From Mao to Yao, China has come a long way, and not everybody here is happy about it.
Amid a national controversy over what it means to be a worker in the China of 2005, the Communist Party government announced Thursday that Yao Ming, the 7′-6″ Houston Rockets center from Shanghai, has been accorded the title of vanguard worker — even though he is a millionaire living in Texas who makes his living playing basketball.