The Year of the Rat is over, and Chinese cadres smoking in the offices of Zhongnanhai, just West of the Forbidden City, must be relieved they survived. From a Tibetan uprising to the Sichuan earthquake to Olympic debacles and now economic meltdown, the past lunar year left many Chinese feeling ratty.
But before the New Year lanterns have been taken down, the Year of the Ox already has officials seeing red.
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