China under Olympic microscope

WASHINGTON — If China thought the August Olympics were going to provide some great heralding of its star rising in the world, well, as my dear mother used to say, it “should have had another thought coming.”

The Olympic Games, modern versions of the games first held in ancient Greece to test men’s virility, strength and cunning, can be wonderful: They can be consummated with beauty, like the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, or they can make political statements, like the 1936 Games in Berlin when the great black athlete Jesse Owens showed up Adolf Hitler.

But mostly, the Olympics reveal the host country’s true self. It’s inevitable because the country is laid bare before the world by all the planning, building and energizing of the people.

I last went to China three years ago, my sixth trip since 1983, and I could not believe, even then, what the coming Olympics had wrought. Old, polluted, filthy Beijing, with its miserable low buildings and unbreathable air, looked like some cosmic magician had been playing interplanetary tricks. The city was full of fabulous new buildings with rounded glass roofs and soaring skyscrapers that put New York to shame, all of which was to bespeak the greatness of the new China.

But so far at least, it ain’t turned out exactly so great.

It was just over four weeks ago that Chinese President Hu Jintao sent the peripatetic Olympic torch around the world from Tiananmen Square on its “Journey of Harmony.” The president of the Games’ organizing committee proclaimed, “The burning Olympic flame will spread the message of peace and friendship and unite all people under one world, one dream.”

But the Chinese, as talented as they are, have this problem: They really BELIEVED it was to be a journey of harmony and that the flame would spread the message. They believed it because they said it, and THEY are Chinese. They have not yet developed to the point where they can grasp the fact that other peoples have other agendas, other belief systems and other legitimacies. They couldn’t see that the torch’s trip would really become a “trip.”

The torch journey turned out to be a bummer. As riots erupted in Chinese-controlled Tibet and the torch carriers were attacked by angry anti-China mobs from California to France and beyond — and as the torch’s Chinese guards looked for all the world like blue-and-white-suited mafiosos from the South Side of Chicago — the Olympic magic of China suddenly dissolved like an alchemist’s coin.

Opening ceremonies

So where are we, as August approaches? What is the world going to think of China, which has been wooing all of Asia (and Africa and Latin America, as well) with promises of trade, scholarships and diplomatic attention? What should we do in terms of attending the opening ceremonies and showing respect for this growing, but difficult, behemoth on the world scene?

First, the West can relax. As so often, the Chinese have done it to themselves.

The result of the last month has been that China has overtaken even George W.’s hated U.S. as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans, the negative poll numbers having doubled since last year. A recent Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times showed that an average of 35 percent of respondents in five major European countries considered China the biggest threat, including the U.S. In the U.S. itself, 31 percent of respondents named China, putting it considerably above Iran and North Korea, the leaders in the negative poll last year.

For a long time, China has gotten away with human rights violations through its diplomatic approaches to the rest of Asia, and by presenting the image of a country that is open and friendly to the world. That is all now likely to change, particularly since, as is being reported from China, the Chinese people are beginning to regard foreigners as adversaries in the wake of the disastrous torch run.

The American approach to all of this is quite simple. We should play the Chinese by using their historic tricks: Publicly, everything should be respectful and cordial, but privately, we (and particularly American companies, if we can get them to move) should lay down the law. The Chinese well understand this dual approach and respond to it. But to publicly humiliate them at this time of overreaching pride is not the way to act. We should first call on them privately to fulfill their promises on human rights and commercial rights, and make our demands public, if necessary, only AFTER the Olympics.

China, where Henry Kissinger says the “center of gravity of international affairs is moving,” is at a point where it can be moved in many directions. Take Hong Kong, for instance. China controls Hong Kong, but recent events there show that Beijing can be flexible when reality impinges: Last December, under the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China formally authorized Hong Kong to conduct direct elections for its chief executive starting in 2017.

Meanwhile, the West might study China’s use of its extraordinary amounts of money. It has authorized spending $200 billion on new railroads to cross and crisscross its huge landmass, while here, America’s infrastructure crumbles and trillions of dollars are buried with the dead in the bloody and useless wars of the Middle East.

Universal Press Syndicate