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Lorne Gunter • China doesn't deserve Olympics

Lorne Gunter . China doesn't deserve Olympics


Lorne Gunter, The Edmonton Journal

Published: Monday, March 31, 2008
The Chinese government contends Tibetans have only begun protesting now because of the approaching Olympics, that nothing material has changed in Tibet recently that warrants demonstrations now more so than six months or a year ago. The timing has been chosen to embarrass Beijing on the eve of its greatest international triumph - hosting the 2008 Summer Games.
This is almost certainly true and all the more to the Tibetans' credit for being true.
After being under the heel of China's Communist dictatorship for nearly 60 years, Tibetans have chosen their moment to act. As a result of China's violent suppression of unarmed Tibetan marchers this month, there will almost certainly be Olympic boycotts, whether individual or national, that will stain the games. And despite China's bravado, even a small blemish on the Beijing Olympics will be more hurtful than most westerners can understand.


China is both a tiger and a lemur contained in the same body. With its mighty economy - which it well knows the rest of the world has come to count on both for inexpensive goods and for investment profits - and its rapidly expanding military, China wishes the world to see it as a colossus, which in many ways it is. But it is a giant with an inferiority complex and a powerful set of phobias. It's a superpower with a nervous twitch and some serious self-doubt.
It isn't sure the rest of the world views it as an equal with the United States, Russia and the EU. And it worries about this because it isn't sure itself that it is yet on a par with those other powers.
China has been using the Olympics to prove to itself it belongs in the upper echelon of nations, almost as much as it has been using them to prove to those nations to let it into their club. So the Tibet uprising, with its potential to bring about serious Olympic embarrassment, strikes not only at China's outward image, but at its self-image as well.
China is supremely self-confident. For instance, Canadian and western businessmen who do lots of business in China's booming southeastern provinces speak of a pro-business environment that rivals anything anywhere in the western world: low taxes, balanced regulation, efficient bureaucrats, moderate corruption and a reasonably reliable application of the rule of law by local courts.
These are hallmarks of a central government confident it understands what it is doing in international commerce and trusting of the people within that region.
By contrast, China's brutal suppression of Tibet is, as are its constant threats to Taiwan, based on an unstable mixture of greater nationalism, ethnic prejudices and insecurity.
China sees Tibet as part of Greater China, even as history provides equally compelling arguments that it is not. The Han Chinese who rule Tibet also see Tibetans as dull, backward tribal herders and religious addicts who are unfit to govern themselves. On top of that there is a constant fear in Beijing of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan god-king and of the potential he and his followers bring for Tibetan separation.
So China is at one and the same time among the most liberal regimes in the world and one of the most repressive because it is equally confident and self-doubting.
In the fashion that is typical of totalitarian tyrants, China has for decades destroyed symbols of Tibetan culture, demolished ancient Buddhist temples, executed thousands of monks and closed monastery schools. The latter it has replaced with state schools for all children, where, among other things, all students are expected to stand in class and denounce the Dalai Lama as a dangerous imperialist.
Millions of ethnic Chinese have been encouraged/forced to move into Tibet in the past five decades to overwhelm the ethnic Tibetans numerically in their own country. It has become almost impossible for Tibetans to rise to the highest levels in government or business because the most powerful jobs are reserved for Chinese.


The current protests, far from being just about a peaceful, serene, meek and spiritual people confronting the largest dictatorship in the world - and one of the most repressive - are also about a young generation of Tibetans who feel like cultural and employment strangers in their own country.
But even if the recent protests and their suppression have not been undertaken for the reasons most westerners believe, even if our impressions of who is battling whom are overly simplistic, China's tactics have been deplorable.
It may be China has lashed out from a sense of insecurity and the Tibetans' goals have less to do with freedom of religion and national independence than good jobs with higher pay. But that does not excuse the deadly attacks on unarmed protesters by Chinese forces that put us in mind of the grisly 1989 suppression of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
China doesn't deserve the Olympics. An international boycott is now more than justified.
Lorne Gunter is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal.



© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

[li5mealone]

当初北京把多伦多干了 怀恨在心呢 呵呵

[wuwei]

作者: li5mealone

当初北京把多伦多干了 怀恨在心呢 呵呵

也不完全是北京把多伦多干了,是多伦多市长在投票前跑去非洲拉票却说了带种族歧视的话,是赖士民给中国送票的,呵

[yuanli]

这应该代表了大部分加拿大人的观点，恐怖呀！所以我们更有必要举行这个国会山的游行，给与正面回击！！

[XiaoMutou]

渥太华热血青年的榜样：

YouTube - Vancouver Chinese protest Tibetan riots in Downtown (part 6