Boycott the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China
January 1, 2008 | Filed Under Activism
Human Rights Will Overshadow Beijing As Olympics Approach
A recent Reuters article on Chinese looming issues says that “Groups such as Free Tibet campaigners or China’s growing band of domestically dispossessed are hoping to use the Olympics to highlight their complaints in front of a massive global audience.”
Chinese Censorship
One of the biggest issues that China will face in 2008 is the assault that will inevitably come over China’s public image on certain issues. China is often denounced for the censorship that it carries out against ideas that are commonly spread outside of Chinese borders. From a liberty standpoint, this kind of restraint on society is unthinkable.
The article does suggest that China isn’t taking the criticism lightly and the cause of humans rights activists may be misguided because China does adhere to acceptable human rights standards. “Human rights, as a concept, have become a constitutional principle, a mainstream subject in the political life of both the Party and the state,” it quoted Dong Yunhu, vice president of the China Human Rights Research Association, as saying.
Here’s an excerpt from a Reuter’s article on the upcoming 2008 Olympics; it notes the challenges that lay ahead for the Chinese government and the problem with journalistic standards and censorship.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China exuded optimism on Tuesday about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saying its centuries of culture and history would light up the world, even as organizers came under renewed pressure to fulfill a media freedom pledge.
“We will show the world 5,000 years of splendid Chinese history, the significant achievements of modern China and the zeitgeist of the Chinese people,” said the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, in a New Year’s Day editorial.
While recognizing that unprecedented challenges lay ahead for the year as a whole, the editorial said that there would be far more opportunities than challenges.
For those interested in further learning about China and their ’successful’ approach to Censorship, you might want to read this article from CNN: China and Internet Censorship
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75 Responses to “Boycott the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China”
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what in the world is the boycott crap!? why do we have to link such a historical sporting event to things like human rights, animal rights? Dose the Chinese sporting spirit somehow rigged by those factors? And Marion Jones taking steroids not? Or the whole MLB playing on steroids not? Just do yourself a favor, make things separated, and haven’t you enlightened by Ron Paul that, “we have to be friends of all nations, and don’t interfere with internal affairs” ? Don’t be influenced by these international interest groups!
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If Ron Paul said that then he’s an idiot. We don’t “have to be friends” with anyone. Having spent the last few months living in China, seeing the poverty first hand, hearing the complete lack of knowledge concerning world affairs. I think most westerners are in for an incredibly rude shock when they come to Beijing. Good. Maybe then we can start helping to encourage the Chinese government to let their people make their own choices for a change.
Lets disalow americans from visiting our countries. i.e. Human rights abuse by covert operatives, CIA.
Invades coutries to place puppet regimes and exploit their resources.
Spends more money than any other country on defence then feed their own people or really help third world countries other than forgive their debts but keeps selling them arms to fuel their internal conflicts.
Has the highest number of people incarcerated. Has the highest number of people walking around who have been convicted of a felony.
From the Olympic Committee’s Website:
“The Games have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles.
The upcoming Games will feature athletes from all over the world and help promote the Olympic spirit.” - http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/index_uk.asp
So this is very relevant– the Olympics aren’t just a sporting event, they are a symbol of peace, good moral principles, and of course, human rights. They are supposed to unite people despite what might be happening in the world. If China can’t reflect that kind of message, they aren’t fit to host the Olympics.
If you want to boycott, stop buying chinese stocks… baidu is over $600 and the govt owns all of it… it’s communism so get over it…
All I hear is complaining. If you want every country in the world to be like America, why don’t you just say that?
The thing about we Americans… we’re just blinded by the fact that our form of government isn’t the only method, i.e Iraq.
Hey, China is improving, compared to its state 4 years ago, it actually looks quite good right now. The Olympics are actually helping China clean up its streets for once and begin to regulate traffic and laws, and for once, they actually begin to try and maintain a good public appearance.
How would you feel if somebody put up a video stating that the Olympics shouldn’t take place in America if they were filming Detroit?
Now think, what if you take away the Olympics? China would once again degenerate into its previous condition. What would be the point of preventing the Olympics from taking place in China? If the Olympics is really a symbol of peace, shouldn’t the Olympics be taking place all over the world like it is? If the Olympics are banned from China, what kind of message would the world be sending?
I doubt boycotting will solve anything.
You don’t need to go to china to find corrupt government officials that take people’s homes and land without just cause or compensation. It happens everyday in the good old USA. Never forget, every politician is a lying scumbag.
Cause boycotting is the way you’ll make em realize they have government issues…
I’m glad to see there’s some concern about these upcoming Olympic games. I never like the idea of China holding the Olympics, and was planning on tuning out the Beijing games this summer. China is becoming increasingly important as an economic and political superpower, and the 2008 games is their chance to put on a smiley face and win the world’s confidence.
At the risk of making an overblown comparison, Nazi Germany did the same thing hosting the 1936 games in Berlin.
Adam above is suggesting that China will wipe out the Jews
Wow so many pro communist chinese commenters … but people tend to favor tolitarian rule under the guise of protecting personal freedoms these post 911 days so no real surprise I guess … plus so many USA companies operating in china such as walmart,starbucks and home depot to name but a few it’s getting real hard to tell the players without a scorecard … but human rights are human rights whether it be Beijing or Kansas City … power to the people — boycott the olympics!!
[…] an excerpt from a Reuter’s article on the upcoming 2008 Olympics; it notes the challenges that lay ahead for the Chinese government and the problem with […]
I’m going and I’ll be videotaping quite a bit, I have no agenda other than relaying my experiences, if we can get enough citizen journalists going and photographing, videotaping and blogging their experiences that should shed a light on any human rights violations than any mere protest would. I report you decide.
it’s true China doesnt have human rights…. but… it’s better than 50 years ago… the boycott shows only the “police” actittude western has about “our wayof life” i dont see chinesse people in riots or in strikes about their goverment..tyeah the goberment might put it donw or killed them…but c’mon there are like more that 1 billion chinesse people there… it’s like cuba some they like the way they live… ahd yeah it might look like they have millions of slaves…but the most powerfull coutries have done horrible thigns in order to grow up…do you americans remember the segregation??? you have HUGE issues in your country..first deal with them and when you’re better that anyone else in the world you can try to act like the police in the world…. sorry for my english…
Hi, baby,
You are a good tool of many politicians, surely.
Hey fuck you. America sucks. Imperial fucking swine, killing my fellow iraqi country men to fatten your pig pockets. Fuck you. Piece of shit. Only god will judge you.
See, that’s what I’ve been tellin’ everybody for the past fukin’ 2 years, we need to ban them games if they ain’t in America! What good is it gonna do if we have these games held in a Non-American speakin’ country! I sure as hell don’t trust them slanty eyed yella bastards with my Olympic games! And up yours to the Communist Iraqi’s comment, hell, we’ll turn Iraq into a giant Walmart before it’s all over boy!
Get a brain!
Moran!
DO NOT come to Beijing for the Olympics, not to boycott anything, but because it’s a freaking mess!
There’s no way to page passengers at Beijing Capital Airport. So if you are trying to find someone, they’d better have the cell phone, or the wits and Mandarin skills to buy a phone card for the pay phone. Imagine how much worse it would be if you lost your kid.
The traffic jams are horrible at rush hour. This isn’t just your typical US highway wait-it-out-and-eventually-you’ll-get-somehwere traffic jam; it’s a perpetual struggle to try and squeeze in the last spot. At these hours, the fastest way of getting around town is a bike. Sidenote: drivers are crazy here.
Pollution. You can’t breathe here. Really. I don’t know how they expect athletes to function; every time I blow my nose after going outside, my snot is black.
People trying to rip you off. All the time. Especially if you look foreign. And for those of you who don’t look foreign, welcome to the wonderful world of institutional racism. They hate Asians here, they really do. Think I’m kidding? Take a white kid and an asian kid, set them on a task with anyone official looking. The white kid will get his stuff done in half the time.
There are lots of pretty tourist sites and all that. Good luck getting to them and good luck seeing anything besides other tourists.
In summary: Don’t come to Beijing.
Its good to see that even retards get their chance to voice their opinion on the internet.
You want to talk about human rights? Look at the way your government treats people in your own country, but more importantly, look at the way you treat people outside of your country. Thats where the real injustice of this world is.
I will be boycotting America before China.
@America is a piece of shit.
yup, I’ve got so much money in my pocket from our soldiers killing your countrymen. I mean I can barely get my wallet in my pants. I guess I’ll go spend it all on gas now because we’ve illegally taken so much of it and used it for our own country…. /sarcasm
This is BS. I live in China and while they do censor some stuff it’s really not that hard to get past the blocks. And also people really don’t understand the chinese mentality. People here post like Chinese people want democracy and unfortunately are unable to demonstrate or strike. If the chinese people wanted democracy they would just plain revolt. But they don’t want that. They’re fine with thier goverment currently. They do indeed express for the need of improvments but this attitude of americans that chinese people hate thier goverment is simply not true. They like it and i myself (a Canadian) have some but not huge problems that can’t be fixed. And did not the goverment just give the people land rights? The people will at the end of the day get what they want so long as they don’t knock down the communist party.
“If the chinese people wanted democracy they would just plain revolt.”
Yeah, that whole Tiananmen Square thing was just a joke, really, nobody actually wanted democracy, they were just looking for a good restaurant when things got out of hand.
By the way I just speant 4 days in Beijing and it was an absolute blast. My friends and I are all hoping that the Olympics will blow the lid off of Beijing so that everyone finds out how much fun it is.
The OP is a classic example of the America Hegemonism. People with such stereotype always want to put their American last name on every human in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, most of them are being used by giant capitalists who are behind every conspiracy aimed at the money. A moral example is George w. Bush who largely invests in oil companies and defense industries while prolongs the war in Mid-East as much as he possibly can. If you are too stupid to understand this, Bush’s using innocent soldiers’ lives to drive up demands and prices for oil and weapons, and then he uses the taxpayers’ money to force the government to buy all those evil supplies from those companies that he has share in.
You can’t count how many criminals there are in the Bush administration. 4 years ago, he had messed this country up like never before, and those stupid morons still reelected this doche bag that doesn’t even speak English hoping to bring this country back to the stone age. It’s too late to regret people! Just impeach him along with Cheney!
The US has to fix its own huge problem before spitting on anyone else. Its condition is not any better than the rest of the world, and its international relationship is in its historical low.
Well, the OP didn’t even mark his name on the article. What are you afraid of? Fear of losing your face after people discover you are full of sh!t? Shame on you!
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i think the olympics should be boycotted because they are letting the biggest human rights violators in the world participate. USA.
Uhm, are you stupid? boycott the olympics? Its a tradition of the entire planet…nice try.
“Just because the U.S. has freedom doesn’t mean the rest of the world should have it.”
This is what some of you idiots are saying. Stop and listen to what you are saying once in a while.
This was a very biased report on the conditions of life in Beijing. I absolutely would agree that there exists human rights issues, but Beijing has such problems just like everyone else.
The above video was a good example of bad journalism, taking shots of only the worst parts of Beijing. In such a populated state, bad incidents and poor areas of management are bound to exist, but that isn’t to say the Chinese people as a whole are suffering.
Having been born in Beijing (I now reside in Chicago) and having visited for a month and a half this summer, I can say that I have many issues with the Chinese government, and the quality of life there has a lot to improve on, but it is not a terrible place to live.
Boycotting the Olympics would only serve to go against human rights issues; allowing tourists and journalists into the country is forcing the government to clean up its act.
I don’t usually reply to these sorts of things,but this one really gets to me.
I’m American and have been living in asia for several years now. I started in Taiwan where the people are all so certain that China will come and take over and all of their lives will be destroyed in a few moments. I’ve met people from tibet who have told me horrible stories. That is what i see when i think of China.
I was also right there when Utah got the bid and that was just as fucked up. Kick out the poor people and rip up the parts of town you don’t like. That’s the same thing China’s doing. If you’re interested go read about where they are building. Also a number of the manufacturers contracted to make official Olympics stuff have been busted using sweatshops. Maybe you’ll see the kid who made your hat when you’re there.
sorry so harsh about this…i do have a challenge for anyone going over there. Try to leave the area of the games and see if they’ll actually let you. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were special tourist areas.
All in all i say yeah boycott China and if you want to, the states as well.
I believe each and every country has its own problems. I think everyone has a right to have pride in their country. As an American I love my country. I have friends in Germany, Argentina, Austria, England, Mexico, and Canada all of those men and women are really great people. I am fully aware America has its own problems and causes a lot problems as well. I have seen it many times there are some of us who are ignorant and insensitive. However, there are many more Americans that love this world, love our kids, work hard, strive to do hard work. We try to make the best of our lives, we are good citizens of the planet. I feel the same way about every other country. I think we all should. I do understand that Americans more often than not stick their noses in places they shouldn’t. I think other countries need to improve their human rights. I can also understand the opinion that Americans believe in American Rights. They believe in being civil as long as they are being civil towards american interest. However, I think there are a lot of Americans like me who think there are a lot of good things in this world and a lot of bad things. i am not saying it is America’s responsibility to fix these issues. I think it is our responsibility to help when asked for help not just being the world police. So I see a lot of your points about America being a good or being a bad humanitarian. However, someone said it well earlier. The Olympics are a time where people from every corner of the globe with different believes, differnt cultures, ideas, races, background, interests and they all are given an opportunity to compete on one common field, court, pool, pitch etc. The olympics brings 1 common thing to everyone. we are all cheering for a gold medal. We are watching the finest athletes around the world strive for perfection. I think every country should have a chance to bring the Olympics to their home. If you are upset about the way China acts go to China and act they way you think they should act. Be a model for good citizenship and sportmanship. Lead by example. Do not run away, do not stay at home in your lazy boy watching old reruns of CSI Miami. Stop complaining and start doing something to make it better.
China is a Communist country. I don’t even understand why China is qualified to host Olympics!
There isnt one nation in the entire planet thats close to being perfect. Boycotting the olympics based on the fact that country is in violation of Human Rights will make every country in the planet ineligible to host Olympics includig our own.
For example, We are supporting an army dictator in Pakistan (because its in our best interest?)who has done everything wrong to hold on to his own power, kicked off the judiciary who deemed his presence illegal, arrested thousands of citizens who protested against him and is now is alleged to have his biggest opponent Benazir Bhutto killed. We are involved in similar operations all acorss the world that are not always ethically right and violate basics of human rights.
I agree with the posts here, Olympics is a platform for worlds best athletes to come together, have fun, compete and make their nation proud. Lets just leave it at that.
Everything is possible in this legend country.
I’m sorry but this is ridiculous. Blaming the fucking Chinese government is simply stupid. If you want to blame anything fucking blame capitalism. Corruption happens everywhere, America, Britain, everywhere. It happens. Also in every developing nation there are winner and there are losers in the development story. Fuck for America to develop they stole from the Indians, Genocide the Indians, enslaved the Africans and stole from Mexico. Britain, imperialized half the fucking planet. No one got to the top playing fair. I’m not saying what is happening is right or good, but its inevitable. What did people expect to happen? Oh, and don’t give bullshit about Taiwan, Chiang genocide the native Taiwanese population and before that he systematically killed off Communist party members. He wouldn’t have been any better. These parents of these peasant’s probably would have starved under the GMD (KMD) before they could even have kids. Food for thought
You have rights to do anything you want, as long as you don’t get in others’ way, that’s what “free” means, isn’t it.
You guys want to boycott the Beijing Olympics? Fine! Go ahead! But the game will begin on Aug.8th whether you like it or not. I’m pretty sure that China is not a perfect country, just like many other countries, but I like my life here, as people from other countries. When you are drawing a hell-like image of China, in fact, it’s getting better in the very minute, and that’s something you can’t boycott but you want to deny the most.
Things are complicated in China, it can’t be described by a few words here, and the only way to find out what China is would be come here and look at it by your own eyes, and don’t judge quickly. May be it’s not possible for everyone to come to the very spot, that’s exactly why we chinese would like to host one such Olympic game. You don’t like CCTV? OK, turn to CNN or NBC or what else you like to see what they’ve got. And, hopefully, they are not controlled by chinese government, and is more likely to tell the truth.
China is not such a bad country, in fact, is it far from. That’s what I can tell you here today. I can’t force you to look at or listen to something you don’t want to see or hear, but PLEASE stop the whole “boycott Beijing 2008″ thing to make way for others who like to find out the truth about China!
Everyone has his own problems, as one developing country, China also has some big problems.
[…] Boycott the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China 从表面上看来，这篇文章有一些不好的因素，可是看完文章，看后面读者的评论时，发现事实并不是想象的那样，许多人都在批评作者片面，而且有的人还举了一些反例来否定作者的观点。 (tags: china) […]
a man in Denmark has launched an movement called “the orange color” which calls for using anything in orange color to protest the violation of human rights in China during th beijing olympic. for more you can log in www.thecolororange.net
The idea of boycotting the Olympics in China is tied to how we should have boycotted the 1936 Olympics in, remember, Nazi Germany. There are striking similarities between the two political structures. If you think I am saying this to be sensational, then you really should do some research. Do you know what kind of human rights are being violated in China? Do you know about the mass murders that happen to anyone who opposes the state? Have you read anything by people who experienced the cultural revolution? Do you know the kind of religious persecution that happens in that country?
Until you look into it, then you have no idea the kind of atrocities that are happening. Moreover, most everyone who visits Beijing will have zero exposure to what life is really like in China. You will get the beautified version of China that they want you to see. Try visiting the provinces that are pretty much shut to foreigners…because the control they assert over the people is devastating.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/beijing-olympics-boycott.html
I am a student from CHINA.
I think what you see are one-sided, as the video above , it exists, but it is not widespread.
I do not deny that China has a lot of poor people. China is in development, in all aspects of society are changing. I THINK,Many facts are not your own thought out, nor is it you listen to, but you need to confirm it by youslef.
If you get a chance, you are welcome to come to China. Eliminate misunderstanding is the only thing we can do.what do u think?
jack from china///jack0851@gmail.com
Are there slums in America?
Can Americans refuse the wars start by the goverment?
Why are there the most gun events in America in the world?
Do you think all of these have human rights?
Why this country spend lots of money in electon but cut scientific research fee in high energy physics(Fermi lab and SLAC ect.)?
What makes you think you can do decisions for others?
Is that human right?
Are you successful in your own field? If not, why don’t you spend more on it?
Do you think you know China more than Chinese or more than the voters who elect Beijing to run the Olympics?
How ridiculous!
I as a Chinese can’t tell China in one word, how can you?
I think if you give your mercy to the poor in Anmerica, it will work better!
Chinese goverment can find ways to feed so many people and makes people live better and better.
But America goverment gives wars and bombs to so many countries in the world…
Without wars start by other contries with “human rights” in our land, Chinese must live much happier than American!
What the great human rights!!
The thieves stolen my treasures, now they laught at my poorness!
Our country has only 58 years of peace and only 30 years of high speed of development, but other goverments can’t withstand it! What they do will not help Chinese at all, but destroy our economy and our lives!
Leave China alone. Mind your own business!
I think it is a terrible thing that China can fool anyone when it was built on one of the most brutal bloody histories in the world. I would boycott all of China until Communism falls if I could, just like it fell in Russia.
I support the severity of boycotting China. The American economy is terrible and the people who are benefiting this is China with more jobs given to them with the Americas losing jobs and money from an imbalance trade deficit. The country of China holds so many US dollar reserves. This is a severe concern. The US economy is losing huge to China, our competitiveness is also losing to China in a rapid rate. It is difficult to make a living in the US and the opportunites are given better in China due to a rising middle class. There is a future in China and the direction of America is nothin more than opportunities lost in the United States.
The Chinese are trying to take over the world and its true. You look at Africa especially on the amount of investments and more human violations such as Sudan. The Chinese are gulping more oil and earth resources including food and food from the sea. Inflation is rising and unemployment is rising in the United States. I blame China for this and hate them for all these problems that are affecting how the United States citizens are suffering. I personally believe that the Americans must boycott China, they do not see what is happening with themselves.
China has a habit of abusing any avenue for the purpose of promoting its business interests. In the 1960s thier hands were slapped for passing of Chinese written jouranlism as American journalism in American newspapers to promote thier business. It is just an example of how little they understand the purpose of these institutions. Likewise, the Olympics to China is not about the games, it is about PR. Look at the America’s cup. What in the hell were Chinese doing singing opening ceremonies for the AMERICA’s Cup? China has been hijacking our media and institutions for at least a decade … all forms from the posters in your bank and post office to your banking websites … to nearly every advertisement in every industry; it has been a huge propaganda machinery aided by traitorous businessmen all to the service of the Chinese economy. Corrupt businesses likewise are lining up to by advertising for the games … its all about how much income the games will bring to China and how rich business will get off the advertising. Period. It is not, has not and will never be about the games or the athletes. This is not communism here … that is long in the past if it ever could be in a country that breeds in billion counts. Life is cheap and exendible in nations such as these. Its labor carries a dirty low price. A few million dead are not missed. It is about as extreme a case of neo-nazi capitalist fascism as we can see in the world today. Not only do its citezens have no value, nor do those of surrounding countries, not a few of whom also demand a boycott of these games. The positive Public Relations the games bring to the region is undeserved. You can not undo these horrors by hosting games. The greediest people in the world simply don’t care. One Chinese was taped saying the games boycotts are immature. Do you think he would think that criticism of European and British colonialism was immature? Clearly those protesting the boycots are getting kickbacks and economic advantages from blood money; to those who do, China can do no wrong, it can do anything it damn well pleases and nobody dare call it on its hipocrisy. It takes more to earn respect from the world than PR and saving face while committing genocide, constructing skyscrapers monuments to greed lords and striving to make the world’s greatest contribution to CO2 pollution and global warming.
Boycott killing in Iraq before you boycott the Plympics!!!
Boycott your school gun shot before you boycott the Olympics!!!
Boycott use US dollar to trade oil before you boycott the Olympics!!!
Valentine’s gun shot!!! 16 killed!!!
Well done Americans, send your kids to BeiJing and you can win more metal in gun shooting.
In response to those of you who criticize and hate America, well who isn’t looking out for their nation’s own best interest? It’s completely natural to want to survive. Does that mean we should hate China too (as someone above does)? Absolutely not because if America was in that position, we would take advantage of our circumstances too. However, I am not saying that it is right to abuse the Iraqis because everyone is a person with individual liberties that ought to be respected. But we went into that war deceived. We created chaos in that country and now we cannot leave them in civil war. America is not perfect. Neither is China.
But at least we have freedom here. A nation that abuses rights to the degree that China does must be condemned. As possibly the next superpower, we cannot let China set the example that oppressing it’s people is okay. And yes, the video is biased but there is truth to it. I’ve been to China and have witnessed the poverty and wretchedness of the people. (And the air and roads are terrible as well.) Besides, we cannot step aside when any nation or leader chooses to violate people’s rights. It is our duty as citizens of the world to stand up for those who are abused.
Considering that the Olympic Games is a celebration of the human spirit, it makes no sense that the games are held in China, a nation notorious for the violation of the stated. So I say Boycott the Olympics!
And to those of you going for journalistic purposes, good luck! (And avoid spending a large sum of money).
Just more American hypocrisy and arrogance, led mostly by closet White racists and xenophobes and supremecists.
China has some problems but it is essentially trying to pack in its Industrial Revolution in 1/5 the time it took America, and does anyone remember the crappy conditions America had for women, children, and workers during its own Industrial Revolution? China was a 3rd world country just 25 years ago so I’d say they are doing the best anyone could do with such a huge population in such a short time.
I love how moronic Americans love to point fingers at Tibet, Sudan, etc, and then conveniently ignore Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Kosovo, multiple South American countries, and the MILLIONS of innocent people killed directly as a result of American Imperialism.
If there is a threat to the world, it is the United States with its trigger-happy and weapons-dominated hegemony bent on taking over the entire world (with already 900 bases all over the planet, establishing World Hegemony).
wow olympics are to unite the wolrd, calm down and remeber that it is just a game
bamchickawahhwahhh ur so righttt!
i don’t think boycotting games would be a solution. it will not change anything in china.
china governement is just always lying to its people (through all media) and the result is clear : most of chinese people do not know something happened in tiananmen 1989, and they think that tibetan people are very happy.
if we boycott games, china TV will just find bullshit excuses to explain that to people, and nothing will change.
Let’s make a statement to the brutal government of China.
Boycott their dog and pony show. No Olympics for me.
Spread the word.
USA is another gross violator of human rights. I did not hear of a proposal to boycott the olympic games in Atlanta.
Carl von Clausewitz said, “Boycotts are a continuation of politics by other means …”
Boycott cartoon here:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_sgDXxnsAt8A/R-B9xn6wHdI/AAAAAAAABYc/PiOUbPQzhXU/s1600-h/OlympicsBoycott.jpg
I’m an American musician(trumpet player) who has lived, toured, and taught in China on and off for the past several years, in the rural schools and colleges, (mainly around Liugong) and I can tell you (from first-hand experience), basic human liberties, free speech, and access to information, are VERY restricted outside of the major metro areas, (Beijing, Shanghai, and Donghai) the people there are stark afraid of their government, you DO and THINK what and how you are TOLD to and nothing else, unless your a high ranking member of the Communist party…
it’s a fuckin’ repeat of the 1936 games in Hitler’s back yard, or the 1980 Moscow games…it’s just a publicity stunt for the regime, and I fail to see how they ever won the bid in the first place…I mean have you noticed how thick the smog is ANYWHERE in China, you can’t exercise outside without a surgeon’s mask, so how can Beijing have ever hoped to host the games?
it’s fummy, every couple of blocks in any decent sized city and you will find an olympics store there, trying to sell it to their people, and from my various contacts, arn’t buying it…
Lots of chinese i know are patriotic. Just because a small bunch of ppl revolt and they are suppressed, it violates human rights? Doesnt this happen in most countries?
yes! I’m sorry to say this, but I hate China. Look how dirty of the air in Beijing, how rude and crule of the Chinese governmnet!! Boycott the Olympics!!!1
This tells you a lot about the causative factors to the Tibet protests. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/03/tibet-uprising.html
thats horrible
Hey guys…
have a look at our site www.noolympics2008.com and join our list!
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Apartheid was eradicated through boycott (South Africa was banned from sports for more than 2 decades).
It is sad that some HUMANs on this forum are too busy enjoying life and couldn’t care less for those oppressed. I believe that they can say so because they are FREE to express their thoughts. Or perhaps they stand to gain from the “EVENT”.
It is pathetic that in the FREE world such HUMANs continue to live.
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Hi,
I think it is about time us Americans stand up for human rights and freedom. If China cannot respect human rights, we should boycott them until they understand. That is the only language a third world, uneducated country will understand. I am proud to be an American, bringing freedom and liberty across the globe. If it wasn’t of us, Iraq would still be under dictatorship. we Amercians sacrifice and brought freedom and life into Irag. Most of those Iragi people does not know what freedom is, of course not, they are all so uneducated, that is why we have to step in to help them. As the number 1 country in the world, we have a responsibility to teach poor country what freedom, courage and liberty is.
Most of you fools, think we Americans are violent, but if we are so wrong, why are we the number 1 country in the world? If it wasn’t of use, the Europe would not exist today, a.k.a. WWII
The chinese are wrong, they pick on those poor monks in Tibet, all they want to do is pray in their temple and huts. The chinese also eat dogs and cats, it just shows how barbaric they are.
We americans have to step up, and lead the world to freedom. U.K. and France are too weak to do it, that is why we have to.
Re: Tweekville
“I’ve met people from tibet who have told me horrible stories”? That’s it? I’m sure people from China have horrible stories too - I wonder what the family of the man who was disembowelled by Tibetan monks would think of Tibet?
I can’t believe this can even consitute part of your argument. I’m neither Chinese nor American, have no fixed standpoint on this issue, and even I cringed when I read that.
Your ability for clinical dissection of social issues leaves me stunned.
A French Chinese published the following poem:
We have been labelled the “Yellow Peril”, the “Sick man of East Asia”.
Now we are becoming a Superpower, we are being labelled a “threat”.
When we closed our doors, you introduced us opium to “open the market”.
When we refused opium, you sold them to us by “gunboat diplomacy”.
When we believe in free trade, you rebuke us for taking your jobs.
When our country was divided, you sent in the armies to share the political loots.
When our country is united, you call the “liberation of Tibet” an invasion.
We try Communism, you hate us as communist elements.
Now we have accepted capitalism, you also hate us for monopolizing the market.
When we have over a billion people, you say we are over populating this planet.
When we implemented family planning, you say it is a violation of human rights.
When we were poor, you treated us like nobody.
when we lend you money, you complain it has made your debts too high.
When we build our industry, you say we are polluters.
You buy affordable products from us while we get the blame for “greenhouse effect”.
When we buy oil, it is the “exploitation of Africa and support for genocide”
When you launched a war for oil, you called it “liberation”.
When we have unrest, you would interfere and come in to impose law on us.
When we deal with the riots according to the law, you call it “brutal suppression”.
When we remain silent, you say we do not have freedom of speech.
When we are no longer silent, you call us xenophobic that we are all brain washed.
“Why do you hate us so much ?” we cannot help but ask.
We do not hate anyone. Has the Western world always been civilized, fair and tolerant?
“Do you understand us?” we cannot but doubt.
“Are you kidding ?” you said, “We have the best media in the world - AFP, CNN & BBC.”
Life can not be too CNN!
Risky Geopolitical Game: Washington Plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China
by F. William Engdahl
April 10, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8625
Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing’s by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relations and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months. It also includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bringing US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves. It includes counter moves across mineral-rich Africa. And it includes strenuous efforts to turn India into a major new US forward base on the Asian sub-continent to be deployed against China, though evidence to date suggests the Indian government is being very cautious not to upset Chinese relations.
The current Tibet operation apparently got the green light in October last year when George Bush agreed to meet the Dalai Lama for the first time publicly in Washington. The President of the United States is not unaware of the high stakes of such an insult to Beijing. Bush deepened the affront to America’s largest trading partner, China, by agreeing to attend as the US Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.
The immediate expressions of support for the crimson monks of Tibet from George Bush, Condi Rice, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel most recently took on dimensions of the absurd. Ms Merkel announced she would boycott attending the August Beijing Summer Olympics as her protest at the Beijing treatment of the Tibetan monks. What her press secretary omitted is that she had not even planned to go in the first place.
She was followed by an announcement that Poland’s Prime Minister, the pro-Washington Donald Tusk, would also stay away, along with pro-US Czech President Vaclav Klaus. It is unclear whether they also hadn’t planned to go in the first place but it made for dramatic press headlines.
The recent wave of violent protests and documented attacks by Tibetan monks against Han Chinese residents began on March 10 when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for celebrating the award of the US Congress’ Gold Medal last October. The monks were joined by other monks marching to protest Beijing rule on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
The geopolitical game
As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.
The background actors in the Tibet “Crimson revolution” actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal”, Tibetan independence.
Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”
President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
1 Dalai Lama’s odd friends
In the West the image of the Dalai Lama has been so much promoted that in many circles he is deemed almost a God. While the spiritual life of the Dalai Lama is not our focus, it is relevant to note briefly the circles he has chosen to travel in most of his life.
The Dalai Lama travels in what can only be called rather conservative political circles. What is generally forgotten today is that during the 1930’s the Nazis including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and other top Nazi Party leaders regarded Tibet as the holy site of the survivors of the lost Atlantis, and the origin of the “Nordic pure race.”
When he was 11 and already designated Dalai Lama, he was befriended by Heinrich Harrer, a Nazi Party member and officer of Heinrich Himmler’s feared SS. Far from the innocent image of him in the popular Hollywood film with Brad Pitt, Harrer was an elite SS member at the time he met the 11 year old Dalai Lama and became his tutor in “the world outside Tibet.” While only the Dalai Lama knows the contents of Harrer’s private lessons, the two remained friends until Harrer died a ripe 93 in 2006.
2 That sole friendship, of course, does not define a person’s character, but it is interesting in the context of later friends. In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, and former Beijing Ambassador, CIA Director and President, George H.W. Bush, the Dalai Lama demanded the British government release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Dalai Lama had close ties to Miguel Serrano2, head of Chile’s National Socialist Party, a proponent of something called esoteric Hitlerism.
Leaving aside at this point the claim of the Dalai Lama to divinity, what is indisputable is that he has been surrounded and financed in significant part, since his flight into Indian exile in 1959, by various US and Western intelligence services and their gaggle of NGOs. It is the agenda of the Washington friends of the Dalai Lama that is relevant here.
3 The NED at work again…
As author Michael Parenti notes in his work, Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, “during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help.” The US-based American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in the group. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951. It was later upgraded into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet, according to Parenti.
4 According to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, “for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.”
5 With help of the CIA, the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India where he lives to the present. He continues to receive millions of dollars in backing today, not from the CIA but from a more innocuous-sounding CIA front organization, funded by the US Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has been instrumental in every US-backed Color Revolution destabilization from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine to Myanmar. Its funds go to back opposition media and global public relations campaigns to popularize their pet opposition candidates.
As in the other recent Color Revolutions, the US Government is fanning the flames of destabilization against China by funding opposition protest organizations inside and outside Tibet through its arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED was founded by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980’s, on the recommendation of Bill Casey, Reagan’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following a series of high-publicity exposures of CIA assassinations and destabilizations of unfriendly regimes. The NED was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and Government agencies so as to be less conspicuous, presumably. The first acting President of the NED, Allen Weinstein, commented to the Washington Post that, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
6 American intelligence historian, William Blum states, “The NED played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North’s shadowy “Project Democracy.” This network privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs, and engaged in other equally charming activities. In 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED “run Project Democracy.”
7 The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization today is the International Campaign for Tibet, founded in Washington in 1988. Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founder of the NED. Other ICT award winners have included the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Czech leader, Vaclav Havel. The ICT Board of Directors is peopled with former US State Department officials including Gare Smith and Julia Taft.
8 Another especially active anti-Beijing organization is the US-based Students for a Free Tibet, founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet, and accusing Beijing of wholly unsubstantiated claims of genocide against Tibet. Apparently it makes good drama to rally naïve students.
The SFT was among five organizations which this past January that proclaimed start of a “Tibetan people’s uprising” on Jan 4 this year and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing.
Harry Wu is another prominent Dalai Lama supporter against Beijing. He became notorious for claiming falsely in a 1996 Playboy interview that he had “videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was taken out and shot. The tape was broadcast by BBC.” The BBC film showed nothing of the sort, but the damage was done. How many people check old BBC archives? Wu, a retired Berkeley professor who left China after imprisonment as a dissident, is head of the Laogai Research Foundation, a tax-exempt organization whose main funding is from the NED.
9 Among related projects, the US Government-financed NED also supports the Tibet Times newspaper, run out of the Dalai Lama’s exile base at Dharamsala, India. The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet,” also based in Dharamsala. And NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
In short, US State Department and US intelligence community finger prints are all over the upsurge around the Free Tibet movement and the anti-Han Chinese attacks of March. The question to be asked is why, and especially why now?
Tibet’s raw minerals treasure
Tibet is of strategic import to China not only for its geographical location astride the border with India, Washington’s newest anti-China ally in Asia. Tibet is also a treasure of minerals and also oil. Tibet contains some of the world’s largest uranium and borax deposits, one half of the world’s lithium, the largest copper deposits in Asia, enormous iron deposits, and over 80,000 gold mines. Tibet’s forests are the largest timber reserve at China’s disposal; as of 1980, an estimated $54 billion worth of trees had been felled and taken by China. Tibet also contains some of the largest oil reserves in the region.
10 On the Tibet Autonomous Region’s border along the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is also a vast oil and mineral region in the Qaidam Basin, known as a “treasure basin.” The Basin has 57 different types of mineral resources with proven reserves including petroleum, natural gas, coal, crude salt, potassium, magnesium, lead, zinc and gold. These mineral resources have a potential economic value of 15 trillion yuan or US$1.8 trillion. Proven reserves of potassium, lithium and crude salt in the basin are the biggest in China.
And situated as it is, on the “roof of the world,” Tibet is perhaps the world’s most valuable water source. Tibet is the source of seven of Asia’s greatest rivers which provide water for 2 billion people.” He who controls Tibet’s water has a mighty powerful geopolitical lever over all Asia.
But the prime interest of Tibet for Washington today is its potential to act as a lever to destabilize and blackmail the Beijing Government.
Washington’s ‘nonviolence as a form of warfare’
The events in Tibet since March 10 have been played in Western media with little regard to accuracy or independent cross-checking. Most of the pictures blown up in European and US newspapers and TV have not even been of Chinese military oppression of Tibetan lamas or monks. They have been shown to be in most cases either Reuters or AFP pictures of Han Chinese being beaten by Tibetan monks in paramilitary organizations. In some instances German TV stations ran video pictures of beatings that were not even from Tibet but rather by Nepalese police in Kathmandu.
11 The western media complicity simply further underlies that the actions around Tibet are part of a well-orchestrated destabilization effort on the part of Washington. What few people realize is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also instrumental, along with Gene Sharp’s misnamed Albert Einstein Institution through Colonel Robert Helvey, in encouraging the student protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The Albert Einstein Institution, as it describes itself, specializes in “nonviolence as a form of warfare.”
12 Colonel Helvey was formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency stationed in Myanmar. Helvey trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989. He is now believed acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong in similar civil disobedience techniques. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with the Albert Einstein Institution and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation long before then. In its annual report for 2004 Helvey’s Albert Einstein Institution admitted to advising people in Tibet.
13 With the emergence of the Internet and mobile telephone use, the US Pentagon has refined an entirely new form of regime change and political destabilization. As one researcher of the phenomenon behind the wave of color revolutions, Jonathan Mowat, describes it,
“…What we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “Revolution in Military Affairs” doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments “enabled” by “real time” intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of “intelligence helmet” video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine’s civilian application.
“This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The “revolution” in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. Although these military utopians have been working in high places, (for example the RAND Corporation), for a very long time, to a large extent they only took over some of the most important command structures of the US military apparatus with the victory of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld.
14 Goal to control China
Washington policy has used and refined these techniques of “revolutionary nonviolence,” and NED operations embodied a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects as part of a larger strategy which would seek to cut China off from access to its vital external oil and gas reserves.
The 1970’s quote attributed to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a proponent of British geopolitics in an American context comes to mind: “If you control the oil you control entire nations…”
The destabilization attempt by Washington using Tibet, no doubt with quiet “help” from its friends in British and other US-friendly intelligence services, is part of a clear pattern.
It includes Washington’s “Saffron revolution” attempts to destabilize Myanmar. It includes the ongoing effort to get NATO troops into Darfur to block China’s access to strategically vital oil resources there and elsewhere in Africa. It includes attempts to foment problems in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and to disrupt China’s vital new energy pipeline projects to Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Middle East, where China depends on uninterrupted oil flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries.
Behind the strategy to encircle China
In this context, a revealing New York Council on Foreign Relations analysis in their Foreign Affairs magazine from Zbigniew Brzezinski from September/October 1997 is worth quoting. Brzezinski, a protégé of David Rockefeller and a follower of the founder of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, is today the foreign policy adviser to Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In 1997 he revealingly wrote:
‘Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world’s population; 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.
‘Eurasia is the world’s axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy….’
15 (emphasis mine-w.e.). This statement, written well before the US-led bombing of former Yugoslavia and the US military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or its support of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, puts Washington pronouncements about ‘ridding the world of tyranny’ and about spreading democracy, into a somewhat different context from the one usually mentioned by George W. Bush of others.
It’s about US global hegemony, not democracy. It should be no surprise when powers such as China are not convinced that giving Washington such overwhelming power is in China’s national interest, any more than Russia thinks that it would be a step towards peace to let NATO gobble up Ukraine and Georgia and put US missiles on Russia’s doorstep “to defend against threat of Iranian nuclear attack on the United States.”
The US-led destabilization in Tibet is part of a strategic shift of great significance. It comes at a time when the US economy and the US dollar, still the world’s reserve currency, are in the worst crisis since the 1930’s. It is significant that the US Administration sends Wall Street banker, former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson to Beijing in the midst of its efforts to embarrass Beijing in Tibet. Washington is literally playing with fire. China long ago surpassed Japan as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves, now in the range of $1.5 trillions, most of which are invested in US Treasury debt instruments. Paulson knows well that were Beijing to decide it could bring the dollar to its knees by selling only a small portion of its US debt on the market.
Published on Monday, April 14, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations
by Floyd Rudmin
We hear that Tibetans suffer ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’ in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not ‘demographic aggression’ but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing ‘cultural genocide’ but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, ‘demographic aggression’ and ‘cultural genocide’ can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email at Floyd.Rudmin@psyk.uit.no
Why does every government have to be like the American government, anyway? Why can’t we just accept that other countries can have different governments and still be successful? The point of a government isn’t to be able to boast their ‘democracy’ to the world, but rather, to protect their people and provide a ‘good’ way of life for them.
And why is it that everyone is in support of a free Tibet when it’s only the aristocratic Tibetans who want a free Tibet anyway? How about all the other lower class Tibetans who want to ‘break’ away from China? Their lives have been improved drastically since China became involved in their affairs, check out the education rates if you want support.
Half of all these “Free Tibet” people don’t even know where Tibet is, anyway. Where is there information? Their backup? ANd why is it that these political issues have to be included in the Olympics? Ancient olympics marked a time for peace, when all wars were stopped in the name of sports. I guess Americans are all so corrupt now that they aren’t afraid of dishonoring the ancient tradition of the Olympics, hm?
First of all: think of what China had undergone under Mao, it takes a long time to get back on their feet and from what I see the progress China has made over the past years has been enormous!
Second: I have many friends either living in China or with a Chinese background. I also know several Europeans who are living there at the moment (one in Peking). Yes there is pollution, yes there is poverty, yes there are a lot of serious problems! But hey countries considered “good” are facing these problems (just think about the mess Katrina caused a few years back and how paralyzed the entire state was!!).
I think the Chinese can pull these games of. And do well at it too! It’s ridiculous to say that “because their chinese” or because they’re not caucasian they can’t pull this of.
Not only has China violated human rights, they have killed our pets, including mine, poisoned our children and destroyed the environment. They are growing at a rate that is extraordinary, but unlike the rest of us they do not have regulations that protects their people and the environment. One someone speaks up and reports a problem they put them in a position where they could actually do some good then they set them up and imprison them. Their actions threatens the ecosystem of entire planet. By backing the Olympics in china we will be reinforcing their actions. Unlike other countries where the profits made by hosting the games will be shared by the masses, in china the government be the only ones to profit. The profit will be used to further their horrendous actions. The offenses China have made are worse than Stalin or the Nazis. It may be different if they abided by their promises but as usual they say one thing and do another. We might as well have the next Olympics in Iran. We must put our foot down once and for all and boycott the Olympics.
To most Westerners who DESPISE China,
You may think that you are the best, but to the Chinese- to me, you are not. Chinese are also not the best but they are united. When you watch the olympic torch relay on television,you can see how many China supporters are there just to support the Beijing Olympics. The number was much over the Tibet supporters.
To me, I think that Americans are the rough ones, the brainless ones. All they see in their eyes is the word “kill”, to rob Arab of the oil they have, to earn money. See, lets say about paper. Who is the one who invented paper? Ts’ai Lun of China! MANY MANY of the things that the Americans had thought to have been invented by THEMSELVES are actually inspired, improved or totally taken from China inventions!!!!!!
The Americans are not actually that bad.They also have their good points.They are good in thier English. Their influence had been great and people all over the world started learning it. However, can you say that the Chinese do not have a good point? They are good in chinese.
All that Westerners know that China has BAD, BAD , BAD air pollution ;toys that are DETRIMENTAL to kids life. But I hope that they will know that the countries who are importing the toys from China wanted low-cost toys. How can the these manufacturers provide very, very good qualitied ones with so little money. However, have the Westerners seen the effort that the China government had made to improve the starndard of things in the country.
China is the third largest country in the world.It is very hard to control all parts of the China to work the way it should be. I hope that the Westerners will understand.
That is true, America’s econamy is going down with China’s going up. The Americans have no doubt taken China a treat to their powerand status in the world.
No body is perfect. no country is perfect. Asians and the Americans must learn to accept each other differences,adapt each others’ culture and make the world a better way to live in.