Rioting Monks, Toxic Soup, Genocide and the Beijing Olympics
Published April 8, 2008
By Alex Hemmer
After China’s bid to host the 2000 summer Olympic Games failed miserably because of environmental and social issues, the country vowed to change its ways. The Chinese took the rejection as an insult to their personal and national honor, and in the next decade the People’s Republic invested in massive development projects that were supposed to transform the nation into an economic and social powerhouse that would be the envy of the world.
Chinese diplomats promised better treatment of minority groups. The communist leadership would loosen their stranglehold on individual rights. Beijing’s transportation and industrial sector would undergo a complete overhaul, featuring ultramodern transit systems, renewable energy, and significant reductions in emissions.
It was all but guaranteed by the government that by 2008, the “new” China would dispel any criticism the international community held against it.
The optimism has not lasted long.
Photos of screaming Tibetan monks, plumes of thick soot from industrial smokestacks, and increasing controversy over China’s human rights violations have destroyed that once rosy depiction of Beijing as a clean and friendly host of the summer games. In place of cooperation and assistance from other countries, China has faced harsh criticism, most recently from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who icily suggested that he would boycott the opening of the games. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not attend, nor will Britain’s Prince Charles. President Bush is under pressure from Congress to join them.
While China has been defending itself from critical remarks abroad, the country has also suffered major setbacks domestically, where ethnic tensions and violent crackdowns have added millions of Chinese voices to the chorus of disapproval. Despite of all this, the Chinese government insists that abuses of human rights are vastly exaggerated and over reported, and that Beijing will be clean and safe for the Olympics in August.
So what’s the deal? Is Beijing ready to take on the Games as the Chinese government says, or are the human costs too high?
To sort out this confusion, we have to set aside both the propaganda from the Chinese government and commentary from foreign media and take a closer look at the hard facts of the situation.
The environmental and social problems with the Beijing Olympics are worse than the Chinese government, and even some foreign observers, like to admit.
“Free Tibet” signs are now more popular than ever, and protests by Buddhist monks make headlines despite Chinese efforts to keep foreign media away. The response to these protests by the government has been swift and brutal. The most active Tibetan groups have called for an international boycott of the Olympics as a way to shame and punish the Chinese government for its oppressive rule. The exiled supreme leader of Tibet, the Dalai Llama, confirms the abuses of the Tibetan people by China, but also calls for an end to the violence and supports China’s hosting of the Olympic Games.
The communist regime in Beijing, nonetheless, accuses the Dalai Llama of inciting riots and of being “a jackal in monk’s clothes”. It has tried to play off the protests and riots as minor disturbances unworthy of international attention. To demonstrate the overall stability of the area, the Chinese last week took some foreign journalists on a PR tour of Lhasa, a major city in Tibet. The area was anything but calm, however. A crowd of enraged monks surrounded the bus and riot troops were brought in to restore order. These tensions have sparked popular uprisings by students and other minority groups, the Taiwanese in particular. It is feared that as these uprisings gain intensity, the Chinese will resort to more aggressive and bloody crackdowns.
Although not currently as prominent as the unrest in Tibet, the tainted relationship between the People’s Republic and Sudan calls some major ethical issues into play. China’s support of the government of Sudan has funded the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
With a rapidly growing economy, China relies heavily on Sudan for oil. In return for this precious resource, China supplies Sudan with money, weapons and steady political support. The Sudanese government then uses these imports to finance a bloody civil war. Frustrated at China’s refusal to stop weapon shipments, many have begun calling the games in August the “Genocide Olympics”.
Finally, the air pollution levels in Beijing’s have reached extremely dangerous levels. The city is literally choking on growth, awash in the byproducts of rapid expansion: a toxic soup of ground level ozone, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. The city’s factories lack modern emission controls. 1,200 cars are added to Beijing’s streets every single day. So much pollution is produced in China that nearly half of all the smog in Los Angeles is from emissions floating over the Pacific Ocean. According to one study, just breathing the air in Beijing is equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.
In conditions like these, simply living in the city is difficult, much less competing in an Olympic sport. Many participants are actually preparing for the harsh environment of the games by running behind buses in order to breathe in the fumes while training. Most countries are planning on flying their athletes into Beijing, where they will wear protective masks and respirators right up to the point when the events begin (no masks are allowed during actual competition). The athletes will then be flown out as soon as possible.
To anyone who hasn’t kept up with the news, the idea of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing may sound like a joke. A competition to determine the world’s best athletes in air you can’t even see through, let alone breathe? Unarmed monks being beaten by armored troops? The ruthless massacre of thousands sponsored by the host country? Evidently “Made in China” applies to much more than plastic consumer goods these days, with pollution drifting overseas and Chinese weapons sent to civil wars in Africa.
Hosting the games is supposed to be one of the biggest honors a country can receive, a recognition of its achievements and commitment to social progress.
Yet sending our Olympians to Beijing makes a mockery of these ideals, and sends a message to other countries that they can abuse the freedom and health of their people (and those abroad) and still reap the same benefits as any other, more socially responsible nation. Is this what the rest of the world will do, by going into the games with heads down and mouths shut, or will we demand change and greater accountability from this rising power?
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