Move over ugly American, make room for the ugly Chinese.

In Seoul on Sunday, groups of Chinese students accosted protesters demonstrating against China's treatment of North Korean refugees and Beijing's policies in Tibet. The attacks by the Chinese occurred as the Olympic torch wended its way on its seemingly never-ending journey around the world. The South Korean government was justifiably angry. China, after initially denying the events occurred, has now taken steps to still the waters. But the damage has been done. China's angry youth - called "fen qing" in Chinese - are ruining their country's reputation around the world and spelling the end of a decade-long honeymoon that the world has had with China.

The flare-up was the latest deeply troubling and profoundly weird event to mar the globe-trotting journey of the torch, which the Beijing government has dubbed "the sacred flame." (Remember, these dudes are officially atheists.) Before Seoul, we had Chinese cops in blue and white tracksuits manhandling demonstrators in Paris and London; we had a Chinese woman in the United States who participated in a pro-Tibet protest being identified on a listserv run by Chinese students; now her parents are on the run in China and her high school in Qingdao has revoked her diploma; and we've witnessed the incessant hounding of Tibetan and other speakers on US campuses by Chinese students. In cities around the world, the Chinese embassy has fanned the passions of the "angry youth" by encouraging them to demonstrate, handing out T-shirts and flags.

While I have no problem with displays of patriotic feeling, the only thing these "angry youth" are accomplishing is turning the world away from China. And they are not alone in this ill-fated effort to get China's point across. China's propaganda machine is also seriously in need of repairs.

For a few years there, the tone adopted by spokespeople of China's government was downright suave. Background briefings. Check. A quiet drink with journalists. Check. Even a bowling event without a government minder. Check. But these days, it seems like someone has disinterred Cultural Revolution propagandist and Gang of Four member Zhang Chunqiao and put him at the helm.

After the March riots in Tibet, the Tibetan government proclaimed a "people's war" against "splittism" (somebody should really tell them to lose that word) and the party boss there called the Dalai Lama "a jackal clothed in a monk's robes, and a vicious devil who is a beast in human form." A few days later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "disgusting." And the amazing thing was the Chinese expected to be taken seriously.

Finally, there's China's "ship of shame" - packed with arms for the government of Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe - on its own troubled journey to first South Africa and now Angola. In both places, dock workers refused to unload the weapons. It's a coincidence but also a bad one because China has been focusing a lot of diplomatic capital on improving its ties to Africa and the rest of the Third World.

What does this all mean for China? To me, it means the end of an era of China's "soft power."