Many Chinese today still believe the official line about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre – a counter-revolutionary violent riot. On March 22, 30 Chinese intellectuals who publicized “12 suggestions” including un-distorted information about Tibet and independent investigation have been denounced by their friends and even fellow liberal reformists. This week, the 21 Beijing lawyers who offered legal service to detained Tibetan monks have been interrogated and some of them received death-threats.
It is difficult to tell how long it will take for the truth to be told to the Chinese about Tibet, or Tiananmen, or, for that matter, the current international criticisms of China’s human rights. For some time to come, the government censorship and propaganda will fan nationalism and anti-Western sentiments. Consequently, in a manner rather resembling the icy period post-Tiananmen, China will stage harsh crackdowns, pushing aside any pretence to respect human rights and rule of law. High rank officials told the visiting American John Kamm of the US based Dialogue Foundation bluntly that China is prepared to sacrifice the Olympic Games to counter threats to national security at end of March.
It is not too late, then, to think beyond August.
The problems with China’s human rights and Tibet will not be solved in four months. Western democratic countries’ leaders have done and will continue to do little about the problems for the sake of competing for China’s market. Chinese activists, those pushing for reform, advocating human rights, will continue their struggle and pick up where the protests and pageantries leave after the Games are over. For sure, the Beijing Olympics now goes into history, together with such types as Hitler Nazi Germany, the former USSR, Apartheid South Africa, and the former dictatorial South Korea. This will also be the “legacy” of the IOC under Rogge’s leadership, ironically, for having awarded the Olympics to Beijing and adamantly dismissed any efforts to get the IOC to speak up about China’s human rights. China paid a price. China has to learn about commonly accepted behavior of decency if it wants to act and be treated as a respectable big power in the modern world. Economic mighty does not always triumph over the right.
While somewhat unexpected, China’s Olympic-size headache is inevitable. The economically powerful and diplomatically sophisticated, but politically little changed China is bound to resort to the usual tricks of censorship, propaganda and suppression in handling such incidents. More precisely, China only has these “tricks” in its repertoire of tools. How else could an authoritarian police state that systematically censor and control the press, manipulating the media, suppress freedom of religion, imprison dissidents and critics, disrespect rule of law, could have handled the current crisis differently? This time, however, China may have wished it had alternative tactics for the outcome of its suppression clearly undermines its grandiose Olympics dreams.
In 2001, it was controversial to award China the Olympics, but enough people believed that this opportunity would encourage China to become more open and friendlier to ideals of fairness, human dignity, and tolerance, which are at the core of the Olympic spirit. China made some unusual promise at the time: Improving human rights and allowing more freedom in the press. Those who supported the decision or are willing to shelf their doubts are particularly caught unprepared by Tibet and by the international public outrage. As if all of a sudden, the call to boycott the Olympics over China’s human rights is not even that relevant. One main human rights objective of a boycott - drawing international attention to and scrutiny of China’s human rights behavior -- has been fulfilled beyond anybody’s wild dreams. Only one month ago, in a March 17 internal memo circulated by the IOC chairman, Jacques Rogge said the events in Tibet, though “disturbing,” would not jeopardize the "success" of the Olympics, counting on that no "credible" government or organization is supporting boycott.
So how has China managed to mess up its golden opportunity, as if it had “picked up the rock and dropped it on its own feet”?
First, it’s arrogance. Giving its growing power status and increasingly more sophisticated diplomacy, China has confidence that it could run the Olympics at a complete disregard to its own promise to “promote human rights”, a promise it made out of desperation to win the bid to host the Games in Beijing. China has failed spectacularly to keep its promise. Violent attack and imprisonment of human rights activists, censorship, political persecution – China’s preferred methods to ensure pre-Olympics security and harmony - have prevailed in spite of “silent diplomacy” and public criticisms. Any Chinese who dare to speak up to criticize pre-Olympics abuses now languish in prison or risk arrests, violent attacks, surveillance, and other forms of intimidation and harassment.
In the “year of Olympics,” China has, in the name of Olympic preparations (construction, security, harmonious image, etc.), failed to protect labor rights of construction workers in re-building Beijing and other cities hosting the Games; suppressed efforts to seek justice by victims of forced eviction from housing/farming land for constructing Olympic facilities; detained and tortured people arriving in Beijing to complain about local official abuses and corruption in clean-up operations to rid the Olympic city off “undesirables” or off potential protesters. Press censorship got worse despite official promulgation of relaxing pre-approval rules for foreign journalists to conduct interviews. Authorities closed down websites or blogs, shut down or changed management of journals and newspapers, patrolled online chat rooms, BBS, and monitored cell phone and SMS use. Outspoken critics of the authorities handing of the Olympics have been punished harshly. China has jailed a new set of prisoners of conscience – the “Olympics prisoners.”
Hu Jia, a soft-spoken activist who suffers from hepatitis B, was jailed this month for criticizing the Olympics-related abuses, among his other expressions critical of the regime. His wife and enfant daughter have lived under house-arrest and police surveillance. The Beijing lawyer Teng Biao, who co-authored with Hu Jia an open letter “The Real China before the Olympics,” demanding an end to Olympics-related rights abuses, was kidnapped and interrogated for 41 hours by Beijing security police who threatened him with violence. Yang Chunlin, a rural organizer of land-loss farmers in China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, was sentenced to 5 years last month for organizing a petition campaign, in which more than 11,000 farmers signed the open letter “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics!” Many people who had traveled Beijing to petition the Central government to intervene and stop wrongdoings by local officials – from forced eviction to unpaid salaries to lost jobs, were intercepted and locked up in make-shift detention facilities for the purpose of making Beijing “harmonious” for greeting its Olympics visitors.
Secondly, it’s old habit. China reacted to the Tibetan monks’ protests in mid-March with its usual tactics – harsh crackdown with iron-fists, blaming the “Dalai Lama clique” for instigating the riots, blocking information, sealing off areas of protests, manipulating reporting, and fanning nationalism. The Chinese leaders’ continuing refusal to talk to the Dalai Lama gives the international community neither reassurance of any sincerity to solve the Tibetan issue peacefully nor any credibility in its claims about the “criminal” acts of the “rioting” Tibetans. The escalating numbers of detention and arrests of the Tibetan “instigators” only feed the fear of further suppression of religious freedom and violation of due process rights in the larger Tibetan areas.
It is unlikely that China could have avoided its current political crisis, not just a public opinion “disaster,” and could have handled things any better. Expensive public relations firms could not have saved China. Determined by its nature, it is accustomed to using brute force to suppress protesters, dissidents, “separatists” or “terrorists,” or anyone perceived as a threat to the state. There might be some indication of top leadership disagreement about how to handle the Tibetan incident, but the iron-fist approach wins because no leader within the high ranks would want to appear weak. Local officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region, including ethnic Tibetans serving in official capacity, stand to gain from escalating suppressions of the monks – in securing their own posts and increased allocation of state funding.
In short, China messed up its Olympics Gala because its approach, from beginning to end, is excessively political. On February 15, Xi Jinping, a member of the Standing Committee China’s Politburo and a front-runner to become the next president, told reporters that “holding the Olympics and the Special Olympics in 2008 is a major event for our Party”. Authorities throughout Beijing and the country have been charged with “the political duty” of ensuring “successful” Games. China treats the Olympics with such top political priority because it is eager to showcase itself a newly rising power, modern, prosperous, responsible and competent enough to host mega international events. Chinese leaders count on the world’s focus on China during and before the 3-week sports to officially inaugurate its international power status, to reclaim world recognition that took a nose dive after the 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing. Domestically, Chinese leaders count on the international prestige to boost its legitimacy to rule over a country where the disadvantaged and marginalized are restless, posing political challenges. The leaders need this boost to strengthen their hands within the ruling elites’ internal power struggle.
China’s politicizing of the Olympics has backfired. To the Chinese leaders, the political objectives of the Olympic dream are paramount whether or not they have predicted the international reaction. They suppressed dissent and upended any potential “threat” in their cradles. The IOC and other Western leaders may have contributed to this dogged pursuit. In the above-mentioned internal memo, the IOC praised China for such “improvements” as resumption of dialogue between China and the US, the signing of a UN covenant on human rights and China's election to the UN Human Rights Council. But who would find “improvements” in this list unless one stupidly equivocates talking and promising to real changes in behavior! Human rights dialogues between China and the US, China and EU countries and others in the past 20 years have produced little in ending political/religious repression. China had signed and ratified the Convention against Torture in 1988, yet torture remains prevalent. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998 but never ratified or reformed its laws accordingly. China has abused its status on the UN Human Rights Council to get rid of human rights monitoring mechanisms to its own dislike.
The US President Bush insists on the “non-political” nature of the Olympics. But his “non-political” presence at the opening ceremony, as democratically elected leader of the people of the United States of America will deliver a clear political message: that the US does not mind China’s crackdown on Tibet protesters and Chinese human rights activists, nor its handling of the Beijing Olympics on the ruins of many Chinese lives, homes, rights, and dignity – the Party must go on and business is as usual. This message will surely hurt those Chinese who have struggled to reform the repressive system and have suffered a great deal in the hands of the current leadership – particularly those who stood up to the government’s Olympics-related abuses and brutality. Mr. Bush may say something about religious freedom, which will be blocked or quickly brushed away by the government controlled media, while the spectacle of him standing side-by-side with Chinese leaders on the podium, admiring fireworks and pageantry at the opening ceremony will be prominently and repeatedly broadcast to the Chinese public. That spectacle is precisely the political boost that the Chinese leaders desire! Mr. Bush may maintain his “extraordinary relationship” with the Chinese President Hu Jingtao and enjoy himself as a “sport fan,” the American people will bear the moral disgrace of his political gesture endorsing China’s human rights repression at home and support to repressive regimes abroad!
Reacting resolutely to the Tibetan “riots” serves the Chinese leaders’ need to rally the population and divert them from the expanding social-economic disparities at least for now. Facing with “separatist” Tibetans, “instigated” by the overseas “Dalai clique,” trying to spoil China’s “coming out” party, Chinese leaders found the “external threat” to unite the Han Chinese. Defending the Olympics from being tarnished and ruined is now tantamount to defending national unity and sovereignty, defending the pride and glory of the Chinese nation. This tactic always works wonders. Government censorship that block independent media coverage and manipulate information to suit the government’s political agenda make this easy. The extensive control mechanism of official censorship has benefited from cutting edge technologies provided by foreign (mostly American) companies. A combination of information manipulation and demonizing of the Dalai Lama, long-time lack of public debate over Tibet (and, for that matter, over Xinjiang), not surprisingly, brought about the latest wave of nationalistic fervor. In interviews in Chinese cities, foreign journalists found a resounding agreement with the government over Tibet; dissident intellectuals who voiced their concerns over media blockade and lack of independent verification of official reports of “rioting”, and human rights lawyers who offered to provide legal council to arrested Tibetan monks, have received emails attacking them as “traitors” and even death threats. The huge number of ethnic Chinese showed up in the streets of San Francisco last week, the only stop of the torch relay in North America, to support the Beijing Olympics, seemed to consist mostly in youth from the Bay Area’s universities heavily populated with Mainland Chinese students, and backed up by the Chinese Americans business establishments with large import-export interest at stake in China.
Looking beyond Olympics, we must not lose sight of a growing civil rights assertiveness in spite of the current nationalistic frenzy. In the past several years, this assertiveness has grown in the face of harsh suppression. Public outrage at the beating to death by police of a young migrant laborer, Sun Zhigang, led to the abolition in 2003 of a notorious extrajudicial detention system – the “custody and repatriation” detention facilities – was the first landmark victory of citizen mobilization to fight rights abuses. Police had unrestricted power to lock up anyone in this facility without any judiciary oversight. Since then, Chinese citizens – mainly public intellectuals, dissident writers, journalists, lawyers, and a new class of NOG activists (though independent NGOs still face sometimes insurmountable legal, political, and financial hurdles) – have organized many campaigns, often online, over rights problems. The problems involve labor protection, rural migrants’ rights, housing/land forced eviction, rights of people infected with HIV/AIDS, unfair elections of village directors or representatives to the local People’s Congress, official ban on books, government Fire-Wall on the Internet, employment discrimination against people tested positive in hepatitis B, pollution, etc.
What has come to be known as the “rights defense movement” has taken the form of citizens’ actions such as signing open letters or public petitions addressed to government officials, proposing legislative suggestions to law makers, disclosing official corruption or violations on websites or blogs, filling lawsuits against government or officials to seek remedies and accountability, and organizing forums for public discussions or demonstrations. This activism has spread from political, economic, and cultural metropolitan centers to the less developed inland cities and villages. Coastal areas which have grown the fastest also see more indications of rights awareness. Increasingly more people from the professional, resources-rich, middle-classes have joined in. Initially, just as farmers were prompted to stand up to their land rights, these middle-class people are prompted by defending their housing rights, employment opportunities, privacy as consumers of Internet or cell phone services, which matter to their life style. But, after encountering official hurdles, repression, and retaliation, witnessing the lack of rule of law and serious defects in the system first hand, some have joined force with other groups and become more sympathetic to the less fortunate social groups’ causes. The fight for legal rights and personal protection, though may pitch one group against another, has seemed to unite different social groups when they come to realize that the lack of a rule of law and non-democratic unaccountability of officials lie in the roots of their diverse complaints.
This movement has cashed in to confront government abuses in the name of the Olympics. On the day of the one-year countdown to Games’ opening on August 8, 2008, several dozens of Chinese citizens – writer, lawyers, journalists, and professors – publicized an open letter “One World, One Dream, Universal Human Rights,” urging Chinese leaders to end persecution of out-spoken critics of its handling of the Olympics, stop harassment of protesters against forced eviction for Olympic constructions, lift censorship, release political prisoners, and protect labor rights on Olympics construction sites. In China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, more than 10,000 land-loss farmers signed an open letter “We Want Human Rights, not the Olympics.” And a similar open letter was also publicized with 261 signatures of people fighting forced eviction in Shanghai, China’s most developed metropolis. By now, however, inside China, authorities have practically stamped out any public display of dissent from the official-line on the Olympics. The protests continued, mostly online.
It is not far-fetched to accept that the small handful of Han Chinese, initially 30, then increased to about 300, who signed an open letter to demand free press and independent investigation of the March “riot” in Lhasa, may in fact represented the views of a much larger size of the population. The repression of religious freedom in Tibet, unfair returns in social-economic benefits of the region’s boom for ethnic Tibetans, lack of freedom of expression, etc. should be easily recognizable by some Han Chinese as common concerns. This shared understanding, made possible by the rapidly deepening disparities among Han Chinese, will undermine ethno-centrism and nationalism fostered by censorship and official manipulation.
However, one must be warned against a period of post-Olympics overcast. The government is unlikely to back down under international pressure. The leaders in office would absolutely not want to look indecisive to their rivals in the power struggle at the high level. In stead, they are doing their best to transform international public opinion into imperialist interference, intended to demonize China, contain its modernization, and deprive it of its well-deserved great power status. This nationalistic rhetoric is counted on to divert attention away from the injustices and right violations suffered by many Chinese. To save face internationally, appear strong to rivals, and strengthen their legitimacy to rule, Chinese leaders will retaliate against those who have challenged their ways of handling the Olympics – after the 20,000 strong foreign reporters return home and the world attention shift elsewhere.
As long as the Chinese leaders perceive nationalism as politically beneficial, no meaningful dialogue with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama will be likely. International protests and pressures from some Western leaders will keep up. The Chinese government will do everything they could to transform this humiliation into a national crisis, justifying imposing more draconic measures against “separatists,” dissidents and reformers after the Dames. There may set in a period of freeze, so to speak, in a manner with resemblance to the post-Tiananmen era in the 1990s. Detained Tibetan monks (official number is put in the 900s now) and other protesters or critics may be forced to “settle scores after the Autumn.”
Yet, such set-backs on the treacherous road toward political openness in China, though inevitable, are temporary. China can’t shut its door to the global trafficking of ideas, activism, and solidarity with the repressed. The messages of the recent international protests are sipping through China’s Great Firewalls and will spread, thanks to globalization and the internet, faster than two decades ago. This will prompt some soul-searching among the Chinese populace. This prospect, depressing as it is, is no worse than the international lethargy before the current scrutiny on China: when business as usual with China predominated despite its disregard for human rights, while the international key players, preoccupied with the “war on terror,” seemed content with sterile “human rights dialogues” and quite diplomacy. International civil society actors can make a big difference as e have witnessed lately. They will keep the pressures on to extract good compliance to international norms and shining the spotlight on China.
The longer view beyond August also asks for better preparedness for assisting Tibetan protesters and activists inside China. Some of them are eager to take advantage of the unprecedented exposure to have their voices heard. The international community may be able to help cooling nationalistic frenzy, for instance, by keeping an focus on human rights abuses in both the Tibetan and Han Chinese regions by the same authoritarian regime. This would avoid playing into the hands of government-manipulated extreme nationalism and undermining positions for Han Chinese activists sympathetic and supportive to the Tibetan struggle for religious freedom, social-economic justice, cultural integrity, and human rights. A peaceful and democratic solution for Tibet requires fundamental political reform of the authoritarian regime. The international community can help the Tibetans more effectively by helping both the Tibetans and the Han Chinese to advance their common agenda.
Xiaorong Li
April 2008
(This paper, in Italian, appeared in the Aspen Institute Italia publication: Aspenia, No. 43 http://www.aspeninstitute.it/Aspenweb/Aspenweb.nsf/AspeniaUltimo?OpenForm&Li
ngua=I&Area=001000)
