The New Public Relations War

Al Jazeera ’s Beijing office occupies the upper floor of an apartment block near Tiananmen Square. I arranged to meet the bureau chief, Ezzat Shahrour, one winter and had rashly decided to walk from my hotel, along Jianguomenwai Dajie. The morning traffic had already turned the overnight snowfall into a dark slush and my face was bitterly cold by the time I arrived at the apartment block. Shahrour was from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which was obvious the moment his secretary opened the door for me. His office was crammed with the furniture Aleppo is famous for. It is beautiful, made of handcrafted rose and walnut wood, and inlaid with mother of pearl. I have similar pieces in my own apartment. It wasn’t hard to imagine that such furniture had also found its way to China centuries earlier along the Silk Road. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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