Sure, the controller could have spoken slower and maybe he wouldn’t have had to get upset either. However at the same time you all know the frustration you yourselves feel when you desperately want to get your own transmission through but some stumbling guy like this one is taking up all the space and time.
I’m sure that the controller feels this too. He’s got plenty more movements to track than just you and me so I can fully understand his feelings when something like this happens.
Furthermore I think you Britons for some reason get more upset by an American that doesn’t speak British than a Spanish or French that doesn’t speak English.
You might miss one or two messages in the US but I’m convinced that more confusion and misunderstandings are created within French or Spanish airspace when most of the time they don’t speak English at all.
The US controllers are speaking in the clearest and most direct way they know how, it might not be “RKO” language but that infraction of standards is one of the smaller ones when comparing with other parts of the world.
What I react to though is this poor guy who can’t form anything resembling a complete sentence and he’s supposedly just passed the exam.
When you combine this with the Chinese way of never wanting to be wrong, I.e. never challenging a question, you’ve got a nasty recipe.
Don’t bash the controller for this incident. It was caused quite simply because the Chinese pilots English was inadequate. In fact you might say that he doesn’t speak the language at all, he has a phrasebook where some of the pages are more worn than others.