US hints at boycotting 2008 Bejing Olympics on Darfur crisis

Wouldn't that be something? Go Bush Go!

Thursday 31 May 2007 09:25.

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Sudan Tribune: May 30, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — At a time when the US envoy hinted at boycotting the Bejing Olympics, its demand for new U.N. sanctions against Sudan faces an uphill struggle, not least because Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he wants more time for diplomacy to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur.

Ban urged the U.S. and the U.K., on April 2 to delay a push for tougher sanctions - and he indicated that he remains opposed not only to President George W. Bush’s call for U.N. sanctions but to new U.S. economic measures that Bush ordered Tuesday. (more)

Organ-harvesting claims spark call for boycott of Beijing Olympics

China's own genocide should be in the front page before the Games. Why won't China open their doors to an investigation if they have nothing to hide? Since they have denied that they're are doing this gross atrocity to the Falun Gong, then what is stopping them, eh?

Times Colonist: Tim Naumetz - Published: Thursday, May 31, 2007 - OTTAWA - A coalition of Falun Gong supporters is calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing if the Chinese government does not allow an independent investigation of organ-harvesting allegations.

The Canadian chapter of a coalition that claims China supports the illegal harvesting of a range of organs of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners said the boycott should begin in August unless China complies with the request.

At a Parliament Hill news conference Wednesday, former Liberal MPs David Kilgour and Simma Holt, along with a group called Doctors Against Organs Harvesting, lent their support to the demand from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong.

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Former MP, David Kilgour, speaks during a Falun Gong demonstration, on Parliament Hill, on Tuesday Sept. 26, 2006.

"It's simply impossible, in my view, to have torture and killing going on in one part of Beijing,"said Kilgour, "and the Games going on in another."

Kilgour and Winnipeg human rights lawyer David Matas last January released a report saying they had independently confirmed allegations of Chinese organ harvesting on a "large scale" from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.

The Chinese government last month denied the claims, saying it has banned the sale of human organs and allows medical transplants only with written consent under standards that protect the safety and health of patients.

But Kilgour and Matas said they found evidence Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs, which are sold to foreigners for "huge amounts of money."

Holt, who once represented the Vancouver House of Commons seat now held by Trade Minister David Emerson, accused Emerson of being complicit in organ harvesting by ignoring the allegations while supporting closer trade ties with China.

Torsten Trey, a physician with Doctors Against Organ Harvesting, compared the 2008 Beijing Games to the 1936 Olympics held in Germany only three years before the beginning of the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust in China has already started," he said. "The organ harvesting of living people is just the tip of the iceberg in the persecution of Falun Gong."

China claims Falun Gong is not a religious or spiritual movement and poses a threat to society by exercising mental control over its followers while amassing illegal wealth. It has compared the movement to unnamed cults it claims are banned in western democracies.

Reuven Bulka, president of the Canadian chapter of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong, said China should not object to an inquiry if the allegations are untrue.

"They shouldn't be afraid of an investigation," he said. "That's all we're asking."

Media Freedom Under Assault Ahead of 2008 Olympics

Harassment of Journalists, Censorship Still Prevalent Despite Official Pledges

Human Rights Watch: 31 May, 2007- ...“Not only is China violating freedom of expression, but it is also engaging in invidious discrimination against its own nationals,” said Richardson.

Both rights are guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to which China is bound as a member of the United Nations, as well as the International Covenant on Cultural and Political Rights, which China has signed but not yet ratified.

“China’s long-planned 2008 Beijing Olympics ‘coming-out party’ can easily become a public relations disaster if the government persists in failing to honor its obligations to media freedom,” said Richardson. (more)

China: the Beijing Olympics

What if it rains on Beijing’s Olympic parade?

Elliot Wilson really sees the Communist Party for what it is. Yes, let it rain--a good hard rain can be cleansing!

Spectator.co UK: ...Tax officials apart, the destruction of old Beijing continues to fill the pockets of construction tycoons and a sprinkling of extremely rich, supremely well-connected landlords now lauded by the very party that once had them tortured and executed. Auto-makers and dealerships are benefiting from the new roads, while leading consumeroriented multinationals are set to cash in too — no new Beijing office building is complete without a Starbucks, a KFC and a Japanese noodle shop. As a result the city now has an odd, hollowed-out feel, with vast new expressways and avenues only detracting from the old, cosy, understated ambience.

The ultimate aim of all of this destruction and reinvention is simple — to allow China to throw the greatest, most expensive Games the world has ever seen. For the ruling Communist party, these Games aren’t about sport, or even about bringing the nations of the world together, but about demonstrating China’s size and power.

Before a single ping-pong ball is struck China will have maxed out its credit card on the event, and when historians judge the success of next year’s Games, Beijing wants them to be thinking only of records broken, gold medals won, public adoration secured. It’s all about being biggest and best. Take the torch relay, historically the dullest part of any Olympic Games: Beijing in 2005 decreed that its version of the relay event would cover more ground than any other in Olympic history, involving more people in more cities and countries, including both Taiwan and North Korea. Overall, more athletes will participate in more events with more medals than ever before, and Chinese viewers, in the stadia and at home, will have been primed by propaganda to expect gold in every contest.

Then there are the ubiquitous corporate sponsors — the inevitable gaudy sideshow of any modern sporting gala. If the Beijing Games are about anything other than power, they are about making money — and proving that communism and capitalism can happily cohabit. Twenty-two of the world’s biggest corporations, including global brands such as Adidas and Coca-Cola and local giants such as Bank of China and the computer maker Lenovo, have stumped up $2.1 billion between them — another Olympic record, naturally — to plaster their logos over hoardings, T-shirts and baseball caps. Their aim, which rather chimes with that of the party, is to insert their branding messages into the hearts and minds of 1.3 billion impressionable consumers, particularly the 300 million Chinese under the age of 25. (more)

China’s Ministry of Public Security Issues Secret Directive to Investigate and Bar Thousands Worldwide from Olympics

NEWS - May 31, 2007 Falun Dafa Information Center [ http://www.faluninfo.net/ ]

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China’s Ministry of Public Security Issues Secret Directive to Investigate and Bar Thousands Worldwide from Olympics
Directive Targets Falun Gong, Dalai Lama, Counter-Revolutionaries, and the Handicapped

FDI: NEW YORK, NY – In what may be its most audacious Olympic act yet, China’s Ministry of Public Security has issued an incredible directive that lists 43 categories of unwanteds who are to be investigated and barred from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Falun Dafa Information Center has learned. Pariah groups include eerily vague “key individuals in ideological fields,” “overseas hostile forces,” “counter-revolutionary” figures, the Dalai Lama and all affiliates, members of “religious entities not sanctioned by the state” (e.g. Roman Catholics), “individuals who instigate discontentment toward the Chinese Communist Party through the Internet,” and even certain types of “handicapped” persons.

Members of the Falun Gong would be barred, as would “family members of deceased persons” killed in “riots” -- a euphemism for events such as the Tiananmen Massacre -- and Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, which the regime brands “national separatists.” Only at the very bottom of the directive does it identify “violent terrorists” and members of “illegal organizations” as targets for investigation and possible barring.

To be investigated are participating athletes, members of the media, Olympic staff members, referees, sponsors, dignitaries, and the International Olympic Committee itself, among others, to determine whether they fall into any of the 43 categories. If carried out, the directive would amount to an espionage effort of astounding proportions, and would fly in the face of international law.

The Ministry’s directive, said to have been issued in April and titled “Notification on Strictly Carrying Out Background Investigations on Candidates for the Olympics and Performing a Pre-Selection Screening” has reportedly been circulated to each Chinese province and autonomous region as well as to all police stations and bureaus in municipalities directly under the Central Government. The Information Center is making available the relevant excerpt of the original document (Chinese) as well as a translation (English).

The directive also calls upon all levels of China’s regime to “cooperate,” but adds that it is “vital to keep this directive and all associated activities secret… it is of utmost importance to give the look of an easygoing environment to the outside, but in fact keep a firm handle on all activities.”

“To see China’s rulers abusing their Olympic privileges like this is simply unconscionable,” said Mr. Erping Zhang, Information Center spokesperson. “The regime appears to have gone so far beyond international norms as to risk absurdity, and is clearly bent on hiding this fact. This means that a shockingly large number of people could not participate in, work at, sponsor, or report on the Olympics. You might even have your phone tapped although you live in London, or you might be spied on in Florida, simply on account of your possible political or religious beliefs.”

“The CCP is making a mockery of the Olympic spirit,” Zhang said.

The directive is yet further evidence that China’s rulers are capitalizing on the Olympics to quash dissent, particularly the Falun Gong. A Feb. 21, 2001, Reuters report revealed that the campaign against Falun Gong had escalated as China entered the final stages of bidding for the 2008 Olympics. The report cited the state-run Xinhua propaganda outlet as saying the government had given “citations” to 110 organizations and 271 individuals “for anti-Falun Gong work” and to “wipe out” Falun Gong.

A July 17, 2001, report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, meanwhile, disclosed that after Beijing landed the 2008 Olympics, China’s then Vice Premier declared that winning the Olympics was “justification for the country’s crackdown on the Falun Gong.”

In 2005, an intelligence journal, Intelligence Online, revealed that China’s deputy public security minister, Liu Jing, had been assigned the responsibility of wiping out Falun Gong before the Games. A directive was issued “demanding that all of the country’s security services lend a hand” in the effort. Notably, investigators were to be appointed even to Chinese embassies around the world to “infiltrate” Falun Gong groups there. This would appear to anticipate the new, April directive dictating massive international espionage.

A growing body of voices has been calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in light of the regime’s human rights abuses. Many point in particular to the regime’s complicity in Sudan, where it has blocked U.N. and other efforts to stem the tide of genocide, with the regime itself being known to supply arms to the Sudanese government. Some China watchers have likened Beijing’s Olympic efforts to those of Nazi Germany in connection with the 1936 Berlin Olympics -- referred to by many as the Nazi Olympics. Historians have said of the ’36 Games that “the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany.” (link)

“China’s regime is using the Olympics to legitimize its oppression,” said Zhang. “Is China’s communist dictatorship to decide who gets a share of human rights come Olympics time? Or are the games to just be one big propaganda stunt?”

The Falun Dafa Information Center is calling upon the International Olympic Committee to vigorously investigate the above, and take firm, principled action to uphold the Olympic Charter and the human rights it enshrines.

# # #

NEWS - May 31, 2007
Falun Dafa Information Center, www.faluninfo.net

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Background
Founded in 1999, the Falun Dafa Information Center is a New York-based organization that documents the rights violations of adherents of Falun Gong (or “Falun Dafa”) taking place in the People’s Republic of China. In July of 1999 China’s autocratic Communist Party launched an unlawful campaign of arrests, violence, and propaganda with the intent of “eradicating” the apolitical practice; it is believed certain leaders feared the influence of the practice’s 100 million adherents. The campaign has since grown in violence and scope, with millions having been detained or sent to forced labor camps. The Center has verified details of over 3,000 deaths and over 63,000 cases of torture in custody (reports / sources). Falun Gong is a traditional-style Buddhist “qigong” practice, with roots in the Chinese heritage of cultivating the mind/body for health and spiritual growth.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER- Contacts: Gail Rachlin 917-757-9780, Levi Browde 646-415-0998, Erping Zhang 646-533-6147, or Joel Chipkar 416-709-8678. Email: contact@faluninfo.net, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/

China's Games

The Olympics are only a year away, but Beijing's human rights record isn't getting any better.

SUPPOSE YOU have a country that's quickly growing into a superpower but has a terrible human rights record. Granting it the Olympics should force it to shape up, right? With all eyes on this country, it can't possibly continue to get away with rampant executions, political oppression, forced abortions and organ harvesting. Right?

That was the gist of what China argued in 2001, anyway. "By allowing Beijing to host the Games," the vice president of Beijing's Olympic bid committee said in April 2001, "you will help the development of human rights."

Instead, getting the 2008 Games seems to have emboldened China's communist rulers. Amnesty International recently released a report indicating that despite a few minor reforms such as the temporary loosening of control over foreign media, human rights violations in China persist and in some areas have worsened.

Washington Post: Tuesday, May 29, 2007; Page A12 - Protests in Guangxi region last week revealed what appears to be a resurgence of the state's harsh family planning policies, which place quotas on the number of children allowed. Enforcement of the policies, begun in 1980, had seemed to wane in recent years, but now reports of forced abortions and sterilizations are reappearing. Extensive use of detention without trial, censorship of domestic media and the Internet, and intimidation of political activists (including two AIDS activists put under house arrest last week) also appear to have increased. The government has been shutting down Web sites.

China is cracking down on dissidents because of, not in spite of, the Olympics. "[S]trik[ing] hard at hostile forces," as China's minister of public security told a state-run publication in March, is meant to "create a harmonious society and a good social environment for successfully holding . . . the Beijing Olympic Games."

China is not just abusing human rights at home; it's countenancing genocide abroad. Despite increasing evidence that the Sudanese government is contributing to mass killings in Darfur, China remains Khartoum's main commercial partner, buying two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports. Amnesty International has alleged that China is supplying the arms used in the Darfur conflict, which China denies. China has generally refused to take a stance on the internal politics of Sudan, just as it wishes the world would stay out of its own internal politics, and it has blocked U.N. sanctions against Khartoum. In recent months, however, China has taken credit for persuading Sudan to accept U.N. and African Union peacekeeping forces. Beijing also recently sent a "special envoy" to Darfur. These gestures are not enough.

China has criticized human rights activists who call the 2008 Olympics the "Genocide Olympics," saying it is improper to "politicize the Olympic Games." But the Chinese government has been politicizing this event all along.

Seven Questions: A Walk On The Dark Side

Amnesty International has just released its global annual report in Moscow. Joshua Rubenstein, a senior spokesman for the human rights organization, on the regimes and trends that are making the world a much nastier place was interviewed by FP. Here we take a look at China and Russia.

Foreign Policy: Joshua Rubenstein: Certainly, there are some trends that are very worrisome. You have a deteriorating human rights situation in countries like China, Zimbabwe, and Iran. This echoes previous years, but it’s complicated by the war on terror, where the vocabulary of the Bush administration is being adopted by other governments around the world. For example, in China, there’s tension between the central government and this Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang [autonomous region]. Now we’re told that the Uighurs are “terrorists,” and the Chinese are carrying out repression there as if somehow the activity for greater autonomy of the Uighurs is connected to terrorism....

FP: Let’s talk more about China. Surely its treatment of the Uighur minority is not China’s only human rights problem?

JR: We’re all aware that China has many domestic human rights issues—the torture of Falun Gong practitioners, the arrests of lawyers and journalists and Internet activists—but we also need to play more attention to China’s role in the world: Its role in Darfur where, along with Russia, it is the principal supplier of arms to the government of Sudan; its role in Africa generally, where it seems indifferent to human rights issues. China is just happy to be there and extract minerals and oil in the same way we used to see colonial regimes behave in the 19th century.

FP: Amnesty chose to hold a press conference in Moscow to release this report. Why Moscow?

JR: It’s important to shine a spotlight on Russia and on the former Soviet Union. Keep in mind that after the Soviet Union collapsed, there were very substantial hopes that these countries would move in a more democratic and peaceful direction. But unfortunately, under Russian President Vladimir Putin, we’ve seen a severe retreat from democratic principles. We’ve seen physical attacks on human rights defenders and journalists. All this has a big influence not only on Russian democracy, but on all of the former Soviet Union, on Central Asia, on Belarus. But I’m not sure that the U.S. administration is willing to raise these issues with Russia and risk provoking a new Cold War, which no one wants.(more)

Chinese human rights activists write IOC

Let's help make a difference by writing to the IOC. Here's another great letter by rights activists.

Olympic Watch: Brussels, May 19, 2007 – A coalition of international organizations working for human rights improvements in China, including several associations of the Chinese democratic exile, has sent an open letter to Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC. The letter calls on Rogge to hold the Beijing Organizing Committee accountable for the lack of human rights progress in China. Considering the promises made by Beijing during its candidacy for the 2008 Olympics, the letter reminds the IOC of the necessity to ensure freedom of the press and of the human rights violations carried out in relation to the Games. The letter also calls on the IOC to stop the political abuse of the Olympic ideals by the propaganda machine of the Chinese Communist Party.

The full text of the letter follows below.


Mr. Jacques Rogge
President
International Olympic Committee
Château de Vidy
1007 Lausanne
Switzerland


Brussels, 16 May 2007


Dear President Rogge,

As a coalition of native Chinese and Asian human rights defenders, and other supporters of human rights in China and Asia from around the world, we call on you to immediately hold the Beijing Organizing Committee (BOCOG) accountable for the lack of progress on human rights since 2001, when you awarded the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing.

We request that you make sure that in line with the Olympic Charter, BOCOG is immediately de-politicized. It must be run as a non-partisan non-political organization promoting Olympic ideals, including human rights and dignity. At this point it is an organ composed of Chinese Communist Party officials, interested primarily in the political propaganda abuse of the Games.

We also request that BOCOG deliver on its promises of freedom of speech in China. Recent cosmetic improvements of regulations on international media operations do not counterbalance the continuing, and in many respects worsening, pressure on the Chinese media, and the increasing restrictions of foreign media availability in China. You know as well as we do that there is no freedom of the press in China.

Finally, we urge you to personally plead for the immediate release of Ye Guozhu, the activist imprisoned and reportedly tortured in relation to the Olympic re-development of Beijing, and to make it clear to BOCOG that any further human rights violations related to the organization of the Games are unacceptable.

With less than fifteen months to go and no improvement in sight, your action is needed now. We look forward to your response.

Most sincerely,


Forum for a Democratic China and Asia
Federation for a Democratic China
Olympic Watch
China Rights Network
Chinese Students and Scholars Organization in Germany
Delegates of the 2007 conference on global support to China/Asia democracy in Brussels

China, U.S.: The Strategic Economic Dialogue as a Tool for Managing Relations

Rodger Baker gives a brief lesson in American history and explains why Russia is so important to Communist China these days. Beijing is a master at diverting attention from the real problem at hand.

Stratfor: May 22, 2007 19 36 GMTChinese Vice Premier Wu Yi is in Washington to meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for the second of the planned biannual Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) sessions between the two countries. The dialogue brings together representatives of numerous ministries on both sides of the Pacific, covering finance, labor, trade, agriculture and the environment, among others. As the talks get under way, business and media attention is focused almost exclusively on two main issues: the Chinese-U.S. trade imbalance and China's undervaluing of the yuan.

The dialogue, however, is designed to integrate a much broader array of issues between Beijing and Washington, moving beyond trade to the larger matter of how the world's only remaining superpower deals with the rapid emergence of China on the international economic and political scene. For Washington, the dialogue is a tool to manage China's international relations as much as China's economic development. And for Beijing, the dialogue represents an attempt to shape relations with the United States in terms of economic cooperation, rather than strategic competition.

The economic framework for discussions seems to appeal to both Washington and Beijing, and the current dialogue, then, serves as a convenient tool for managing relations that sit on a much broader geopolitical framework. Still in its early stages, the SED reflects a changing dynamic in the management of U.S.-Chinese relations. From Beijing's perspective, the SED is a way to focus on the potential positive elements of U.S.-Chinese ties -- business and trade -- and reduce attention on questions of the "China threat" and the emergence of China as a military competitor to the United States.

The SED serves, in Beijing's mind, as one way of using the U.S. administration as a balance to the U.S. Congress. If the administration is looking at the broader strategic issues posed by China's global emergence, then it will be less likely to accede to congressional politicking on the China issue -- or so Beijing hopes. China sees the U.S. Congress as "unsophisticated" on China issues, and Capitol Hill as a place where short-term political interests, based to a large degree on electioneering and campaign contributions, drive periodic spurts of anti-Chinese rhetoric. However, during the past two decades, Beijing itself has grown a little more sophisticated in its understanding of U.S. politics, and has moved past dealing primarily with image management at the presidential and ministerial level to trying to shape U.S. political views from the ground up.

With the rapid rise of the Chinese economy in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis and Beijing's entry into the World Trade Organization, China looked to both protect its growing economic connections and expand its international influence in the post-Cold War environment. With the Soviet Union gone and Europe failing to rise as a counterbalance to the United States, China set its sights on Washington as the biggest challenge to Chinese power -- and yet the best economic path to Chinese growth. Washington was headed for a presidential change, Beijing was dealing with increasing U.S. warnings of the China threat and the Chinese government was looking at its own upcoming leadership transition and the internal battle over best economic policies and security posture. For each of these issues, managing relations with the United States became the critical common factor.

In the late 1990s, Beijing ramped up a program of perception management in Washington, moving from trying to buy influence through campaign contributions to a more subtle approach of accelerating political and economic dialogue with U.S.-based think tanks, research institutes and academic institutions. Chinese scholars, both in the academic fields and in semi-government research institutes, embarked on numerous exchanges, dialogues and forums, sharing insights into policy debates and internal economic inconsistencies in China. At the same time, the state began releasing economic statistics that, through close examination, painted a picture not of a strong and unbreakable China, but of one that faced many of the same economic challenges and potential pitfalls as its Asian neighbors.

Through a carefully managed spread of information, China began shaping the perception of the key U.S. researchers on Chinese issues. Beijing seemed more open, more willing to admit mistakes and more receptive to suggestions for economic, social and even limited political reform. Discussions of the China threat shifted from a military concern to one of economics to one of potential Chinese collapse -- and the attendant ripples that would affect the international (and U.S.) economic systems. This information began trickling up to congressional aides, members of Congress and into the U.S. government bureaucracy and administration.

And Beijing is seeing a payoff, at least on the surface. When the current administration took power, relations with Washington were contentious to say the least. U.S. President George W. Bush came into office with a Cabinet that viewed China as the next strategic threat now that the Soviet Union was relegated to history. China's economic rise, and its military expansion that focused on new missiles and naval technology, was seen as a challenge to U.S. dominance of the seas, and thus to U.S. core national security. Now, the administration is pursuing strategic dialogue and cooperation with China, even if this is just a stopgap measure until Washington can free itself from Iraq.

In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, Washington and Beijing came to a working arrangement. The United States would essentially leave China alone, and China would not present any direct challenge to the United States as Washington dealt with what it saw as a new strategic threat: al Qaeda and international Islamist militancy. Beijing welcomed the reprieve from the more contentious relations with Washington, which had declined precipitously following the collision that left a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on a military runway in southern China.

At the time, Beijing was neither militarily nor politically prepared to square off against the United States. In fact, China was facing a major generational shift in leadership and needed the external buffer to allow Beijing to focus on internal issues. With the political transition completed, Beijing then shifted focus to economic and social stability -- and again used the minimal external pressure from Washington to give it breathing room while these issues took priority.

Internationally, Beijing used the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the North Korean nuclear crisis to try to raise the profile of international organizations such as the United Nations to counter the unipolar power of the United States. At the same time, it tried to raise China's profile and importance to Washington -- since, after all, the U.S. government could not face off against al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea all at the same time.

By 2005, Washington was looking at longer-term involvement in Iraq than it had planned, and then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick made an indirect offer to Beijing for closer potential cooperation -- offering to treat China as a global player if Beijing proved a "responsible stakeholder." The offer appealed to Beijing, and China, cautiously at first but with increasing boldness, launched into a more open dialogue with Washington, making token trades on currency issues and offering its services in "rogue" nations such as North Korea and, more recently, Sudan in order to demonstrate its "responsibility" and keep real pressure from the United states to a minimum.

While the U.S. administration, particularly the Pentagon, was not all that reassured by China's behavioral change (as seen in early 2006 with a series of reports labeling China a strategic threat and culminating in a several-minute-long tirade by a Falun Gong activist at the White House reception for Chinese President Hu Jintao), Washington, with the exception of Congress, has taken a relatively relaxed approach to China. Trade issues dominate the headlines, as does the yuan valuation, but the administration pushes for more cooperative dialogue with Beijing rather than punitive sanctions or tariffs.

On Beijing's side, shortly after the first SED meeting in December 2006, China's Foreign Ministry launched the Center for China-U.S. Relations Studies at its research institute, the China Institute for International Studies. The center is designed to bring together top Chinese scholars on U.S. issues from across a broad spectrum of China (economic, international relations, security and others) and encourage increased exchanges with counterparts in the United States -- thus managing the perception campaign from a unified center. Earlier this year, China also appointed Yang Jiechi as foreign minister, calling on Yang's years of experience in the Chinese Embassy in Washington, his work with both sides of Congress and his long-standing ties with the Bush family.

The SED, then, provides both Washington and Beijing with a more centralized (and less random) point of contact for managing bilateral relations. But management and fundamental alterations are very different things. China's trade and economic policies will not be set with Washington's concerns as the top priority. Beijing's first concern is the maintenance of Communist Party rule, followed closely by the maintenance of social stability (which allows the party to remain in power). Economics are a tool, one that must balance domestic social pressures with international concerns. Furthermore, while dialogue can provide a channel for managing relations with the United States, China is not abandoning other tools for preserving its increasing economic vulnerabilities as its trade and energy requirements are internationalized.

China's anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) test in January was a clear reminder that China still sees the United States as the top challenge to Chinese economic security. China is a land power, not a maritime power. But China's economics have grown increasingly linked to longer and longer supply lines, particularly with energy imports. As such, Beijing sees a major vulnerability in its supply routes, as a large portion of its energy must pass through waters that, for all intents and purposes, are controlled by the United States. The ASAT test was intended to notify Washington that Beijing has ways to deal with the U.S. strategic dominance of the seas by threatening critical U.S. communications and guidance infrastructure.

China's vulnerabilities as a land power increasingly dependent on sea routes makes Beijing always extremely nervous about the United States, regardless of whether Washington intends to interdict Chinese trade and energy supplies. At the same time, China's expanding trade and political links around the globe are starting to rub up against U.S. strategic interests, particularly where China taps into energy resources Washington wants, or where Beijing's relations in places like Africa and Latin America challenge U.S. access to raw materials. But economic competition notwithstanding, Washington is loath to directly confront China, as attacking a land power in Asia is never wise or easy.

There is a standoff, then, between Washington and Beijing. Washington is heavily occupied with Iraq and Iran, and Beijing is taking advantage of this to expand its political and economic ties as broadly as possible. At the same time, China is obsessed with internal economic and social instability, and Washington can use these concerns to needle Beijing and keep China from taking too much advantage of Washington's limited bandwidth. Both see the SED as a useful place to manage this dance. Neither sees the SED as a real forum for a strategic partnership between China and the United States, or a place for drastic changes in the relationship.

There is something beyond the SED, however, that could start bringing Washington and Beijing closer together: the re-emergence of Moscow.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been rather manic since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. After Beijing's initial flirtations with Washington, China and the United States soon found themselves facing one another on the battlefields of Korea. China's ally at the time, the Soviet Union, largely sat out the conflict, leaving Beijing to ensure the communist revolution in Asia -- and letting China fight the United States while Moscow avoided the potential World War III feared by U.S. strategists at the time. Rather than using the opportunity presented by the Korean War to launch a simultaneous assault on Europe, Moscow let China fight, undermining the potential for any Sino-U.S. relations and tying China closer into the Soviet sphere of influence.

But by the late 1960s, tensions between Beijing and Moscow had risen to a fevered level, and significant border clashes broke out in 1969. Three years later, the mutually perceived threat from the Soviet Union brought U.S. President Richard Nixon to China to meet with Mao Zedong. The United States and China embarked on a new strategic relationship based on balancing the Soviet threat. This lasted until shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when China began seeking to expand its influence in East Asia and looked as though it were getting much more serious about war with Taiwan. In the late 1990s, China even flirted with the idea of establishing a strategic partnership with Russia to block the unipolar power of the United States, but never quite trusted its northern neighbor (and, for a while, Moscow had little to offer anyway aside from arms sales, which were already taking place). When 2001 rolled around, Beijing found new opportunities to deal directly with Washin
gton.

But Russia has begun reasserting its influence around its periphery, and Cold War rhetoric is flowing from Moscow. On the surface, that would seem ideal for China, except that Beijing has been looking at Central Asia as a critical piece of its energy security puzzle, since Central Asian energy supplies never need to move by sea to China. As Moscow seeks to reclaim influence and control in its near abroad, China sees its potential role in Central Asia diminishing and its energy supplies challenged by the resurgent Russia. Add in Russian talk of reinvigorating the Russian presence in the Pacific, and China sees its energy and economic security once again challenged by its neighbor.

This could provide the impetus for a Beijing move closer to Washington -- to keep the United States focused on Russian threats rather than Chinese concerns. Beijing already has experience working with the United States to counter Russian influence, and keeping the current and former superpowers eyeing each other leaves China a less visible threat, and thus capable of continuing to deal with its own internal issues while facing minimal pressure from outside. As Beijing sees it, if a true multipolar world cannot be established any time soon, the hints of a return to a bipolar world order -- with Russia facing off against the United States -- could keep China out of the crosshairs and constrain U.S. actions. With the SED already in place, China has another pathway through which to shape its own image as cooperative, and perhaps drop a few hints of its concerns about Russia.

Top Dictators

China made the Freedom House list for one of the world's worst dictators. Oh what a surprise!

Daily News: Posted 2007-05-21 - When David Wallechinsky compiles his annual list of the world’s worst dictators for Parade magazine, a few leftists always complain that President George Bush should be in the top ten.

Mr. Wallechinsky, who was something of a sixties radical, patiently explains that the current president is not having his critics hauled off to gulags, is not conducting genocide and has not killed tens of thousands via starvation.

To the dismay of the more radical critics, President Bush and the United States have missed another list too. A recent report by Freedom House – a private democracy watchdog group – singled out 17 nations as "worst of the worst," in terms of repression.

Libya, North Korea, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Zimbabwe were among the nations that held top ranking on the infamous list, although Saudi Arabia was credited with "incremental reforms." However, Freedom House noted there is still no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, or in the rest of the nations mentioned.

No doubt this is merely a conspiracy by Freedom House, funded by the big oil corporations, to distract Americans from the fascism descending on their nation. There is clearly an international conspiracy at work here since Israel is not on the list but several Arab nations are.

Or perhaps it’s a list of who’s causing the real problems in the world.

China set to severely punish Olympic 'troublemakers'

Security chief's leaked speech reveals plans to stifle dissent

Wow! This is totally going counter to the Olympic promises Beijing made in 2001 -- how can we let them get away with that???

Ottawa Citizen: Monday, May 21, 2007 - A leaked speech by a police commander in charge of security at the 2008 Beijing Olympics has disclosed that the authorities fear mass protests by disaffected Chinese as the biggest threat to the Games.

The officer promised "swift and harsh" measures to forestall trouble, combined with "severe legal punishment."

Human rights campaigners were quick to predict intensified repression, systematically orchestrated by the national security apparatus.
A worker makes mascots for the Beijing 2008 Olympics at a toy factory in north China's Tianjin municipality. A leaked speech by a police commander in charge of security for the Games has disclosed that officials are preparing 'severe legal punishment ' against protesters.View Larger Image View Larger Image
A worker makes mascots for the Beijing 2008 Olympics at a toy factory in north China's Tianjin municipality. A leaked speech by a police commander in charge of security for the Games has disclosed that officials are preparing 'severe legal punishment ' against protesters.

The speech was delivered by Yu Hongyuan, a senior officer at the Olympics Security Protection Centre, to a joint meeting of security units on March 12 and was circulated in a restricted government newsletter, Beijing Xinfang.

The text was obtained by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an overseas pressure group. Independent Chinese analysts said it provided a detailed account of confidential plans by the security authorities.

"The main aim of 'security' for the Olympics will be the suppression of freedom," the human rights group said. It challenged the International Olympic Committee to hold the Chinese government to promises it had made to guarantee human rights as part of its bid for the Games.

Mr. Yu has previously been identified by the state media as the second-ranking officer in the Beijing Public Security Bureau. The leaked speech shows he is responsible for overseeing what the authorities term "collective incidents," a coded phrase for mass demonstrations.

Mr. Yu said he was planning the preventive detention of anyone organizing "incitement" and of those who "plot behind the scenes." He said police were building a databank of people known for bad behaviour, singling out Chinese who use the traditional right to petition government as a means to make trouble.

A typical "troublemaker" would be 50-year-old Ye Guozhu, who is serving a four-year sentence for campaigning against evictions in Beijing to make way for the Olympic building projects. Dubbed "the Olympic prisoner" by activists, Mr. Ye has allegedly been beaten and placed in solitary confinement.

The leaked speech also disclosed that during the Games, snatch squads of security men will be posted in Tiananmen Square and other sensitive venues.

To stifle protests, Mr. Yu cited a Chinese expression that means "harshly penalizing one to teach many a lesson and to frighten many more into submission."

The targets are Chinese with grievances against the government -- over land, wages or rights -- who are feared to be planning demonstrations.

There were more than 50,000 such "collective incidents" last year. Only last week, a disgruntled man evaded guards and set fire to the famous portrait of Mao Tse-tung in Tiananmen Square.

Chinese villagers riot over stricter population-control

This is one of the worst riots so far and this has the Beijing bosses really concerned. Dropping the inhumane one-child policy would be one way to deal with this castatrophe.

IHT by Joseph Kahn: BEIJING - May 21 - An intensive campaign to enforce strict population-control measures prompted violent clashes between the police and local residents in southwestern China in recent days, witnesses said, describing the latest incident of rural unrest that has alarmed senior officials in Beijing.

Villagers and visitors to several counties of the Guangxi autonomous region in southwestern China said rioters smashed and burned government offices, overturned official vehicles and clashed with the riot police in a series of confrontations over the past four days.

They gave varying accounts of injuries and deaths, with some asserting that as many as five people were killed, including three officials responsible for population control work. A local government official in one of the counties affected confirmed the rioting in an interview by telephone but denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.

The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to punish people who violated the country's birth control policy. The policy limits the number of children families can have legally.

Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China's long economic boom.

The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China's hinterland remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its largest cities.

To limit the growth of its population of 1.3 billion, many parts of China rely more on financial penalties and incentives than on coercive measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations, that were common in the 1980s, when the so-called one-child policy was first strictly enforced.

But local officials who fail to meet annual population-control targets can still come under heavy bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area of responsibility or face demotion or removal from office.

According to villagers and witness accounts posted on the Internet, officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort fetuses.

Several people said officials also imposed fines starting at 500 yuan and ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had violated birth control measures any time since 1980. The new tax, called a "social child-raising fee," was collected even though the vast majority of violators had already paid fines in the past, the people said.

According to an account published on a Web forum called Longtan, officials in Bobai County of Guangxi boasted that they had collected 7.8 million yuan in social child-raising fees from February through the end of April.

Many families objected strongly to the fees and refused to pay. Witnesses said in such cases villagers were detained, their homes searched and valuables, including electronic items and motorcycles, confiscated by the government.

"Worst of all, the gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people's homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers," said a local peasant, who identified himself as Nong Sheng and who faxed a petition letter complaining of the abuses to a reporter in Beijing.

Nong said the crackdown was widespread in several counties in Guangxi. He said local courts had declined to hear any cases related to the matter, citing an edict from local officials.

Other villagers reached by phone described an escalating series of confrontations that began Thursday and continued through the weekend.

Several described in detail an assault on the government offices of Shapi Township, Bobai County, by thousands of peasants.

They said villagers broke through a wall surrounding the government building, ransacked offices, smashed computers and destroyed documents, then set fire to the building itself. There were inconsistent reports of deaths and injuries during that clash and a subsequent crackdown by riot police officers.

China moves to curb Games dissent

Hu Jintao's iron grip will not relax ahead of the Games - activists beware! A lot of Christians are planning to go though. A news report today said that they've accused the Dalai Lama of fomenting rebellion with the Falun Gong and the Taiwanese. How ridiculous! What will they concoct next? I'm afraid to ask.

The Australian:May 22, 2007 - THE Chinese Government is starting a comprehensive campaign to counter any moves to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games in August next year including preventing human rights activists from travelling overseas.

The new Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, speaking during one of his first meetings in his new role with British counterpart Margaret Beckett, said there were a handful of people who were trying to politicise the Games.

"Their objectives will never be attained," the minister said.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu also condemned attempts to link the Games with "political issues", in this case the status of Tibet, which she said had been "an inalienable part of Chinese territory since ancient times".

"The Chinese people and Government are vigorously devoted to the preparation work of the Olympic Games in 2008," she said.

Beijing's Communist Party boss, Liu Qi, told 730 delegates at the city's party congress that during the Olympics the city would be stable, clean and civilised. "From beginning to end, stability must be our No1 political task," he said.

French Socialist leader Segolene Royal would have been prepared to consider a boycott over China's strong oil-focused ties with Sudan, whose Government has been widely condemned for mass killings in the Darfur region.

She lost in her recent bid for the presidency, but her Socialist colleague, Bernard Kouchner, has just been appointed France's new Foreign Minister.

China also appears to be cranking up a strategy of preventing human rights activists with strong international profiles or contacts from travelling overseas, as a damage control measure in this sensitive period in the run-up first to the crucial five-yearly Communist Party national congress in October, then to the Olympic Games.

Hu Jia, a leading HIV-AIDS activist, and his pregnant wife Zeng Jinyan, just named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, had planned a two-month holiday in Hong Kong and nine European cities.

But on Friday morning, only hours before their departure, Mr Hu was taken into custody by eight police officers. He was released after five hours of questioning, but the couple was immediately put under house arrest.

Mr Hu said the reason was that "the authorities have been anxious about evidence that would damage Beijing's image for the 2008 Olympic Games".

In particular, he said, the police indicated they were "very concerned about a documentary film that my wife produced and recorded of the 214 days of my house arrest last year".

Officials were worried, he said, that the 30-minute film might be shown to International Olympic Committee members and other influential people during their visit to Europe. He told The South China Morning Post that "they are very scared that the boycott of the 1980 (Moscow) Olympics could also happen in Beijing".

Another prominent AIDS activist, 80-year-old doctor Gao Yaojie, was at first stopped from travelling to the US to receive a human rights award from the women's group Vital Voices.

But the authorities relented after US senator Hillary Clinton wrote to President Hu Jintao on Dr Gao's behalf.

Since returning from the US to her home in Henan province, however, she has complained about being cut off by the authorities from the outside world to the point where she might contemplate suicide. "I am under surveillance, I have become deaf, blind and mute," she said.

Leading human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, his wife and children, also live in isolation within Beijing. He is forbidden from using his telephone or computer and unable to leave his home.

The new Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, speaking during one of his first meetings in his new role with British counterpart Margaret Beckett, said there were a handful of people who were trying to politicise the Games.

"Their objectives will never be attained," the minister said.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu also condemned attempts to link the Games with "political issues", in this case the status of Tibet, which she said had been "an inalienable part of Chinese territory since ancient times".

"The Chinese people and Government are vigorously devoted to the preparation work of the Olympic Games in 2008," she said.

Beijing's Communist Party boss, Liu Qi, told 730 delegates at the city's party congress that during the Olympics the city would be stable, clean and civilised. "From beginning to end, stability must be our No1 political task," he said.

French Socialist leader Segolene Royal would have been prepared to consider a boycott over China's strong oil-focused ties with Sudan, whose Government has been widely condemned for mass killings in the Darfur region.

She lost in her recent bid for the presidency, but her Socialist colleague, Bernard Kouchner, has just been appointed France's new Foreign Minister.

China also appears to be cranking up a strategy of preventing human rights activists with strong international profiles or contacts from travelling overseas, as a damage control measure in this sensitive period in the run-up first to the crucial five-yearly Communist Party national congress in October, then to the Olympic Games.

Hu Jia, a leading HIV-AIDS activist, and his pregnant wife Zeng Jinyan, just named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, had planned a two-month holiday in Hong Kong and nine European cities.

But on Friday morning, only hours before their departure, Mr Hu was taken into custody by eight police officers. He was released after five hours of questioning, but the couple was immediately put under house arrest.

Mr Hu said the reason was that "the authorities have been anxious about evidence that would damage Beijing's image for the 2008 Olympic Games".

In particular, he said, the police indicated they were "very concerned about a documentary film that my wife produced and recorded of the 214 days of my house arrest last year".

Officials were worried, he said, that the 30-minute film might be shown to International Olympic Committee members and other influential people during their visit to Europe. He told The South China Morning Post that "they are very scared that the boycott of the 1980 (Moscow) Olympics could also happen in Beijing".

Another prominent AIDS activist, 80-year-old doctor Gao Yaojie, was at first stopped from travelling to the US to receive a human rights award from the women's group Vital Voices.

But the authorities relented after US senator Hillary Clinton wrote to President Hu Jintao on Dr Gao's behalf.

Since returning from the US to her home in Henan province, however, she has complained about being cut off by the authorities from the outside world to the point where she might contemplate suicide. "I am under surveillance, I have become deaf, blind and mute," she said.

Leading human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, his wife and children, also live in isolation within Beijing. He is forbidden from using his telephone or computer and unable to leave his home.

Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal and China

This is a must-read. See how the integrity of the WSJ will be compromised at the hands of Rubert Murdoch to become another propaganda tool or feel good paper ahead of the Olympics.

Stabroek News: Friday, May 18th 2007 - Earlier this month, the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced plans to make a US$5 billion bid for Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. Predictably, the news caused a rush on the stock and sent the share price higher than it had been for many years (Murdoch's bid was 65 percent above previous estimates of the company's value), but there was also fairly widespread concern among journalists and media analysts that the notoriously unscrupulous Murdoch style would destroy the culture of one of America's last quality newspapers. The Journal is arguably the most influential business publication in the world. In addition to being a primary source of market-moving information, its expert analyses and its famously pointed editorial opinions have made it one of very few authoritative voices on current events and their relation to the American and global economies. Its reputation for distinguished investigative journalism is second to none. Last year, for example, The Journal won a Pulitzer prize for its coverage of China. This included a series of critical accounts of how government policies have turned China into a major polluter, exposés of Beijing's indifference to the appalling working conditions of millions of its citizens, and detailed analysis of the large and growing inequality that has accompanied the country's over-rapid industrialisation. Five years earlier, The Journal had won another Pulitzer for its reporting on Beijing's brutal crackdown on the Falun Gong movement. Murdoch has, to put it kindly, a very different approach to these matters. In 1993, when Beijing complained about criticism of its human rights record, Murdoch removed the BBC World Service from Star TV's satellite feed, even though he had recently declared satellite television to be "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere". He later told the New Yorker magazine that "The BBC was driving [the Chinese government] nuts. It wasn't worth it." Not to the News Corporation, certainly, but China's emerging democracy movements must have felt otherwise. Eight years later, in a much-publicised speech at the Milken institute in Beverly Hills, his son James Murdoch, CEO of the Star TV company, attacked Western media and the Hong Kong press for their negative China coverage, urged them not to overplay the government's security measures against an "apocalyptic cult" (Falun Gong), and ominously warned that "these destabilizing forces are very, very dangerous for the Chinese government." Tunku Varadarajan, an editor at The Wall Street Journal, called the speech "an impressive, almost balletic, performance of the genuflectory arts." Then, after recounting Rupert Murdoch's unseemly haste to cancel the publication of former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten's memoir of his political dealings with China, Varadarajan characterised Murdoch's relationship with China as "a form of corporate prostitution, something quite different from ideological blindness or agnosticism." He added that a "close Murdoch-watcher" had recently advised him that "What the Murdochs have specialized in is trading newspaper support to governments, in return for regulatory favours in nonprint media and business generally. While others may do this from time to time, they do it all the time, and without intermission." Few have captured the Murdoch worldview so tersely. The Wall Street Journal is unapologetically conservative but this has never muted its criticism of administrations that, on paper, it might be expected to favour. Over the years The Journal has often published unwelcome opinions, many in the plainest language. After the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group published its recommendations late last year, for example, The Journal dismissed the whole undertaking as follows: "There is something of farce in all this, an invocation of wisdom from a cohesive Washington elite that does not exist, a desperate wish to believe in the gravitas and the statecraft of grave men (and women) who can sort out the mess in which the country finds itself. [But] A fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results." At the time this harsh appraisal must have stung many of the great and good of Washington but, as is often the way with criticism in an open society, most of mainstream opinion reached similar conclusions a few weeks later. The Wall Street Journal is one of the most readable newspapers in America precisely because it thinks for itself, and does so without worrying whether it will upset Washington, Beijing, or anyone else in the process. Rupert Murdoch is the antidote to this freethinking, a censor dressed in a business suit. What remains to be seen is whether the market forces that soon will decide who controls The Journal will prefer the problematic integrity of a genuinely independent newspaper to the easier accommodations of the News Corporation. That, in the language of advertising, is a five billion dollar question with a priceless answer.

China: The 2008 Olympics as a Major Activist Inroad

This is a great piece by Bart Mongoven.

China might be able to manage activist campaigns effectively and relatively peacefully. However, should pressure on internal fronts -- from Falun Gong or other human rights, democracy or free-expression activists -- get too high for Beijing to handle temperately, it could consider using Darfur as a public relations safety valve. Giving in and basically agreeing to work with NGOs on Darfur would satisfy critics by addressing what is for Beijing a third-tier issue.

Stratfor May 17, 2007 19 54 - GMT - Fidelity Investments has sold off more than 90 percent of its holdings in Chinese state-owned oil giant PetroChina, Fidelity announced May 16. Although the company declined to explain the sale, it almost certainly is related to pressure from human rights and religious activists.

Activists argue that, as the primary oil field operator in Sudan, PetroChina is propping up the Khartoum regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur, so putting pressure on PetroChina is viewed as a way to pressure the Sudanese government indirectly. Fidelity's move marks an important strategic turning point in the battle between human rights groups and China over the Darfur region, and sets the stage for a far more powerful strategic thrust that will emerge during the summer -- one in which Darfur activists move from a financial divestment campaign to one focused on the 2008 Olympic Games.

Activists have long sought effective pressure points on China, and the Olympics look to be the answer. More specifically, activists are eyeing the list of Western corporate sponsors that are investing tens of millions of dollars in the Olympics and in companion marketing campaigns designed to run before and during the Olympics.

Olympic sponsorship in 2008 means more than in most past years. For Beijing, giants such as Kodak, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and General Electric are not simply the means to put on a good show; they are integral to its efforts to radically change international perceptions of China and establish its new place in the world. Beijing can control most of the variables that come its way -- the protesters, media investigations into corruption and other potential public relations problems that usually come with hosting the Olympics. And, with the sites chosen and no backup available, it can largely ignore the International Olympic Committee. What Beijing cannot control, however, are the decisions of the games' sponsors and the pressures placed upon these companies in the West.

Through the Olympic sponsors, activists have determined that the year leading up to the Olympics offers a unique opportunity to use market mechanisms to change Beijing's policies. The first Western movement to begin to capitalize on this vulnerability is the Save Darfur Coalition, which turned Sudan into a pariah state with which no Western company will do business only to have its efforts undermined by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Many other issues could have taken this mantle, but it appears that Darfur-focused activists have taken the lead on exploiting Olympics-related vulnerabilities -- and will manage the most effective Western campaign to change China's policies.

The coming year will determine whether activists can actually make Beijing blink. Moreover, it will determine how groups active on issues other than Darfur deal with the likelihood that the more focused Darfur coalition will overshadow their use of this golden opportunity.

Olympic Sponsorship

The decision to become an Olympic sponsor is a strategic one for companies. The price of sponsorship is steep -- estimated at roughly $55 million -- but that pales in comparison to the broader investment these companies make. The largest and most familiar sponsors have attached their most valuable asset, their brands, to the games, and have built long-term marketing plans in which the Olympics play an integral part.

With so much invested, Olympic sponsorship has always brought tension. The 2004 Athens games, which were twice threatened with a move to an alternate city due to poor organization, created stress among investors. Sponsors now have established offices in future Olympic cities, where they work as closely as possible with municipal authorities to ensure that the logistics and setup are on track.

In the years since 2001, when the 2008 games were awarded to Beijing, the games have carried an added political dimension for sponsors. Beijing recruited sponsors not just as sources of money, but as partners, and for large multinational corporations trying to learn how to operate in China the opportunity to work with Beijing was tempting. Those who signed on as sponsors see the success of these games not only as an opportunity to build their market share in the West, but also as a way to increase their presence in China. Beijing also subtly offered improved market access and other preferential treatment to companies that threw in behind the 2008 games.

Beijing, in order to assert itself on the international stage, has spent billions of dollars preparing for the games. It brought in the best stadium architects to build venues and hired Stephen Spielberg to choreograph the opening and closing ceremonies. In addition, the Chinese have razed entire neighborhoods to ease transportation and shuttered industries to clean Beijing's air. If it can be bought, Beijing is buying.

The support and presence of high-profile Western companies provided one thing that Beijing could not buy: legitimacy. The thinking is that the participation of major corporate icons will give a degree of continuity with previous Olympics, and that by extension China will be seen as a modern country rather than a developing one or, more negatively, as the killer of Tiananmen Square, the violator of human rights and the repressor of basic freedoms.

Activists who succeed in portraying corporate sponsors of Beijing's Olympics as supporters of China's behavior would undermine not only the companies' marketing efforts, but also Beijing's plan to use the games as a coming-out party

Darfur

The human rights controversy surrounding the civil war in Darfur has been growing since 1998. Khartoum's operations in Darfur mostly target Christians, and the issue surfaced from the concerns of evangelical Christian organizations active in Africa. By 1999, Darfur had emerged as a mainstream human rights concern, and organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch joined religious groups in calling for the United States and other Western governments to impose sanctions on the regime in Sudan.

Sudan essentially was a pariah state by the late 1990s, so it was obvious even at the beginning of the movement that diplomatic pressure on Sudan would be of limited value. Instead, recognizing the country's dependence on its southern oil production -- and on the companies that turn the resource into revenues for the regime -- activists focused on the corporations. With the flight of most Western companies in the first half of this decade, Khartoum, rather than lose its oil revenue, turned to China. Thus, through PetroChina the Asian giant has managed Sudan's oil operations and kept the money flowing into Khartoum.

Beyond the funding aspect, however, PetroChina's entry into Sudan has stood as a major symbol for Western human rights activists, who have come to view state-owned oil and resources companies as the most significant barrier to their ability to use market campaign pressure to change policies in developing countries.

In response to the globalization of corporations' operations and the rise of the World Trade Organization, human rights groups have come to rely increasingly on codes of conduct and other marketplace initiatives, such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, to hold corporations accountable for their activities in developing countries. Western companies in particular are sensitive to allegations that they are complicit in human rights violations. State-owned enterprises abroad, on the other hand, are insulated from these pressures, and have begun to thrive in those places that Western companies dare not operate.

In human rights discussions, this is termed the "parastatal problem." It is the chief unsolvable barrier to successful efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to use corporations as instruments of change in developing countries.

'Genocide Olympics'

Bumping up against the parastatal problem, the Save Darfur Coalition has begun to build toward using Olympic sponsors as leverage against Beijing. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article published in late March, actor and activist Mia Farrow and her husband called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. The threat will fall on deaf ears, as the vogue of boycotting Olympics -- started by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and re-tried in 1984 by the Soviets -- had no diplomatic effect and only made the boycotters' citizens angry.

The Farrow op-ed, however, contained a more serious threat: As long as China's state-owned enterprises remain in Sudan, the coalition aims to attack Olympic sponsors directly and rebrand the 2008 games as the "Genocide Olympics" (a term first used by Amnesty International to describe China's internal human rights record and the human rights implications of its foreign policy). More sensationally, the coalition threatened to name Stephen Spielberg the "Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing games," a reference to the German filmmaker whose documentary of the 1936 Berlin games glorified the Nazi regime in the broader context of the Olympics. Spielberg now publicly calls for China to change its policy toward Sudan.

The threat to boycott is idle talk, but the threat to change the perception of the games is not. The Save Darfur Coalition includes many of the most talented corporate campaign groups in the world, and the realistic opportunity to change the situation in Darfur is attractive to Western activists of almost all stripes. In addition, the public has a high level of awareness of Darfur as a controversial issue, and most U.S. consumers recognize that China has a controversial human rights record. Sponsors are likely to be sensitive to allegations that they are supporting a "Genocide Olympics" and will take their complaints to Beijing. Given these factors, then, the campaign has an excellent chance of attaining at least some degree of success.

That said, defining "success" is a difficult task. China cannot simply stop the genocide in Darfur with a wave, and it must make a move that simultaneously satisfies its critics, has a chance of changing what is happening on the ground in Darfur and results in China's continued presence in Sudan. (Sudan supplies more than 5 percent of China's oil.) One problem is that China remains one of the last countries with any leverage against Sudan, so it is valuable to activists and governments alike as a point of communication with Khartoum. If pushed too hard, Khartoum could simply open to another state-owned company immune to Western public condemnation, kicking China out. Ultimately, China has few options. It could agree to try to convince Sudan to allow more U.N. and Africa Union peacekeepers into Darfur, but that would end the campaign only if the Save Darfur Coalition agreed that such a deal was sufficient.

In focusing the "Genocide Olympics" campaign squarely on Darfur, however, human rights groups are using a one-time opportunity to achieve a relatively modest goal -- and are passing up a unique moment to effect major change in China.

Falun Gong is another group that appears to recognize the unique opportunity the Olympics offer. This summer, Falun Gong is planning a wave of protests and actions that will bring world attention directly to China's human rights record. Other organizations -- labor, environmental, religious -- also could try to swoop in and use the Olympic moment.

China might be able to manage activist campaigns effectively and relatively peacefully. However, should pressure on internal fronts -- from Falun Gong or other human rights, democracy or free-expression activists -- get too high for Beijing to handle temperately, it could consider using Darfur as a public relations safety valve. Giving in and basically agreeing to work with NGOs on Darfur would satisfy critics by addressing what is for Beijing a third-tier issue.

Olympic projects send poor packing

Another 25 villages will be razed to the ground to transform Beijing into the perfect Olympic city at the expense of millions of migrants who have worked their fingers to the bone to help transform it. And they dare say that human rights are improving?

BEIJING, China (Reuters) May 16, 2007 - Guandong Dian, soon to be cleared to make way for an office block and a wider road, is one of dozens of crumbling shantytowns pockmarking Beijing that have been earmarked for demolition prior to 2008 when the city hosts the Olympic Games.

Having survived the city's relentless modernization drive, local authorities are determined the shanty-towns -- home to many of the millions of migrant workers flooding into Beijing to find employment -- won't survive to tarnish the showcase capital's image during the Olympics.

Branding them "illegal urban villages," town planners demolished 55 of them in 2006 and started clearing another 25 as part of the city's "beautification" work.

Authorities are spending $40 billion to upgrade Beijing's creaky public transport system, build event venues and shift heavy industrial polluters far from city limits in line with a pledge to the International Olympic Committee to unclog congested roads and reduce air pollution for the games.

In a city of glittering skyscrapers, the shantytowns are inconvenient reminders of grinding poverty in China's heartland.

"There are at least 1,000 of us here," said Wang, who once farmed a small plot in his home province of Henan, but now ekes out a living selling slices of "thousand layer cake" from a hand-wheeled cart in Xiangjun Nanli.

"Most of us are from outside of Beijing, from all over the country," said Wang, one of about four million migrant workers who live in Beijing but are not counted in its official population of 15 million. (more)