On Thu, 7 Feb 2008 06:58:50 -0800 (PST), "ltlee1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
<ltlee1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The International Herald Tribune published excerpts from his speeches.
Can you provide the link? I can't find the article. Below is what I
found. My comments are
1. China is right not to interfere in other countries' affairs. Their
problems had existed long before China or any one else came in. They
will be there long after China will have left. Aft present it is low
level and involves only the parties concerned. For a foreign power to
interfere will only prolong and expand the conflict, increase the
casualties,and the suffering without solving anything. In the end one
side must be defeated and the other side become dominant.
2. China doesn't care what her people say or write. The two human
rights activists were arrested because they created websites to
promote a subject foreigners can use to interfere into China's
internal affairs. The IHT article is exactly the kind of interference
China objects to and will crackdown on Chinese residents who enable
such interference.
Whether at home or abroad, China is silent on matters of democracy
By Howard W. French Published: February 7, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/07/asia/letter.php
SHANGHAI: For months, as the Beijing Olympics draw nearer, China has
been refining its arguments in favor of disassociating the Games from
politics.
This effort reached something of a rhetorical crescendo last week with
an editorial in The People's Daily. "Those who want to use the
Olympics to discredit China, and those who think the Olympics will
promote China to change in the way they hope, are doomed to be
disappointed," the column said. "Their efforts will be futile."
In addressing its domestic audience, the Chinese government makes
little effort to clarify what sort of changes the forces, which it
vows to defy, are seeking. Instead, the predictable thrust of the
propaganda campaign is to equate the Olympics with the pride and
"face" of the Chinese people and to cast anyone who criticizes the
country and its playing host to the Games as sinister enemy forces.
It is worth pausing to make clear what the criticism has been all
about. Hitherto, most of the voices that have spoken of a boycott have
objected to Chinese sup****t for the government of Sudan, which has
conducted a genocide-like campaign in its oil-rich western province,
Darfur.
Before speaking further of Darfur or even of China, it should be noted
that to some extent the Olympics have always been about politics.
China, as many others before it, seeks to use the games to give a
boost to its global "brand." It's an old story, and one that has been
tried by all kinds of countries, from Nazi Germany to a rebuilt Japan.
Today in Asia - Pacific
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China's expanding fleet of submarines
China's aims are clearly neither as sinister as the Nazis' nor as
mundane as Japan's. In a word, the country seeks to announce its
arrival in the first rank of nations, as a place of peace and
prosperity and infrastructure - and there's the rub.
China has made impressive strides, acquiring lots of ****ny new
hardware and many other trappings of a great modern power. But its
see-no-evil attitude toward the problems of its Sudanese client raises
troubling questions that differentiate Beijing from other recent hosts
of the Olympics.
If China's lack of attachment to human rights were simply a matter of
averting one's glance from genocide in Sudan, it would be a serious
enough reason for concern. The country's attitude toward human rights
and democracy, however, has far broader implications.
Fighting has raged this week in Sudan's western neighbor, Chad, where
China has growing oil and commercial interests. Sudan is widely
believed to have backed rebels who sought to overthrow President
Idriss Déby of Chad. With two clients involved, one might have
expected China to play a leading role in restoring peace in the
region.
Instead, Beijing has stood back from the fray, allowing France to
rescue its nationals in Chad and expending little discernible
political capital chastising Sudan for the rebel invasion or ****ging
the parties toward a political settlement.
When things get messy, the attitude here is that such trouble spots
are very far away and that China doesn't like to interfere. The
Chinese public, meanwhile, is assiduously kept in the dark about the
nature or extent of China's fast-growing overseas interests.
I was reminded of this as I looked for news stories on China and Chad
on the Internet. My browser went blank, meaning the censors had
decided this was not knowledge I should be able to find.
Sudan appears to have given backing to the rebels because Chad was
preparing to play host to a European force that would have provided
humanitarian relief and, inevitably, intelligence about the state of
things in neighboring Darfur.
Khartoum clearly doesn't want this, but where does Beijing stand? To
be charitable, it is hard to say.
Chad itself is a mess today, not because it lacks growth, which
Beijing sees as a cure for every ill, but because it lacks social
justice and any democratic way of sharing the spoils of its booming
oil income.
This leads to incessant warlordism, not development, with the coup
d'état institutionalized as the only way of changing leaders.
As China emerges as a leading player in the resource-rich Third World,
one awaits its constructive thinking on places like Chad and Sudan.
Instead, one mostly hears silence.
Why is it so hard for China to move beyond the idea that economic
growth and noninterference are the be-all and end-all of foreign
policy? That is because they are also the last word in its domestic
policy. The lack of democratic content in China's foreign policy is
closely linked to the lack of democracy in domestic politics.
Whether it makes sense to boycott the Olympics, as a lever to change,
is questionable. The reason the question arises at all, though, is
that the incipient great power so willfully ignores values taken by
most as universal.
What's often lost in the talk of pressuring China, meanwhile, are the
largest stakes of all: robust respect of human rights and greater
democracy within China itself, without which the ****ny Olympic
superstructure the country shows off this summer will continue to look
hollow.
A recent strong reminder of this came with the treatment of a leading
dissident, Hu Jia, who was arrested in Beijing in late December and
held for a month before being charged. In the end, he was detained for
"incitement to subvert state power," and his wife and newborn child
were subjected to house arrest.
Hu operated as a one-man clearinghouse for news on the arrest or abuse
of others, and with the Olympics coming, even this lonely islet of
civil society vigor appeared to have been too much for Beijing.
"We have never said anything against the Olympics or boycotting the
Olympics," wrote Teng Biao, a lawyer who recently co-wrote an essay
with Hu. "All we wanted to express was that the Olympics should help
open up the society and improve human rights.
"Both the government and the people should treasure such a precious
op****tunity."
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