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Updated: China Detains Two Elderly Women for Protesting Olympics
Two elderly Chinese women in Beijing, ages 79 and 77, have been sentenced to a year of labor and “re-education” for attempting to get a permit to protest what they claimed was inadequate compensation for their homes that were demolished to make way for the Olympics.
It’s the kind of story that will quickly be buried beneath the avalanche of feel good news about Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and the USA basketball team. Yet it stands as a harrowing reminder that individual freedoms and human rights for China’s 1.3 billion citizens are by no means safeguarded.
With the world’s attention focused on China and the Beijing Games, people are learning — and seeing for themselves on wall-to-wall television coverage a rapidly growing, market-driven (and sports-crazy) economic juggernaut, but also the globe’s largest and nearly last remaining Communist-controlled government. Its leaders eagerly attempt to project a progressive, ultra-modern image (reflected in the astonishing architecture of many of the Olympic venues), while simultaneously maintaining strict and pervasive control over virtually every aspect of the lives of its citizens.
The famous image of the student blocking a Russian Army tank on a Beijing boulevard in 1989 remains perhaps the picture that most people in the world envision about China. And no wonder. From its repressive policies towards Tibet and religious minorities within its borders to its laissez faire handling of the genocidal regime in the Sudan, China has earned a worldwide reputation as a nation that cares little about fundamental human rights or personal liberties. The shocking revelations earlier this year that thousands of young Chinese were held as work slaves in remote manufacturing plants was, for many, only additional proof that this is a nation where the rights of the individual have no relevance or meaning.
President Bush, journeying to China to attend the Olympics opening ceremonies, chided the Chinese government for its unwillingness to extend basic freedoms within the nation. A government spokesperson responded by advising the President (and all other governments) to mind his own business. For a nation eager to demonstrate a positive global image, it was a curious response on the eve of the Olympics, yet one entirely in keeping with China’s centuries-old tradition of often confounding inscrutability.
A growing number of observers believe, nevertheless, that China’s hosting of the Olympic Games will finally bring about reform. They believe that worldwide media exposure will help accelerate internal changes and serve as the catalyst for more liberal government policies both internally and abroad. With these changes, it is thought, freedom won’t be far behind.
Others are pessimistic. They argue that by driving aggressive economic expansion while holding individual freedoms in check, the Chinese are offering the world a viable and attractive alternative to capitalist democracy and its emphasis on personal liberty. From the viewpoint of the government, progress in the standard of living at home and growing economic influence abroad are the keys to continued growth, all the better if criticism is muted and dissent prohibited.
This conundrum was explored in recent articles in the Times and The Wall Street Journal prior to the opening of the games. The Journal’s opinion piece makes the point that by hosting the Games, internal forces and trends already underway within China will accelerate the pace of increasing freedom for the average Chinese. The author, Bruce Gilley, suggests that dissidents who are using the Games as a media platform to air grievances about China’s human rights policies, will have the cumulative and beneficial effect of raining on the Chinese government’s parade. “By denying the Communist Party its moment of glory,” Gilley writes, ” the dissonance created by the Olympic year will accelerate the ongoing values transformation in China needed to erode the regime’s popular support. At the same time, the mobilization of social actors and the creation of new venues of protest and expression will leave behind new levers for positive change. Beijing vice mayor Liu Jingmin’s pledge in 2001 that the games will be “an opportunity to foster democracy, improve human rights, and integrate China with the rest of the world” will prove true.”
The Times, on the other hand, interprets the impact of the Olympic Games differently. Its correspondent writes that Chinese government leaders have strengthened their grip on liberalizing movements within China by essentially co-opting the nation’s business and professional elites into supporting the political status quo .
Writes the Times’ correspondent, Jim Yardley: “Reformers hoped private businesspeople might one day prove a force for democratization. But today, together with the flow of party officials into the business sector, the mixing of money and power has rendered sharp distinctions about the state and private sectors less meaningful than they seem in the West. Businessmen have established closer links to the government and the party to get access to state bank loans and tap into the network of officials who control land and government contracts. College students eyeing a career in government or academia often make the same calculation.
“The party seems happy with that,” said Bruce Dickson, a China scholar at George Washington University and author of the new book, “Wealth Into Power: The Communist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector.” “They are not looking for die-hard ideologues. They want to co-opt people into their system. And they’ve been far more successful than people realize.”
Clearly, China is a far different, seemingly more open society than it was at the time of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Yet the Olympic Games help bring into sharp focus the critical question of whether this huge nation is moving in the direction of freedom, where human rights are codified into law and everyday practice, or instead creating an economic behemoth in which individual freedoms are sacrificed in the name of “progress.”
Do you think China’s hosting of the Olympic Games will lead to increased freedom for its citizens? Does it make a difference to you personally if China continues to hold personal liberties in check? Give us your thoughts.
Tags: Beijing, China, human rights, Olympics
“Free press” Bush means the press can be bought and manipulated to serve the corporate agenda because the Chinese press are controlled by the government. I do see the difference however bush thinks there is; well you can try and pull the wool over the eyes of someone else. This is a united effort by the corporations of the west to bombard the Chinese with negative marketing which is really blackmail at this crucial time in Chinese history. Their aim is for China to allow the western corporation’s access to the 1 Billion + untapped consumers so they can sell them their products and services.
There are many intelligence services agents under the guise of journalist in China spinning webs of subversion. Why the need ? well let’s call it economics the western corporations want access to the Chinese population and all the nationalised sectors to be in private hands. They are doing their utmost to undermine and humiliate China while billions of us watch they are turning this prestigious sporting event by politicising it.
What happened to the Sydney Olympics and the aborigines being unrecognised, mistreated, ghettoised and ignored of their rightful ancestral lands ? i will tell you it’s because western corporations own Australia just like South Africa only white might is right so shut up and don’t fight for your rights ! Expect more serious trauma to be inflicted on the Chinese because these corporations will not stop until they get what they want. All these rich kids making protest have the time and the money to make themselves a name these egomaniacs while the rest of us work 9 to 5 and 7 days a week.
The Chinese are the workhorse of the world and they can make almost anything so why would they allow money to go to western banks when they can provide all the needs of their consumers, pick up anything and read the reverse text “made in ?” yes CHINA ! Western corporations know the Chinese are modernising and developing at a fast rate and they see this as a threat because they don’t want the Chinese making and selling all the things their countrymen want because they feel this is against DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM, how absurd. Bush didn’t create FREEDOM neither has he a monopoly of this inalienable right go read your CONSTITUTION bush.