Could a mainland paper run a satirical opinion piece saying that Hu Jintao was doing a bad job?
"No, because it would be untrue," he said.
"But what if the article was all factually true? There were no false statistics, no misspelled names, no wrong dates. But an opinion that Hu was handling things badly?"
"But he IS doing a good job," my Chinese friend said.
The point was not whether he or I personally thought Hu was doing a good job; but whether someone could express the opinion that he wasn't.
"No," my Chinese friend said. "If, hypothetically, Hu really did something factually, provably wrong -- like he was being tried for corruption -- that could be reported."