China will not easily be cowed
Friday, 4 April 2008
Christopher Caldwell
BOYCOTTING the Olympic Games scheduled for Beijing next August is a solution that has long been in search of a problem. A year ago, Mia Farrow, the actress, called for a boycott on the grounds that the government of Sudan, a close ally and major oil supplier of China, was committing "genocide" against rebels in the province of Darfur. Others have sought a boycott in solidarity with Burmese democracy activists, repressed by a junta that China supports. Only now has a consensus cause been found - the pro-independence demonstrations in the Chinese province of Tibet that have turned into violent riots and led to a crackdown.
Before a special session of the European Parliament on the Tibet question late last month, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the body's president, raised the possibility of a boycott. Others, from the Euro-MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit to the actor Richard Gere to the intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, have done the same. The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, has publicly opposed a boycott and Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, warns that we cannot be "more Tibetan than the Tibetans". He raised the possibility of boycotting, instead, the opening ceremonies. While Dr Kouchner backed away from the idea, other politicians in Belgium and France, notably president Nicolas Sarkozy, have taken it up. Too bad. A boycott would be a mistake. A semi-boycott would be both a mistake and an embarrassment.
It is hard to apportion blame in the most recent violence, partly because of Chinese press restrictions but also because of the murkiness of events. Tibet, rich in water and uranium, with vast mineral deposits, has been part of many Chinese empires. The Communist one has ruled it with an iron fist for 57 years. The Dalai Lama has spent half a century in Indian exile. Beijing has muscled its way into the province's Buddhist monasteries, mandating "patriotic education" and trampling religious life. It claims the Dalai Lama is orchestrating the Tibetan violence, a preposterous claim.
The violence is real, however, and it is savage. The most detailed account of the mayhem in Lhasa on March 14 and 15 was given late last month by Jill Drew of The Washington Post. It mentions 19 people killed and 600 injured over two days. A Swiss tourist described "an elderly Chinese man clawed off his bicycle and thrown to the ground, where a rioter smashed his head with a large rock". A mob trapped five Chinese in a shop and burnt them alive.
The Dalai Lama's complaint that China is committing "cultural genocide" against Tibetans has not helped. The genocide in question involves Beijing's encouragement of immigration by ethnic Chinese people, who reportedly make up a third of the population of some Tibetan cities. Europeans who fear their cultures are being eroded by immigration and Americanisation seldom receive support from human-rights activists. Tibetans who fear Sinification are being held to a much lower standard. China, while hardly blameless, has been assigned the role of bogeyman. Like Israel during the second intifada, it gets blamed for policing too harshly, and it gets blamed when thugs go out and murder its citizens.
It is unlikely that sporting boycotts can put pressure on China as they put pressure on South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. Certainly some South Africans were desperate for validation from civilised nations. Moral appeals held promise. Many defenders of Tibet behave as if all the west needs to do is to summon its eloquence and courage. Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist leader, said carrying on with the Olympics as normal "would be a defeat for our values, our principles". Lawrence Donegan, sports columnist on The Guardian, wrote: "There is no mistaking the impact a boycott of the Games by leading nations would have on the Chinese government's efforts to legitimise their despicable behaviour."
But the west's assessment of its moral prestige and influence is inflated. James Mann, the veteran reporter, made the wise point in his book, The China Fantasy (Penguin, 2007), that wishful-thinking westerners often use the word "ill-advised" to describe China's crackdowns, as if its leaders were just learning the ropes of modern-day governance and yearning for guidance. "Rarely is it acknowledged," he writes, "that the Chinese leadership did precisely what it intended, anticipating the international criticism in advance and deciding to ignore it."
China's standing in the world, unlike that of South Africa, does not rest on anyone's approval but on military and (especially) economic power. On March 26 last, US president George W. Bush called Hu Jintao, China's president, to urge him to meet the Dalai Lama. But they also discussed North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, which China plays a pivotal role in addressing. They could have discussed, as well, China's vast western currency reserves, proof that western economies are now tightly entangled with China, dependent on its goods and financing. Just as there is now a bit of hope for liberal democracy in most Chinese villages, there is a bit of slave labour and police repression in most western shoe closets.
A boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies might cause China brief embarrassment and deprive it of a vanity-enhancing spectacle. It would allow westerners to protest while continuing to benefit from China's cheap exports and big markets. But it would not change the objective realities one whit. To assume China will be cowed by our threats to, in essence, skip a party only highlights western frivolity and delusions of moral grandeur. Symbolic gestures made by athletes will not suffice. Registering a serious protest for human rights in Tibet (or Darfur or Burma) means willingness to undergo economic sacrifices. Maybe we should have thought of this earlier.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
FT Syndication Service
BOYCOTTING the Olympic Games scheduled for Beijing next August is a solution that has long been in search of a problem. A year ago, Mia Farrow, the actress, called for a boycott on the grounds that the government of Sudan, a close ally and major oil supplier of China, was committing "genocide" against rebels in the province of Darfur. Others have sought a boycott in solidarity with Burmese democracy activists, repressed by a junta that China supports. Only now has a consensus cause been found - the pro-independence demonstrations in the Chinese province of Tibet that have turned into violent riots and led to a crackdown.
Before a special session of the European Parliament on the Tibet question late last month, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the body's president, raised the possibility of a boycott. Others, from the Euro-MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit to the actor Richard Gere to the intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, have done the same. The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, has publicly opposed a boycott and Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, warns that we cannot be "more Tibetan than the Tibetans". He raised the possibility of boycotting, instead, the opening ceremonies. While Dr Kouchner backed away from the idea, other politicians in Belgium and France, notably president Nicolas Sarkozy, have taken it up. Too bad. A boycott would be a mistake. A semi-boycott would be both a mistake and an embarrassment.
It is hard to apportion blame in the most recent violence, partly because of Chinese press restrictions but also because of the murkiness of events. Tibet, rich in water and uranium, with vast mineral deposits, has been part of many Chinese empires. The Communist one has ruled it with an iron fist for 57 years. The Dalai Lama has spent half a century in Indian exile. Beijing has muscled its way into the province's Buddhist monasteries, mandating "patriotic education" and trampling religious life. It claims the Dalai Lama is orchestrating the Tibetan violence, a preposterous claim.
The violence is real, however, and it is savage. The most detailed account of the mayhem in Lhasa on March 14 and 15 was given late last month by Jill Drew of The Washington Post. It mentions 19 people killed and 600 injured over two days. A Swiss tourist described "an elderly Chinese man clawed off his bicycle and thrown to the ground, where a rioter smashed his head with a large rock". A mob trapped five Chinese in a shop and burnt them alive.
The Dalai Lama's complaint that China is committing "cultural genocide" against Tibetans has not helped. The genocide in question involves Beijing's encouragement of immigration by ethnic Chinese people, who reportedly make up a third of the population of some Tibetan cities. Europeans who fear their cultures are being eroded by immigration and Americanisation seldom receive support from human-rights activists. Tibetans who fear Sinification are being held to a much lower standard. China, while hardly blameless, has been assigned the role of bogeyman. Like Israel during the second intifada, it gets blamed for policing too harshly, and it gets blamed when thugs go out and murder its citizens.
It is unlikely that sporting boycotts can put pressure on China as they put pressure on South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. Certainly some South Africans were desperate for validation from civilised nations. Moral appeals held promise. Many defenders of Tibet behave as if all the west needs to do is to summon its eloquence and courage. Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist leader, said carrying on with the Olympics as normal "would be a defeat for our values, our principles". Lawrence Donegan, sports columnist on The Guardian, wrote: "There is no mistaking the impact a boycott of the Games by leading nations would have on the Chinese government's efforts to legitimise their despicable behaviour."
But the west's assessment of its moral prestige and influence is inflated. James Mann, the veteran reporter, made the wise point in his book, The China Fantasy (Penguin, 2007), that wishful-thinking westerners often use the word "ill-advised" to describe China's crackdowns, as if its leaders were just learning the ropes of modern-day governance and yearning for guidance. "Rarely is it acknowledged," he writes, "that the Chinese leadership did precisely what it intended, anticipating the international criticism in advance and deciding to ignore it."
China's standing in the world, unlike that of South Africa, does not rest on anyone's approval but on military and (especially) economic power. On March 26 last, US president George W. Bush called Hu Jintao, China's president, to urge him to meet the Dalai Lama. But they also discussed North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, which China plays a pivotal role in addressing. They could have discussed, as well, China's vast western currency reserves, proof that western economies are now tightly entangled with China, dependent on its goods and financing. Just as there is now a bit of hope for liberal democracy in most Chinese villages, there is a bit of slave labour and police repression in most western shoe closets.
A boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies might cause China brief embarrassment and deprive it of a vanity-enhancing spectacle. It would allow westerners to protest while continuing to benefit from China's cheap exports and big markets. But it would not change the objective realities one whit. To assume China will be cowed by our threats to, in essence, skip a party only highlights western frivolity and delusions of moral grandeur. Symbolic gestures made by athletes will not suffice. Registering a serious protest for human rights in Tibet (or Darfur or Burma) means willingness to undergo economic sacrifices. Maybe we should have thought of this earlier.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
FT Syndication Service