The Beijing Olympics came to a close yesterday with a ceremony almost as majestic and impressive as the opening ceremony. The Summer Games offered a carefully crafted stage for showing off China’s rise to a great power, and through the magnificent sports arenas, the resplendence of the opening and closing ceremonies and the unsurpassed number of gold medals won, China has told the world that it has arrived.
That is all good and well, but the slogan “One world, one dream” would more appropriately read as “One world, different dreams,” for the touchstone for full membership in the international community is the ability to rise to the standards of a civilized, developed state.
Despite the brilliance of the opening ceremony, the Olympics showed that Chinese nationalism is of overriding importance. Beijing invested an unprecedented US$42 billion in the Olympics. To gain face for the nation, thousands of households were forced to move and tens of thousands of performers prepared for the opening and closing ceremonies without consideration of time, effort or money. To clear Beijing’s polluted skies, factories were closed and millions of cars were forced off the roads. Seven-year-old Yang Peiyi (楊沛宜) was sacrificed because she wasn’t considered by some to represent the face of China. A prettier Lin Miaoke (林妙可) lip-synched Yang’s voice, while Han children represented China’s minorities in a faux show of ethnic harmony.
Respect for the individual was sacrificed on the altar of nationalism.
When vying to host the Olympics, Beijing promised to respect freedom of the press during the Games, but Reporters Without Borders said the Beijing Olympics were a travesty of freedom of expression. Many human rights activists and supporters of Tibet as well as some foreign reporters had their movements restricted. Forty-seven Tibet activists were arrested during the Games. At least 50 human-rights activists were put under house arrest and at least 15 Chinese were arrested for applying for permission to organize demonstrations.
Beijing’s promise to allow the freedom to conduct interviews and demonstrations now sounds like a bad joke.
The Dalai Lama told Le Monde that a peaceful demonstration by Tibetans had been violently suppressed. Although it is difficult for the outside world to verify the unrest in Tibet, China’s ongoing suppression of that region and Xinjiang is a fact.
China used the Olympics to present itself as a great power, but a wide gulf remains between Beijing’s Olympic display and international standards of propriety. Human rights in China fall far short of the international community’s norms. China’s lack of respect for weaker states and its own citizenry proves that everything else comes second to nationalism.
China may have put on a brilliant performance in the Olympic arena, but when it comes to basic welfare, education, employment, standards of living, not to mention freedom, democracy and human rights, it remains unprepared to join the ranks of modern states.
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