Taking it from the Qin

Wow - this is entitled "The state of Sino-US relations" and depicts a Chinese Qin warrior having his way with the Statue of Liberty - I got it via Shanghaiist, where there is some lively discussion about how to interpret it, including the significance of the little girl in the background, which someone suggested represented Taiwan.

The warrior seems to represent a strong, unified, virile, powerful and potentially violent China and a swooning, acquiescent US, which depending on your point of view could be either a good or a bad thing. Perhaps this would not be unflattering to some Chinese people, given perceptions of having been humiliated by foreign powers in the past and most recently taking a pasting in the media over Tibet/human rights etc (even as carnage unfolds in Iraq etc). On the other hand, the "Trafalgar Square is not Tian'anmen Square"-type hysteria in the West belies real fear about the rise of China and spread of perceived illiberal "Chinese values" across the world. In this sense, the values represented by the Statue of Liberty don;t count for much in the face of China's huge economic power...

Whatever - it's a great and punchy piece of political art.

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Add - Roger Cohen in his terrific Passages blog at the IHT writes that while Europe is blue - Democratic-supporting - Asia would prefer the Republicans to win in the US. He says:

But China and India rising see the world more in terms of classic balance-of-power equations, driven by the might and self-interest of nations, than through the post-sovereign European prism of international institution-building and soft power.

In Cohen's view, rising China would see itself as a 'giver' rather than a 'taker' - in the soap-on-the-prison-washroom-floor sense, not the altruism awards sense...