China's Long Awaited Year of the Olympics Is Becoming More like The Year
of Living Dangerously -- Olympic torch threatens to scorch China /FT
Financial Times FT.com
China
Olympic torch threatens to scorch China
By Gideon Rachman
Published: March 31 2008 18:38 | Last updated: March 31 2008 18:38
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The Olympic torch＊s journey to the Beijing Olympics is threatening to
turn from triumphal progress into marathon humiliation. Protesters are
ru****ng like moths to the Olympic flame.
The lighting of the torch in Athens was awkward enough. It took arrests
and heavy-handed policing to keep pro-Tibet demonstrators at bay. Things
could get worse this weekend, when the torch will reach London to be
greeted by a combustible mix of police, demonstrators and patriotic
Chinese students. Other potential trouble spots on the route to the
Olympic opening ceremony in August include San Francisco and New Delhi.
Then there is the trip across Tibet itself. The one spot on the Olympic
torch＊s progress where we can be guaranteed that there will be no public
demonstrations is Pyongyang.
Is the Chinese government beginning to regret its triumph in securing
the Olympics for Beijing? The games were meant to be a coming-out party
for modern China 每 playing a similar role to that of the Tokyo Olympics
of 1964 and the Seoul Olympics of 1988.
Unfortunately for China, the analogy that increasingly springs to mind
is not Tokyo or Seoul 每 but the Berlin Olympics of 1936. This is not to
say that the Chinese government are modern-day Nazis. Any such
comparison is grotesque.
The Berlin and Beijing games are comparable for other reasons. China 每
like Germany in the 1930s 每 is an emerging superpower. Within 20 years
it is likely to be the largest economy in the world. The rise of China 每
like the rise of Germany in the 1930s 每 is reshaping the world system.
So the comparisons with the Tokyo and Seoul Olympics do not really
capture the political impact of the Beijing games. The new China is far
more than just the latest and largest Asian tiger economy.
The Beijing Olympics will be stuffed with political symbolism. The
battle between the US and China to be top of the medals table in Beijing
will be tense for reasons that have little to do with s****t. (For the
record, Germany came top of the medals table in 1936.)
The Chinese government would like the games to be a celebration of the
new China. There is a lot to celebrate. Over the past generation more
than 300m Chinese have been lifted out of poverty. Ordinary Chinese have
op****tunities and freedoms that were unimaginable during the Cultural
Revolution. And the rest of the world is benefiting from Chinese
enterprise and investment.
But China＊s growing power also creates anxiety. This would be true even
if China were a model democracy. Great powers attract unease and
resentment simply because of their size. Even some American allies were
discomfited by the chants of ※USA§ at the Los Angeles and Atlanta
Olympics.
But China is not just an emerging great power. It is also an
authoritarian and nationalistic one-party state. Those concerns might
have been brushed under the red carpet, if the Beijing games had not
become the focus for protests against the Chinese government. But the
violence in Tibet 每 and the subsequent global protests 每 ended any hope
of an apolitical games.
The Chinese government will be praying that the protests surrounding the
Olympics can be contained. Many western governments will quietly join
them in that prayer. If the protests gather force 每 and are met with
violent repression 每 western governments will face a dilemma reminiscent
of that presented by the Berlin Olympics.
They have no desire to give offence to their hosts. But at what stage
does turning a blind eye to the political context in which the Olympics
are taking place amount to an act of moral cowardice and complicity? The
fact that President George W. Bush has ill-advisedly accepted an
invitation to attend the Beijing Olympics will make it impossible for
the Americans to step round political controversies surrounding the games.
The desire to steer clear of symbolic fights with China over the
Olympics is, nonetheless, understandable. Any western effort to
※disrupt§ the Olympics would play into the hands of the most paranoid
and nationalistic elements in Chinese society. It would be used to
validate a self-pitying narrative, in which the west is constantly out
to thwart and humiliate China. The more open and internationalist voices
in China would be drowned out in the din.
But it is not just up to the west to avoid confrontation. The Chinese
government cannot afford simply to complain and bluster as events unfold.
China wants the world to celebrate its emergence as a modern, pragmatic
and dynamic country. But at moments of stress 每 or when neuralgic
subjects such as Tibet and Taiwan are raised 每 the Chinese can revert to
the worst rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution. What is the rest of the
world meant to make of the statement that the Dalai Lama is a ※monster
with a human face and an animal＊s heart§? This crude and inflexible
language reflects crude and inflexible policies on Taiwan and Tibet 每
dependent on the threat of military force.
The lack of debate in China about government policy on these issues is
also disturbing. Nationalistic unanimity in a country of more than a
billion people is hardly likely to reassure foreigners.
If the Chinese government is genuinely forward-looking and pragmatic, it
will use the furore surrounding the Beijing Olympics as a chance to
encourage debate and political openness. To revert to older instincts
and policies would be to invite a public-relations disaster in Beijing
this summer.
gideon.rachman@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
columns at www.ft.com/rachman
Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman＊s blog
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