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China has fulfilled its dream of winning the 2008 Olympics, thereby
gaining lots of face among its own people ("See how important we
are? See how the world admires us?") and lots of money from participants,
TV broadcasters and others. Critics of the regime are very upset,
because the International Olympic Committee (which most recently
achieved celebrity by dragging Salt Lake City's lobbyists to new
levels of corruption) failed to listen to the argument that one
shouldn't hold the Olympic Games in the world's biggest and perhaps
nastiest tyranny, as if the games themselves bestowed some sort
of legitimacy.
I have never understood this argument, since the most famous modern
Olympics — Hitler's Games — undermined the regime's legitimacy
and exposed its vicious racism. The modern Olympics, indeed, were
designed to toughen up Frenchmen, who had recently been overrun
by their German neighbors in a short and humiliating war. The hope
of the French organizers was that the French people would become
competitive, and thereby provide better cannon fodder to the Army.
(That didn't work very well either; France couldn't break its unfortunate
habit of surrendering to Germany in every major war).
The Chinese regime is simultaneously arrogant and insecure: Arrogant
in its demand that the rest of the world cater to its tender sensitivities
on all matters (this is the famous "face" we are constantly told
we must permit them to save), and terribly insecure about its own
legitimacy, both at home and abroad. Only a very nervous bunch of
rulers would be murdering its own citizens at a record pace —
they have executed more people in the last three months than the
rest of the world in the last three years — and dramatically
limiting free speech, access to information, and even simple discussion
(Falun Gong reports that the Chinese Government now treats any conversation
between any two Falun Gong members as an illegal assembly). And
only a highly insecure regime would use "psychiatry" as a method
of political intimidation, recalling the worst of Soviet mental
torture.
Such a regime might have thought twice about the consequences of
bringing the Olympics inside its boundaries. No doubt, the majority
of the hordes and swarms of Western journalists and broadcasters
who will run around the country for the next seven years will cater
to the regime's every whim. But there will be many who will see
some of the terrible things that are going on, and report them.
And many of the tens of thousands of athletes, coaches, trainers,
doctors, support staff, camp followers, fans, tourists and businessmen
will actually speak to some Chinese citizens, and provide them with
some insight into the nature of life in freer societies.
Western democracy is a terribly subversive force, and some of its
power will pass through the bamboo curtain into the People's Republic.
The Chinese see the face-enhancing aspect of their victory. We should
see it as an opportunity to spread our anti-tyrannical antibodies
throughout the land. If we do it well, then the Olympics may yet
be seen as the same sort of turning point as the Helsinki Agreements
we signed with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. You
may recall that these were widely viewed as an enormous victory
for the Kremlin, because they legitimized Soviet control over the
satellites. But there was a little-known provision that required
the United States to monitor Soviet human-rights practices, and
this became a lethal weapon against Soviet Communism. It enhanced
the status of the small but highly effective dissident movement,
and provided an international forum for critics of the regime.
In like manner, we should use the Olympics as a lens to focus the
world's attention on the nature of the Chinese regime, hailing its
progress in creating more wealth for some of its citizens, celebrating
its recognition of the importance of private property, praising
its adoption of more transparency in business transactions, but
condemning its use of slave labor, denouncing its ruthless suppression
of basic freedoms from religious practice to open debate, and encouraging
greater liberalization of the political system.
If we succeed in deflecting the Chinese regime from the current
wave of repression, the Olympics may yet be a victory for all the
Chinese people.
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