China to overtake Japan as world’s largest purveyor of weirdness: report

“It’s a marker of China’s increasingly dominant role in the weird global economy. Only North Korea ranks higher on the unofficial GNW scale but that is due almost solely to the ruling Kim family regime and can’t be considered valid without independent AWWI confirmation.”

While the GNW growth was deemed “impressive” by the AWWI, other analysts pointed out that it was confined to a relatively small amount of China’s overall 1.3 billion population and centered largely in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as well as some second-tier cities such as Chengdu, where “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Happy Happy parties” have become inexplicably popular among stressed-out male white collar workers and job-seeking college students alike.

Meanwhile, China’s vast rural population remains mired in what one expert called “a disheartening cesspool of mediocrity and near-normalcy.” Doubts about China’s ability to sustain the Weird Index growth were also voiced.

“It’ll still be a long time before we see real growth, such as buying used panties in subway stations in Beijing. China is still too conservative for that,” said eminent Oxford University historian, philanthropist and Sinologist Sir William Buckfast. “Though recent indicators, such as the boom in Internet sales of artificial hymens and vials of alleged virgins’ pubic hair, are encouraging signs of sustainability.”

“’The per capita GNW is still small,” cautioned AWWI economist Ravi Singh. “There are hundreds of millions of peasants and farmers living in seriously dull conditions, with lifestyles that we would officially call ‘vanilla.’ There’s not a lot else to do in many of these villages except sleep, eat noodles, bicker endlessly with relatives and possibly fuck a pig.”

Indeed, the growing Weird Gap between China’s rich and poor is reportedly causing concern at the highest levels of government.

Some Chinese economists and sociologists are calling for a rural subsidy package, similar to efforts following the 2009 world financial crisis that saw China pumping several billion yuan into the countryside to encourage peasants to buy discounted appliances and computers, even while many had no electricity to power the devices.

There were proposals being floated during this year’s Two Sessions to reward villages in “Strike Hard, Magnificent Weird” campaigns, such as one pilot project recently enacted in impoverished Henan Province, where residents were encouraged to “let their red freak flags fly.”

Sadly, said one observer, the project was a flop, with witnesses reporting scenes no odder than the sight of several inebriated farmers donning their wives’ oversized faded baggy nylon panties over their trousers and toasting each other repeatedly with baiju before passing out.