China’s Olympics: The Earthquake Dividend
The long run-up to the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August has been more volatile than for any Olympics since the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. First were the serious questions about the degree of pollution in China’s capital city and pollution’s potential effect on athletes and their performance. Then came the controversy surrounding the much-publicized journey to Beijing of the Olympic Torch. Protesters in several countries tried to snatch or douse the torch because of sympathy for Tibetans who rioted against the Chinese in March this year. Counter-protests brought hundreds of Chinese into the streets of Western cities and inspired often vicious Chinese Internet blog posts against the West in general.
That ugly standoff was thankfully overshadowed by the much greater tragedy of the massive earthquake in Sichuan province in May. As the Chinese government responded with an efficiency and alacrity so utterly lacking, by contrast, in Myanmar after that country’s devastating typhoon a few weeks earlier, global public opinion clearly softened towards the Chinese. The Chinese government welcomed in foreign earthquake relief teams, revealing a strikingly a different attitude towards outsiders than the Myanmar government had. Human rights organizations, sensitive to the new international mood, took a lower profile in their public discussions of China.
The pendulum, however, now seems to be swinging back to a more critical mode towards China. One reason is that the Chinese themselves have highlighted their para-military preparedness against any possible terrorism during the games, inadvertently reminding the world that the Chinese government has sometimes used great military brutality against its own people. Another is the release in late June of a report by the Europe-based Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders that claimed human rights violations in China had continued to increase as the Olympic Games drew nearer.
Former Chinese human rights prisoner Wei Jingsheng asserted, “In particular, last year the Chinese Government’s repression has rapidly upgraded, in an effort to make sure there is no dissident voices from the people during the 2008 Olympics.” As if Wei needed amplification of his voice, a European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, in late June denounced China’s censorship of the Internet. At a speech to foreign correspondents in Singapore in late June, she said, “We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable.” She said that the Internet ought to be “a free and open medium” and that the European Union was “fighting for the freedom of speech and the freedom to receive the news.”
A third reason for an increasing criticism of China in the run-up to the Olympics are reports that Beijing’s notorious air pollution, regarded as one of the worst of any major city in the world, seems unlikely to be relieved much by measures the government has taken to curb driving in the city in advance of the Olympics. Starting in mid-July, private cars in Beijing will be limited to driving on alternate days, depending on whether their license-plates end in odd or even numbers. The International Olympic Committee has hinted that it might require the postponement of some long-distance Olympic events to protect the health of athletes if pollution levels do not come down.
The Beijing Olympics, of course, are unlikely to be cancelled for any reason short of war or natural catastrophe. But the controversy that continues to swirl around them is a reminder that the global public attention the Olympics generate to the country that hosts them can be a mixed blessing.
Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.
Columns, David Aikman, Provocations, Global Culture, War and Peace, Mon 30 Jun 2008
