China in our hands

9 August 2008

The Spectator on the Chinese regime

Grudgingly, China has been forced to loosen its control of internet access to its own people. As late as last week the authorities were still denying Western journalists the free access which had been promised. Then came a climbdown, allowing inhabitants of Beijing for the first time to view the websites, among others, of the Free Tibet movement. Doubtless internet access will be restricted again as soon as the Games have left town, but the restrictions will surely be harder to sustain now that people have tasted freedom.

The wonder about modern China, which has been highlighted by the Olympics, is that a country can combine such economic confidence with authoritarianism and a lack of liberty. Nineteen years ago, just after Tiananmen Square, this wouldn’t have seemed possible. We had seen the Soviet Union driven to dismantle its autocratic political machinery as a result of economic stagnation, and it seemed inevitable that something similar would happen in China. Nearly two decades on, however, China has grown richer quicker than anyone would have imagined — and yet continued to oppress its people for far longer than anyone could have guessed.

Is this new political model — rampant capitalism combined with Marxist social control — really sustainable? We doubt it. Eventually, as the Chinese become richer, surely they will demand freedom of expression to go with their hatchbacks and power showers. By exposing the world to the Chinese and the Chinese to the world, the Olympics can hasten that process. We can cheer the competition and condemn the regime at the same time.

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Vespasian

August 9th, 2008 11:41am Report this comment

The Chinese will not necessarily become more liberal with more money inserted into their country. The reason that there is a combination of riches and rigid authoritarianism is simply because of the west's greed. If we had the pricipals and guts to refuse to trade with China until they sorted out their regime then freedom might come to this country. But by simply trading with them and naivly hoping that this will bring freedom to the Chinese people is ridiculous. In this case, why not just admit that we dont care about how the people are treated: what interests our gouvernements is the short/medium term gain.
To use the Olympics as a bargaining tool would have worked if we really had done that. But to give the olympics to China and then weakly demand that they sort out their human rights does not work.
The fact that the Chinese gouvernement convientently destroyed an entire quater 'the quater of complainers' (that housed peolpe complaining against the gouvernement) to build the olympic village shows just how much the people of China will profit from these games. The meancing tone and threats of certain Chinese foreign office officials towards the west should give us a warning too: China is far, far out of our hands.

Riaz Ahmad

August 12th, 2008 7:11pm Report this comment

The oppression of Tibet is no different to the oppression of the Palistinian and the oppression of Kashmir. Rather hypocritically, the west is blind to its own sins, but too keen to talk about the sins of others, expecially China.

What took the west 200 years to achieve, China has done it in mere 20 years. West is much too uncomfortable with the inevitable reality that the days of westren supremacy are over, the sun is beginning to set. Now it is the dawn of the Asian supermacy with China as the future super power. The west robbed, plundered and brutalised the weak of the world to make itself great; China on the other hand has no such history; It has emerged out of pain and poverty purely by its own toil and efforts.

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