Chinese official press slam imitation? Is this supposed to be ironic?

Below is an excerpt from an article in today's Age about a new crackdown on Chinese dissident intellectuals. The article goes on to discuss the phenomenon of public intellectuals in China and the recent publication of a top 50 intellectuals list by a Chinese newspaper which was criticised by mainstream press like the China Daily for being unoriginal.

Writers at the China Daily seem to have a short memory for plagiarism. Perhaps they only consider this derivatory.

An insert in the Southern Weekend newspaper in October included a list of China's top 50 intellectuals as the writers judged them, apparently getting the idea from the British monthly Prospect, which had run a list of 100 public intellectuals.

The official newspapers slammed the concept, saying it aped a foreign publication and "drives a wedge between the intellectuals and the party". Intellectuals were not independent but "belong to the working class, and are part of the people, and are a group under the leadership of the Communist Party", it said.