Q117Comprehension1 Mark28 Apr 2024
Passage
Read the following passage and answer the given subquestions:
Foreigners and Privileges in China
Foreigners were assumed to be generally amiable but also intellectually dim and incapable of understanding Chinese social and political conflicts. As such, they were viewed as harmless and therefore to be humored to the extent possible. The father of a friend visiting from America once borrowed my bicycle and blew right past the guards of Zhongnanhai, the compound where China's top leaders live and work, and rode around, as the guards called to him in Chinese and jogged after the bike. This would be the equivalent of walking into the president's bedroom in the White House. And while domestic dissidents were treated with great harshness, there was a [1] ________ that attended protection against foreign threats. One time, bicycling, I arrived late to the Great Hall of the People for a meeting with Li Lanqing, the vice premier. I had forgotten to bring the invitation card and my ID. Instead, I showed the guard a CCP membership card I had bought as a novelty at a market. He looked at the card, which I had filled in myself with my atrocious calligraphy, and said, 'I didn't know any foreigners were party members.' I told him, 'I'm Number 65,' and he let me in. Gradually, the membrane between foreign and Chinese thinned and became more porous. Sometimes, Chinese married foreigners, then what were they? Sometimes, people with foreign passports looked Chinese. Sometimes, foreigners had been born in China—should they be restricted? The government tried to expand the system of controls over foreigners to be less reliant on people and more reliant on technology, such as listening devices and surveillance cameras. But the exceptions started to break that down. Ultimately, the circle of Chinese who participated in foreign privileges got wider and wider, and it became clear that the privileges extended to foreigners would bleed into Chinese life and become a liberalizing influence.
Source: chinafile.com - Keeping the Files Out - Anne Stevenson-Yang
What is the meaning of the word novelty as used in the given excerpt?