Monday, March 24, 2008 at 06:20pm
Michael Portillo says China left itself wide open by hosting the Games:
When China bid for the Olympics it judged correctly that democratic
politicians are pusillanimous. Given their hunger for Chinese contracts
they would not let massacre in Darfur or torture in Tibet disrupt a good
party. But Beijing failed to see that western statesmen are even more
craven towards their celebrities and media.
Beijing's other mistake was being too anxious for the Games to be a
success. A man who wants something too much makes himself vulnerable.
UPDATE
Portillo says China simply banked on being able to once again undermine
America's human rights diplomacy:
China's economic sway is such that it has undermined US foreign policy
with impunity. America aims to use its muscle to shape a world that
embraces western values. In developing countries it insists that
governments respect the rule of law and reduce corruption as a condition
for trade and aid. China, on the other hand, has extended the hand of
friendship to gruesome regimes (including Sudan's). Beijing's
requirement for natural resources is its only consideration.
And Mark Leonard in Prospect explains how - and how well - that
undermining has worked:
The IMF spent years negotiating a transparency agreement with the
Angolan government only to be told hours before the deal was due to be
signed, in March 2004, that the authorities in Luanda were no longer
interested in the money: they had secured a $2bn soft loan from China.
This tale has been repeated across the continent. Whereas US foreign
policy uses sanctions and isolation to back up its political objectives,
the Chinese offer aid and trade with no strings.
The UN is also becoming an amplifier of the Chinese worldview. This
diplomacy has been effective-contributing to a big fall in US influence:
in 1995 the US won 50.6 per cent of the votes in the UN general
assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 per cent. On human
rights, the results are even more dramatic: China's win-rate has
rocketed from 43 per cent to 82 per cent, while the US's has tumbled
from 57 per cent to 22 per cent.
China's deliberate weakening of US attempts to foster democracy and
human rights has been almost completely ignored by the Left (Prospect
aside), where hatred of America tends to overwhelm a concern for
freedom. Maybe the Games will make the Left realise at last which
superpower is the best guarantor of human rights, and which the greatest
threat.
UPDATE 2
Interesting insight from the New York Times into China's apparent fears
of a propaganda disaster:
In the chaotic hours after Lhasa erupted March 14, Tibetans rampaged
through the city's old quarter, waving steel scabbards and burning or
looting Chinese shops. Foreigners and Lhasa residents who witnessed the
violence were stunned by what they saw, and by what they did not see:
the police. Riot police officers fled after an initial skirmish and then
were often nowhere to be found.
(W)itnesses say that for almost 24 hours, the paramilitary police
seemed unexpectedly paralyzed or unprepared, despite days of rising
tensions with Tibetan monks.
What happened? Analysts wonder if the authorities, possibly fearing
the public relations ramifications of a confrontation before the Beijing
Olympics in August, told the police to avoid engaging protesters without
high-level approval.
Of course, that paralysis lasted only a day before China hit back hard,
as the article makes plain.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"The question scientists should now be asking is not how much it will
warm over the next 50 to 100 years, but why has it warmed so little
during the major carbon dioxide buildup?" Patrick J. Michaels,
Environmental Scientist , University of Virginia
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