How much it warms my heart to hear Bryan Curtis dismiss the Olympics! And, Robert Lipsyte is right-watch a sporting event, but let's not make it into a big deal. Good people have better things to do than worry-or better ways to help-the Chinese people get respect.
The problem with a compromise, that it satisfies no one's moral beliefs all the more that it is reasonable. For instance, how do we confront PRC's human rights problem?
The most successful human rights engagement with China—such as that of John Kamm, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong who has intervened on behalf of hundreds of political prisoners—is characterized by what one might call respectful tenaciousness. Trying to crack Chinese Internet censorship or highlighting the cases of those mistreated for seeking to advance the rule of law or exercise free speech, for instance, is always appropriate. But so is applauding China's attempts to control corruption or experiment with local elections.
Effective human rights work requires two things. First, it requires a tragic sense of history—a recognition that, no matter what we do, we will never be able to save everyone from misery or suffering. Sometimes, for example, despite its immense power and resources, the U. S. government's own ability to influence human rights is limited, and its willingness to do so in a bold way is compromised by competing interests. We who care about human rights would do well to recognize that and shape our recommendations to the U.S. government accordingly. Otherwise, we risk even greater marginalization than we already experience.
But secondly, good human rights work requires persistence and a long view, the recognition that human rights have become the lingua franca for much of the world and a ticket of admission to widely honored membership in the international community. The United States with its plummeting approval ratings around the globe has learned that the hard way. China too will learn eventually that the best way to avert hurt feelings is to avoid prompting criticism in the first place.
I'm almost certain none will like this suggestion.
ESWN reminds its readers about joining the pro-Tibet bandwagon, and I agree. And, not just because I trust Rebecca MacKinnon implicitly. As I've argued before, on this blog, and also contra-TNR (it would take too long to find the comment on the TNR site), why stop at boycotting the Olympics when ending them permanently is so much more beneficial?
Beijing is doing much that's distasteful, like blocking communication and roughing up protesters. Even EU leaders are strongly considering an Olympic boycott, which is enough to embolden even the most cowardly. TNR's Joshua Kurlantzick piles on even more transparently.
The charges, though absurd--it's the Dalai Lama--are hardly unique. In fact, they're of a piece with a new tactic the Chinese government seems to have developed: using Olympic security as an excuse to crack down, beyond any sense of proportion, on its "enemies."
Take the case of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group located primarily in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang. (Though primarily Buddhist, Confucian, and atheist, China has a Muslim population of one to two percent.) Earlier this month, China announced that Uighur terrorists had targeted the Games, a claim that understandably drew headlines around the world. Given the Games' horrific history of terrorist attacks, many sporting fans probably breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that the Chinese authorities had busted a plot hatched by militant separatists.
The Uighurs? Is Kurlantzick trying to launch his own central Asian state with disaffected anti-Han groups in tow? That he's right has nothing to do with Beijing, Tibet, or the Olympics!
The World Uyghur Congress believes that the unrest is a huge challenge for the Chinese government's controversial rule of Tibet, casting serious doubt on the Chinese government's promises to improve its human rights situation ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games. The harsh crackdown on peaceful Tibetan protesters reveals the brutality of Chinese rule in Tibet which flatly contradicts the core of the Olympic Spirit founded upon universal moral principles.
The World Uyghur Congress also urges the world community to exercise more pressure on the Chinese government to cease using military force against the Tibetans and Uyghurs, and instead seriously seek political solution to their legitimate aspirations, ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
It's a political statement, not the gospel! However much one might agree that the Uighurs are in bad sorts, let's not swap careful consideration for slavish and convenient groping for fashionable trends.
In 1945, a rebellion led to the creation of a short-lived independent republic in the Yining region close to the Soviet Union. But in 1949, this was abolished after the Russians told the Uighurs to co-operate with Mao. An earlier East Turkestan, in 1933, had lasted only a few months. Since 1949, Chinese rule has never been seriously challenged, although the authorities say there were more than 200 «terrorist incidents» between 1990 and 2001, causing the deaths of 162 people. The most recent unrest of any significance occurred in 1997, with the Yining riots. Three bus bombings in Urumqi and an explosion in Beijing that year were also blamed on Xinjiang separatists.
Calls for independence are still heard among members of the Uighur diaspora. Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and former political prisoner who was sent into exile in America by China in March, has become a prominent cheerleader for the cause. She has been labelled a «terrorist» by the Chinese government and her family members in Xinjiang have been harassed by the police. Amnesty International says the government's accusations «have not been backed up with any evidence» and appear to be aimed at discrediting Ms Kadeer and her associates as part of a broader political crackdown in Xinjiang.
But at the beginning of October, official celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the founding of what China calls the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region passed without disruption. Tight security for the events reflected the authorities' continuing fear that, though subdued, separatists could still pose a security risk. Yet China plainly does not worry that Xinjiang might descend into a Chechnya-style conflict. And for all its warnings of terrorist dangers, it appears convinced that, just as rapid economic growth has bought respite from radical political demands in other parts of China, the same formula could well work in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is a prize worth keeping for more than just reasons of national pride. As China searches for fuel to power its economic development, its gaze has inevitably turned westwards to the province's rich endowments of coal, oil and natural gas. Driving along the edge of the vast Taklamakan desert, the vista is of endless tracts of wells and drills. Official hyperbole makes it hard to tell how much oil and gas Xinjiang really has. But the province is a focal point of exploration by China's largest oil and gas producer, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
The discovery of Xinjiang's Kela II natural-gas field laid the foundation for a 4,000km (2,500-mile) pipeline that began pumping gas from Xinjiang to China's east coast last year. Three years ago, the oilfields of the Junggar basin, in northern Xinjiang, broke the annual output record for Chinese oilfields by crossing the ten million tonne mark. In 2004, the Tarim basin oilfields chipped in with five million tonnes.
With its borders with Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, among others, Xinjiang is also China's principal gateway to the energy reserves of Central Asia. Chinese oil experts are frequent visitors to Almaty and Tashkent, where they hammer out some of the biggest deals in the global energy market today. The first phase of an oil pipeline stretching from Kazakhstan to the border town of Alashankou, in Xinjiang, is soon to be completed. The two countries are also exploring the feasibility of a natural-gas pipeline.
Dissent among the Chinese is perspicacious, although the Potemkin treatment is unnecessary. An historic summit between western and Chinese media, including bloggers would be a good start.
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The Atlantic's Graeme Wood on Buddhist democracy nails it:
There may be something or nothing to learn about democracy from these spectacles. The first suggests that the movement for Tibetan independence does not answer only to the Dalai Lama, and that China may have a bigger problem, with a wider and more distributed base, than it thought. Would Lhasa consider exchanging the unquestioned rule of Hu Jintao for something more than the unquestioned rule of Tenzin Gyatso? As for the Bhutanese monarch, all signs point to democracy -- except for the often and freely expressed desire of the Bhutanese to keep and revere the monarchy, with or without elections. Whatever else this shows, it should put rest to the notion that democratization of the Buddhist street is any simpler -- or more welcome -- than democratization of the Arab one.
Second place in thought-provoking quotes, though, goes to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner:
On Wednesday, Kouchner told RMC radio and BFM television that the boycott was not a bad idea. But "it seems unrealistic," he said. "There are a lot of good ideas that can't be put into practice."
"When you're dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it's sometimes at the expense of human rights," he added. "That's elementary realism."
It's no time for sycophantic devotion to one political course, religion, leader, or even state, especially when repression seems to be expanding.
Sphere: Related ContentTibet, a Chinese autonomous region, is a geo-economic powder keg disguised as the harsh crimson hues of self-determination and autocracy.
Contrary to the official propaganda, few Tibetans or their allies – not even the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader who lives in exile in India – are calling for full independence from China. Like the Dalai Lama, all the important foreign powers acknowledge Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but want China to respect the human rights and the unique culture of its Tibetan population.
Beijing should therefore stop hiding behind its accusations that «splittists» are behind the troubles in Tibet and start dealing seriously with Tibetan grievances. Negotiating with the Dalai Lama with a view to introducing real autonomy would make a good start.
Unfortunately, there are few signs of such an approach from Beijing. Chinese officials have announced in old-fashioned communist language that the unrest was «meticulously planned by reactionary separatist forces» with the goal of making Tibet independent, according to the Tibet Daily. Ominously, the officials called for «a people's war» to oppose separatism and expose «the hideous face of the Dalai clique».
As the violence spread to towns outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Dalai Lama condemned what he called China's «rule of terror» and «cultural genocide» in Tibet. But he refrained from joining calls for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games in August. In the current violent circumstances, that is an olive branch, and Chinese leaders should grasp it.
FT's call for restraint contradicts both Gordon G. Chang's call for the Bush administration (and, by implication, Senator Barack Obama's call to respect Tibetan autonomy) to "show revulsion for Beijing's goals and abhorrence of its tactics" and the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement. China Hand makes short work of the Tibet-as-Gaza argument.
In other words, think of Tibet as the new Gaza.
The occupying power games the political/diplomatic system to counter criticism, but relentlessly extends its military and economic reach inside the territory. The occupied turn to militancy. They attempt to create an atmosphere of intense bitterness and anger on the ground through direct action and by the creation of a new generation of militants in religious schools.
The objective is to marginalize moderate and co-optable forces, make a successful occupation impossible militarily, politically, and socially, and finally compel the oppressor to give up and withdraw.
An interesting idea, except it hasn't worked in Gaza, even with sub rosa aid from Iran.With the Tibet independence forces actively opposed by India and the United States and just about every other government I can think of, I wouldn't think that such an approach would succeed in Tibet.
And it would also involve abandoning the moral high ground that the Dalai Lama has assiduously cultivated for fifty years, turning an esoteric religion and feckless ruling class into beacons of righteousness and hope.
Yet,ethnic Tibetan protest has already spread throughout western PRC. In response, popular Chinese resentment has also increased. James Fallows' Comment is instructive:
The government is full of subtle thinkers, but few are in the propaganda or public security ministries. The propagandists black out news coverage and blame every problem in Tibet on what they call (when they speak in English) "hooligans" from "the Dalai clique." Most people in China assume that Tibet, like Taiwan, Inner Mongolia, or the Muslim Xinjiang region of the northwest, is an integral and inalienable part of its territory. That's all they have ever heard from the media and in the schools. The threat of regional "splittism" raised by riots in Tibet is in this view a true threat to national security.
There's also this update in The Economist (which, according to its own report, is the "only foreign news organization with official approval to be in Tibet"):
Two aspects this report highlights:
1. The animosity between ethnic Chinese Muslims, or Hui, and Tibetans. The People's Armed Police has seemingly asserted control, but there's the possibility of violence between the two populations (of course, this might be what local authorities want foreigners to know).
2. The comments following the report contain Chinese, or pro-Chinese, comments, many of which voice hostile denunciations of western bias against China.
Actually, I wonder now just how wise American and EU support for Kosovo independence was, given the possibility of ethnic violence in Tibet and western PRC. I'm also reminded of Thai Buddhist reprisals against Muslims along its Malaysian border, which helped precipitate the Thaksin coup, as well as ethnic tensions between majority Burmese and other groups in Myanmar. As an NYT article highlights the Tibetan Youth Congress, it might be too hopeful to perceive Tibet in light of the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way". Facile support for both spiritual and political determination is naive.
Tim Johnson, who unfortunately doesn't have official approval, is trapped watching traffic.
Earlier today, I saw probably 100 or more military trucks on a highway heading to Tibet. I have no idea what they were carrying or if it was a routine caravan. It's all part of the riddle of trying to decipher what is happening, and what will happen, in Tibet.
It's Myanmar redux.
Returning to clarity, FT outlines the causes for the Tibetan uprising:
The Dalai Lama's higher international profile has enraged Beijing and been a significant factor in damaging relations with countries like Germany and Austria, and disrupting ties elsewhere.
China has sought to counter the Dalai Lama's enduring influence on multiple fronts, right down to micro-managing cultural practices, such as the wearing of fur during festivals.
Tibetans had refused to wear the traditional fur-trimmed robes at an annual horse-riding event last year after the Dalai Lama said they should not. The Chinese, however, insisted they wear the robes in defiance of their spiritual leader, to the bitterness of participants.
The underlying sovereignty issue aside, China's expanding economy, and the demand for raw materials, has also substantially increased the Chinese presence in Lhasa in particular in recent years, and resentment among locals.
The growth of the Chinese population has been supported by the opening up of the new railway line, the highest in the world, from the next door province of Qinghai.
«In the last couple of years, we have seen an accelerated drive to push through Beijing's economic policies, which is basically to develop the city along the lines of an urban industrial model,» said Kate Saunders, of the International Campaign for Tibet.
The 2008 Beijing games, and the planned passage of the Olympic torch through Lhasa in coming weeks, have been another factor in lifting tensions in recent weeks. The Dalai Lama himself has not supported an Olympic boycott.
Of these causes, I hold Beijing's hunger for resources to be both the most troubling and solvable problem. As the international system becomes more multipolar, Beijing will pushback against the US. But, short of a technological revolution in energy, geo-economics is till a zero-sum game. Beijing needs what Tibet offers, and the access it ensures. Only an international solution that will guarantee economic growth for all states without pause or excessive cost will slake Beijing's hunger.
Finally, Dan at China Law Blog recommends Peter Hessler's "Tibet through Chinese Eyes". I conclude with a comment:
Great article by Hessler, except for his conclusion. What it boils down to I guess is that the people who live in a place should be allowed to live as they please. Hessler's comments about American Indians are true (I'm part Indian) but there is a big difference in 1850 and 2008 - we should all know better by now.
Honor the dead by not heaping more corpses on humanity's bier.
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Let's stop canonizing or demonizing (unfortunately, both left and right have latched on to this cause celebre) celebrities for taking safe political stands. Case in point: Steven Spielberg (and Mia Farrow). Why stop at boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when we can just end the Olympic movement!
Who cares for weeks of spectator sports most viewers will never practice, and the mere viewing of which is even more harmful to health. Why support a movement fueled by corporate endorsement of drugs-abusing spoiled, isolated monsters whose entire lives have revolved around celebrity and abuse of their own bodies? Why support a movement that allows governments to build worthless infrastructure with public money, and then forces tax-payers to alter their life's for weeks to cater to foreigners for the governments' benefit?
It's not that I agree with Beijing's human rights abuses, or its Sudan policy. It's that the reason Beijing, and other developing states, want to host an Olympics is, to justify building infrastructure.
«It's like approaching the Forbidden City, it's absolutely incredible.» The adjective is one that Mouzhan Majidi, chief executive of Foster + Partners, liberally attaches to Beijing's new airport terminal, designed by his British firm. The world's largest, designed in the gently sinuous form of a Chinese dragon, it was planned and built in four years by an army of 50,000 workers. «The columns on the outside are red and you see them marching for miles and miles,» says Mr Majidi.
A little hyperbole is understandable. The terminal is 3km (1.8 miles) long. The floor space is 17% bigger than all the terminals at London's Heathrow combined (including about-to-open Terminal Five). Chinese officials like the Forbidden City analogy. Just as the towering vermilion walls and golden roofs of the imperial palace inspire visitors with awe, China wants its golden-roofed terminal to impress those arriving for the Olympic games in August. Part of a $3.8 billion expansion, which included the opening of a third runway in October, it is due to open on February 29th, weeks ahead of schedule.
(…)
There was no consultation with the public on the terminal. Nor was there any public debate about the construction of Beijing's third runway, notwithstanding the noise pollution already suffered by thousands of nearby residents. Beijing is now planning a second airport (even with Mr Majidi's terminal, the current airport is expected to exceed its designed capacity of 60m passengers this year, seven years before schedule). The location is being considered in secret. Xu Li, an official at the Ministry of Communications' transport research institute, agrees that China's infrastructure expansion is not as restrained by rules as it is in America. Once a plan is made, it is executed. «Democracy», she says, «sacrifices efficiency.»
An often heavy-handed approach to land appropriation also helps. For Beijing's airport expansion, 15 villages were flattened and their more than 10,000 residents resettled nearby. But several of the former farmers told your correspondent that they were still barred from the unemployment benefits and other welfare privileges of city dwellers even though their farmland had been grabbed from them. One elderly man said that officials had threatened them with violence if they refused to leave their villages.
(…)
A show-off tendency among Chinese urban planners (as well as a dire lack of suburban rail networks) has helped to fuel a rapid expansion of costly underground railways. In some cases, says the World Bank, this is diverting resources away from urgent needs in the bus systems. Two decades ago only two cities, Beijing and Tianjin, had subways (and only three lines between them). Now 15 cities are building them at a total cost of tens of billions of dollars. Beijing and Shanghai are leading the way, spurred on by their desire to impress the world at the Olympic games and, in Shanghai's case, the World Expo which it will host in 2010. Beijing's official Olympics website displays a story saying that the city will have the biggest underground network in the world by 2015.
Such abuse is not limited to Beijing, or even East Asian autocracies.
In short, the real human rights abuse is not just Beijing, but the Olympics itself. Even The Economist has to admit, that the modern Olympic movement has never lived up to its own hype:
Lofty words are always a hostage to fortune. The Olympic movement boasts that the games «have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles.» Yet history suggests otherwise. Boycotts marred the jamborees of 1956, 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1968 two American sprinters gave a Black Power salute on the podium. The 1972 games were blighted when Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes.
It's not as if athletes will miss opportunities for competition, or corporations for advertising. World Cups are just as prestigious, and incur their own abuse (that will be the next boycott!). But, if we want to use the Olympics to make a one-time statement about Sudan, then why not take the extra effort and avoid future abuse on a two-year rotating schedule?
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