As diplomatic go, it was not a big one, but for many people in Hong Kong and southern China it felt like the latest in a long line of slights. In May, Nintendo—a Japanese toy company— launched its most recent video games of Pokémon, a franchise of cute furry creatures, and announced that the names of the creatures would henceforth be written in characters that adhere to Mandarin pronunciation, not Cantonese. This, said the company, would help to provide unity across the greater Chinese market. On May 30th, a group of demonstrators gathered outside the Japanese consulate in Hong Kong to protest. Read more
