Thread: No protests during Olympics, Beijing warns foreigners

Originally Posted by astralis

zeng,

you should know by now that i'm not one to criticize china unfairly. but that statement does not exactly show how "liberal" china is- it just shows how much of a long, long way china has to go before it turns into a modern nation.

"free tibet", however much i disagree with its premise, should be able to be debated by any chinese, anywhere. the CCP still fears the free flow of information, and having "one valley in Tibet" open for demonstrations- well, that's not impressive at all.

chinese leaders are right when they say that civil and political liberties cannot be suddenly thrust upon a people. however, it has become increasingly clear that they are simply using that as an excuse for inaction. reforms in the judiciary, in the NPC, and even in the CCP structure itself is absolutely glacial and do not fit the massive changes which china is currentlhy undergoing.

that is too bad for china, as the CCP continues to if not encourage, at least foster a very narrow sense of nationalism. for that matter, this is bad even for the CCP itself- it means in a long run a populace the CCP is held even more hostage to, and a CCP is less able to adapt to what will be inevitably greater challenges ahead.

in any case, while it sucks to have to politicize the olympics, i think that this experience will certainly be beneficial for china overall. in fact, i know (and have worked with) quite a few organizations which have successfully used olympics pressure to get china to free its human rights prisoners, to push local bureaucrats to at least temporarily stop or reduce human rights violations in defiance of china's own constitution, and to generally push china in a better direction as a whole.

boycotting the olympics altogether, that is stupid- no more pressure on china there. but pressuring the CCP on the olympics- hell, yes. the CCP needs all the pushing it can get.

astralis,

Sorry, that inaccessible Tibet valley for legal demonstration is just sarcasm.

I agree with most of your opinion. Tibetans do deserve more freedom just like rest of the Chinese people.

In fact, we have Tibet Fever in China in the recent years. Different authors wrote lot of books about Tibet, Tibetan culture Tibetan people and Tibetan life. I highly recommend some of the books below.

Personally, I like the 走过西藏 (across Tibet) by马丽华 (Lihua Ma) the best.

tushu4

I heard that someone is translating it (at least part of it) into English. The prefaces wrote for her book by a Tibetan professor is wonderful.

Her book showed us a fantastic Tibet and its people. After read her book, you will feel wanting to rethink about your life again and wouldn’t want leave this world until visit Tibet. I visited Tibet, lived with Tibetans for several months and did feel the impact on my thinking of my life. Tibet is really a sacred place and we wouldn’t give it to anyone.

尘埃落定 (dust has settled) by " 阿来 (Alai), a Tibetan author, is also an excellent book about the Tibetan life during transition from early 1900s to 1950s. It was a best seller and an award winning book. I like it very much.

We also have people like 王力雄 (Wang Lixiong) who married a Tibetan woman and can be considered as a dissenter. He suggests giving Tibet and XinJiang more autonomy. Today, he can come and leave China freely although he was jailed in China before. His Tibetan wife is also an author.

Wang Lixiong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I read his book 天葬：西藏的命运 (Celestial burial: the fate of Tibet). It is an excellent book although I consider that his other books like 黄祸 (Huanghuo, or Yellow Peril) to be junk book.

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About the pace of China’s political reform I am not an expert and also feel that Chinese leaders today may be over cautious to make changes on the political front.

However, the lesson of USSR’s collapse told us that there is a critical line for the political reform. If you get cross that line, things will become out of control and rolling ahead no matter what happens.

The ideal scenario is that we push to close to that critical line but not cross it before we are ready. But I don’t know how far away we are from that critical line and how we are prepared for the democracy.

Today, China has thousand of protests and demonstrations a year. We don’t have those in Mao’s time. Definitely Mao’s time was much worse than today. That shows that China is becoming less oppressed now. People dare to do protests and demonstrations now and those protests and demonstrations do put pressure on CCP. I think that it is a good thing for China and Chinese people.

But do we know how many protests and demonstrations are within the controllable limit? If giving more freedom, could we end up getting protests and demonstrations everyday? Could that result central government loss control over local government? Could we repeat June 1989 ?

How far away we are from collapse? If CCP collapse today, there is no alternative governing system in China. We will end up in big mess and the one who suffer the most will be the ordinary people just like the case in USSR/Russia.

I don’t feel happy with China’s pace for political reform but I don’t know how fast we can change without loss control and certainly I don’t want China gets into anarchy.

I also agree that the pressure from Olympic game on CCP is beneficial for China overall. I just want to make some jokes with those emotional guys who advocate boycotting the olympics.

CCP knew that Olympic game will put pressure on it and pursued it and managed to execute it as smooth as possible, I give them credits for it.

China just announced that the environmental protection will be a priority of the top local leaders. A plan and target for improving the environmental protection will be set for local provinces, cities and counties. If they can’t reach the target by the end of the evaluation, the top local leaders will have to take the personal responsibility and may have to leave their positions. Pollution will be direct affecting the careers of the local leaders.

This is a typical way CCP doing things in China just like they set economic plan and target for the locals before. I think that 2008 Olympic game also give CCP a push to put the environmental protection as a priority. It will be good for China.

Today in China, you get bombarded with public advertisements for studying foreign languages, behaving well and polite to each others, respect each other, correct the bad habits like spit on the street, establishing harmonious society and so on. I think that it is a good thing.

May be I am not sensitive enough about the democratic/freedom issues. I worked in China for many years. Now, although I work most of the time in America I still go back China very often for my work and really don’t feel I was so much oppressed in China.

Of course, I acknowledge that America has more freedom in media and Americans have the right to vote. China definitly should move to that direction.

But in the company, I feel that people are more fraid to speak out different opinions than in China. It is just my personal opinion, it may not be correct over broader range.

Today, so many oversea Chinese go back to China. Some of them are already very successful in America or other countries. But they still go back to settle in China. It seems that they are not so sensitive about the democratic issues or oppressed issues either. They found that China gives them more opportunities.


Finally, some of the human rights prisoners of China are really disappointing. Many Chinese including myself used to respect them very much. But their behaviors in America are just despicable. They receive funding from any anti-China organizations. They cheat each other and betray each other for those funding. Their behavior shows that they are not any good than the CCP.

高瞻 (Gao Zhan), a female human rights prisoner of China, was convicted in China for espionage. IMO, her conviction did show that Chinese juristic system is not transparent. Personally, I don’t think that she got a fair trial.

American government saved her because she has green card and gives birth to two children in America as US citizens. China released her to America for “her health reason” and “humane considerations” to let her unite with her kids and husband.

As a decent person, she really should thank America for that. But after she came back to America, she continues to forge documents and sell restricted stuff to China for profit. She also made tax fraud. Finally, she got arrested in US.

That is the character of a human right activist. She betrays both China and America. The only thing matter to her is money.

Gao Zhan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gao Zhan sentenced - News

Of course, I believe that there are decent Chinese human right activists out there. But the number is really not that many. IMO, most of them behaved very badly when they come to America.