The Olympic have brought no freedom to China

XIAOXIONG YI • August 19, 2008
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Aug. 8, 2008, was an extraordinary day for China, a day that the Middle Kingdom (China or Zhongguo in Chinese can be literally translated into English as Middle Kingdom) has been dreaming of for more than 100 years. At the eighth hour on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year since 2000, the world leaders and athletes gathered in Beijing's National Stadium, nicknamed the Bird's Nest for the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. The choice of date and time (2008-08-08 8:00) reflects the fact that the number eight is considered the luckiest of all numbers in Chinese tradition.

The Beijing Olympic opening ceremony was indeed a spectacular show, with soaring fireworks, lavish entertainment and tons of Chinese national pride. More importantly, this was supposed to be the opening act of China's "coming out party" to the world. But, as Olympic historian Herb Weinberg points out, "Every Olympics has new issues. The IOC always says they will be as nonpolitical as possible, but somebody always tries to use the Games for political purpose."

The question is: who are using the Games for political purposes this time?

Beijing has insisted that the Games are purely a sporting event and attacked those it accused of seeking to politicize this Olympics. In an opinion piece in the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, the author stated, "As the Beijing Olympics have become a popular talking point around the world, some who look at the Chinese people with tinted spectacles have created a sort of baffling 'excitement.' They believe they can exert pressure on the Chinese Government to force China into a situation where it cannot but do their bidding. These people have surely made the wrong calculation."

In truth, however, it is the Olympics organizers in Beijing who have played host to a highly politicized game and used the Games for their political purposes-to allow China to use the Games to portray a "harmonious" image to the world while at the same time using it as an excuse for cracking down on internal dissent and tightening up domestic censorship. As The Economist underscored, "On balance, the award of the games has done more harm than good to the opening up of China."

Even on the face of it, writes Daniel Bell in the British newspaper The Guardian, "There is cause for concern. The creative director of the ceremony, Zhang Yimou, also directed the movie Hero which seemed to endorse the brutal and totalitarian ways of the first Qin emperor: in his drive to build a wealthy and powerful state, the emperor killed countless numbers. Zhang seems fond of spectacle that dwarfs the individual, and there are about 10,000 performers at the opening ceremony, most of them come from the army and the armed police."

China's preparation for the Olympic Games has not only sparked a "wave of repression" against critics of the regime at home, but the violent crackdown in Tibet in April was also carried out in the name of not interrupting the Beijing Games. While the burst of civilian violence in Tibet was deplorable, a protest of some kind there, after decades of religious and cultural suppression, is inevitable. Unfortunately, now the world leaders and International Olympic Committee have together granted Beijing free rein to crush "unharmonious" elements in the name of international sportsmanship.

Perhaps no one puts it better than Ai Weiwei, one of China's leading contemporary artists who also collaborated with the Swiss architecture firm Herzog and de Meuron in designing the Bird's Nest. Since then Mr. Ai has distanced himself from the Chinese state, becoming an increasingly outspoken advocate of China's political change. In an article entitled "Why I stay away from the opening ceremony of the Olympics," Mr. Ai wrote, "Almost 60 years after the founding of the People's Republic, we still live under autocratic rule without universal suffrage. We do not have an open media even though freedom of expression is more valuable than life itself. Today is not the time to dwell on our problems, but neither should we accept those who tell us these games are not political."

Seven years ago, in bidding for the Olympics, Chinese government vowed the games would bring human-rights improvements. While Chinese people are indeed much freer today than they were 20 or 30 years ago, that is not because of the Olympics, which have only brought more repression. As Ai Weiwei put it, "When I helped conceive Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium, I wanted it to represent freedom, not autocracy: China must change." Let's remind Beijing of its Olympic promises.

Dr. Xiaoxiong Yi is a professor at Marietta College and director of the China Institute.