Sir, – I write in reference to an article with the headline "From China with love: why spies still love a good honeytrap", (October 22th) by Peter Cluskey.
Since my arrival in Dublin 3½ years ago, I have regarded The Irish Times as a respectable and worth-reading source of information about the Irish people, who have been genuinely friendly to China and the Chinese people.
The truth is that all these years China-Ireland relations have kept growing and the peoples of our countries are finding that they are more and more alike and closer rather than increasingly different and apart.
However, much to my disappointment, the aforesaid article appears quite the other way – what is said and how it is said are strange and misleading.
Its writer apparently wanted to give a totally different impression of China by choosing far-fetched cases.
Instead of furnishing facts or sharing insights, the author resorted to sensationalising hearsay and guesswork, and even casually and irresponsibly likened today’s China to the former Soviet Union in the Cold War.
In fact, the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs has already made statements that the allegations regarding the cases [mentioned] were all but groundless, which the article did not mention at all.
The article is not helping the Irish people get real knowledge and understanding of China. It is simply attempting to be a James Bond-style story that deliberately creates and enhances biased and stereotyped misunderstandings.
– Yours, etc,
XIONGWEN PAN
Chinese Embassy in Ireland
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.