Cup of Cha
This is China

The Olympics have been a tremendous success and I have enjoyed them enormously. However, there is one huge fear that I have always held that seems to be coming true: this success of sports is going to be used to validate horrible public policy.

This came to light yesterday in two pieces. The first was an article on Danwei by the usually great Jeremy Goldkorn. However, I have to take extreme exception to his piece in which he, presumably tongue in cheek, refers to people concerned about the pollution during the Games as “wussies.” However, for me and hopefully for many others, the Olympics were simply a chance to highlight the environmental crisis. The real issue was never whether it would kill the atheletes. Aside from a few endurance events, the pollution was never likely to be a real problem. (And incidentally, the road cycling was a complete disaster with dozens of athletes dropping out.) Here is Jeremy’s take on pollution and the Games:

An athlete should be able to compete in different conditions, and pollution is one of the realities of 21st Century life.

Moreover, there are between 12 and 20 million people who live in and around Beijing on a permanent basis. Health concerns about people staying here for a week or two never deserved to be taken seriously.

That’s exactly right. But the fact that most officials consider the pollution problem not to have been a major factor during these Games will allow them to justify their current hideous policies that are killing off the Chinese population. Once the atheletes leave, the filthy transport truck will come back and the factories will re-open. All of this is window-dressing that is designed only for the Games, and not for the people of China.

I know a political consultant who always says that the candidate in a race is the least important part of the campaign. Similarly, athletes are the least important part of the Olympics. It’s about the city and country they leave behind.

In addition to the pollution issue, which has been improperly dismissed, the very real problem about protests has been ignored. Remember when the government announced that it would have designated protest areas? Well, they got pretty good press out of it. This AP article was hardly glowing about the plan, but it still allowed the government to present a false idea that there might be some possibility of dissent:

In approving the protest zones, Liu said officials noted that Athens set up such areas for the 2004 games. The Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002 did too. “We have already designated specific areas where people or protesters who want to express their personal opinions can go to do so,” Liu said.

Protests have become commonplace in many parts of China in recent years, especially by state industry workers upset about layoffs and farmers angry about land confiscation. But China’s leadership remains wary about demonstrations in the capital or large-scale protests anywhere, fearing they could snowball into widespread anti-government movements. Three violent protests have occurred in far-flung provinces in recent weeks.

In a sign of Chinese nervousness, the special protest areas are not near the Olympic green where most venues and medal ceremonies are concentrated, but rather are in outlying parks: the World Park in the southwest, 3 miles from the softball venue; the Purple Bamboo Park in the west, south of the volleyball arena; and Chaoyang Park in the east where beach volleyball will be played.

Not surprisingly, the reality has hardly been a bastion of policy discussion. On the contrary, it appears that virtually anyone trying to protest has either been ignored or detained. The NY Times highlighted an example of two eldery women who found themselves in jail:

The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth.

But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.\

While these examples have been brought to light, and also got air time on NBC’s Nightly News broadcast, they have, not surprisingly, played second fiddle to the actual Games. Making matters worse, the heavy coverage in the US of the presidential campaign and anticipated vice presidential choices have further obscured these important stories.

Cynics like me were proven correct, though doubt anyone is surprised. When they announced these “protest” zones many of us scoffed at them. At the time I wrote:

If I were a long-term expatriate here (oh wait, I am!) or a Chinese (in the extremely broad definition of the term), I wouldn’t get within a mile of those areas. Why? They will be taking down names and information of everyone involved. It is also safe to assume that they will not allow protests for the more sensitive topics, and it would be less than surprising if many of the “protesters” were patsies protesting much less sensitive issues in an effort to keep an eye on things.

They didn’t even bother to hold fake protests. They just shut the whole thing down.

And this is the problem of the Beijing Games. For all of the fun and amazement, there are serious problems that have been completely glossed over. In essence, the government has won a massive propaganda campaign. People have virtually ignored all of the major issues that they discussed in the run up to the Games. Is it because air pollution is not a problem? No. It’s because it won’t kill the athletes (just the population). Is it because China allowed dissent or press freedom as promised? No. It’s because it’s easier to write about trivial issues like the fact that China blatantly cheated in gymnastics and Joe Biden says “I’m not the guy.”

These are not real stories. The real stories are the future of this country and the role China will take on the world stage in the coming years. If this is China’s coming out party, as the Chinese government likes to call it, then the question remains: what has China shown the world?

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