Left Flank

Robert Lipsyte has a contrarian view of the Olympic movement I'm contrarian enough to applaud the irony of calling the International Olympic Committee an «evil empire».

So, if an athlete just has to compete in the spectacle for his/her career, what is he/she to do, especially with progressives screaming for a boycott? How about handing the flag to a Sudanese refugee to spit in Beijing's eye during the opening ceremony? Beijing has struck back on that perceived insult.

By revoking the visa of 2006 Olympian Joey Cheek at the very last moment because he had the nerve to speak out about Darfur and the Chinese government's support for Sudan's barbarous regime, Chinese authorities guaranteed that the opening of these Games would focus as much on politics as on sports. The burden now is not on China's critics but on its government.

Supporters of China's Olympic bid hoped that this month's events would showcase how much the country has changed. Let's stipulate many of the things they regularly assert: China is more prosperous and, in important senses, more free than it has been for generations. It is in the world's interest, and in America's interest, to deal peacefully with China and to acknowledge its growing power. We have business to do with China, in the most basic sense of that word, on global warming and also on many diplomatic questions. And, yes, China's economic growth has been staggering.

But a dictatorship is still a dictatorship, a fact that so many who highlight China's achievements try to discuss only in the most guarded tones because there is such fear of antagonizing the Chinese government. Yet the Chinese government seems to have no compunction about antagonizing those for whom liberty and human rights take priority over sports and making money.

Barring Cheek, a gold-medal-winning speedskater, was an utterly gratuitous act demonstrating that no matter what the Chinese leaders promised in order to host the Olympics, they will not put up with athletes who have the nerve to challenge their policies.

Cheek and former UCLA water polo player Brad Greiner are co-founders of Team Darfur, a group that calls attention to the suffering in Sudan, which happens to provide China with a lot of oil. Greiner's visa also was revoked.

No tears here-why should the sovereign states of DPRK and ROK have a joint team marching together anyway?

The Taiwanese and Chinese are also playing language games, when the Taiwanese delegation almost boycotted the games because of a demeaning modifier. Beijing threatened to call the Taiwanese contingent, «Taipei, China», as if the Taiwanese were from a province of the PRC, instead of «Chinese Taipei».

Based on a protocol signed with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Taiwan has been participating in international sports events under the English title «Chinese Taipei» since 1981, due to pressure of from China.

Tai continued that according to a pact inked between both sides of the Taiwan Strait in Hong Kong in 1989, all sports teams or organizations representing Taiwan will follow IOC regulations when attending sports events in China.

Both sides also agreed that Taiwan would be referred to as «Chunghua Taipei» in Chinese characters, or «Chinese Taipei» in English, in any of the Olympic Games' publications or public information materials such as brochures, invitation letters, athletic badges and media broadcasts.

In the Olympic standings, the Chinese Taipei team uses the initials «TPE,» with the Republic of China's National Banner Song as its team song, according to Tai.

She explained that if a Taiwan athlete wins a gold medal, the host authorities should play the Republic of China's National Banner Song while the «Chinese Taipei» flag is being raised.

The more politics in this corporate sports spectacle, the more I might enjoy it. It's certainly more remarkable than ugly gray skies.

The CSM asks, "Will Beijing ever get the point?"

Time is on Taiwan's side as its democracy matures and its de facto independence becomes widely accepted. The "new" KMT cannot now return to its old authoritarian, corrupt ways or it will lose the very US support that keeps Taiwan from being swallowed by the dragon and allows democracy to flourish.

The US showed its resolve to defend Taiwan in 1996 during a cross-strait crisis in which China lobbed "test" missiles toward the island. Now this potential flash point of Asia has used its democracy once again to show the world – and especially China – how a people can collectively correct their leaders through ballots instead of bullets.

Shall I punctuate the point, after last year's 17th Party Congress farce? "The March 22 election was the second time this 'Chinese democracy' saw a transfer of power, serving as a model for what China could be." Michael Turton, even in his despair, adds color.

Another thing -- the atmosphere in Taipei is nightmarish. Never again will I spend an election there -- the conventional wisdom is totally out of touch with the reality of the electorate. In 2004 I stayed in Taichung and got a pretty good line on what would happen, but not this time. I used to describe what circulates in Taipei as a cloud cuckoo-land of KMT talking points, but even that isn't right -- I lack a good grip on the kind of language to characterize its vast and all-encompassing wrongness. As reporters were churning out articles saying that the election was going to be tight Ma win, as speakers everywhere were retreating to positions of nervous ambiguity, and people talking to both campaigns said it would be tight, voters were preparing to hand Ma a 17 point victory. On Friday the DPP was saying it was seeing a late surge for Frank Hsieh, which I didn't report because it so obviously reeked of lying spin. But some apparently did. Nobody I talked to in the capital even got a whiff of a 17 point Ma victory, though all thought he'd win. Certainly somebody knew, because there were massive capital inflows into Taiwan in the last week before the election as international capital prepared to hollow out Taiwan like a gourd invest in our fine nation in anticipation of a Ma victory. Ironically, the nearest polls were the nutcase polls in the pro-Ma papers, though a close examination will show they were nowhere near correct either.

Voter patterns! I'll have a full discussion on them later this week. One thing that really really really stands out here is the desperate need for thorough, credible, detailed survey work that is reliable through time. Tomorrow's analyses in Taipei are going to be largely groups of people talking without the numbers to back them up.

It all sounds like a modern democracy, even if most news organizations have their own pro-Beijing spin.

Should we keep a vigil for KMT autocracy?

Chicago Tribune has a must-read interview with Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bien:

Q: How should the U.S. promote peace and stability between China and Taiwan?

A: Washington should support Taiwan's democratic development, promote official talks between the governments of China and Taiwan, review the outdated one-China policy and abide by the Taiwan Relations Act -- the law that governs relations between our countries. It should sell Taiwan defensive weapons and otherwise help this country defend itself.

When we hold our referendum on Taiwan's participation in the UN [in March], we hope the U.S. will have a positive attitude toward it. The reason Taiwan enjoys its democracy today is because of the encouragement and support of the U.S. government and American people. We want to make the voice of the Taiwanese people heard throughout the world and to become a formal member of international organizations.

Now that the Bush administration has achieved «something» on the Korean peninsula, perhaps it could do something about Taiwan. But, not just what Beijing wants. Michael Turton's apoplectic response to a Reuters article towing the Communist line,/a> is noteworthy in itself.

It's always worth pointing out: China can bluntly say (1) we're threatening war and (2) we're not going to negotiate even one little bit but you can read in actual analysis from thinking human beings that - I'm not making this up - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan is a radical. I suppose, from the point of view of a human history that offers us about 100,000 years of conflict settled by force, that democracy and referendums are a rather radical approach....

Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bien gave a great interview to Der Spiegel, and his response to Beijing is just as dramatic and noteworthy.

SPIEGEL: Your desire to be admitted into the UN would be more likely to succeed if you could come to terms with Beijing - just as the two German nations did 35 years ago.

Chen: We want to negotiate with China, and we see Germany as a model. But for the Chinese there is nothing but the One China policy. Beijing apparently has no interest in dialogue.

SPIEGEL: But you consider reunification with China both possible and desirable?

Chen: We have no way of knowing what will happen in the future. Currently, at any rate, reunification is out of the question.

So, can the US Congress help Taiwan?

...the US Congress, which houses the largest collection of invertebrates outside the Smithsonian, took the State Department to task for its opposition to Taiwan's purchase of F-16s, and sent a resolution through the Committee on the F-16 purchase...

The US opposes the deployment of cruise missiles because they are «offensive weapons» but it wants to sell Taiwan submarines- which it told Taiwan it could not have for the twenty years prior to 2001 - because they were «offensive weapons.» And of course, the 1,000 missiles that China aims at Taiwan receive no attention....I guess they must be defensive weapons.

Seriously, readers, tell me who you think is more dangerous, Taiwan or the PRC?