On Demand
China Steps Out
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Richard Baum, professor of Political Science at the University of California - Los Angeles, and former Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, looks at what these Olympics - and the growing protests - mean for China's place on the world stage.
- About the Brian Lehrer Show »
- Staff Bios »
- Contact Us »
- Tapes and Transcripts »
- Latest Episode »
- Show Archive »
Features & Series
Podcast
Stay up to date.
Subscribe to the Podcast
YOU PRODUCE The Brian Lehrer Show
Be a listener-producer with facts, questions and people you'd like to hear on the air.
More
The Brian Lehrer Show Scrapbook
Visit the scrapbook for daily photos and miscellany from The Brian Lehrer Show.
More
Shop at Amazon!
The Brian Lehrer Show picks
Start your Amazon shopping on WNYC.org and a portion of your total purchase goes to WNYC.
More
Comments
Refresh
If China is unable to take the political heat over the 2008 Olympics, then it should not have bid on the Games in the first place. China wants all the benefits of a coming out party on the world stage as a world power without any of the negatives. The Chinese people who believe that the Olympics should be apolitical are naive.
China wanted to show itself off by staging these games. The pollution in Beijing, coupled with the repression of the police, will show the world that if the ecocomic system there is no longer communist, the political/economic system appears fascist, if one recognizesd fascism as a partnership of capitalism amn government.
Definitely boycott the opening ceremony at the very least. Unfortunately politics and sports are inextricably linked. I feel for the athletes, as their sports are barely a blip on the radar screens in most people's eyes until the Olympics every four years. Of course, the form of protest which would hit home hardest would involved some sort of trade restriction, high risk of course but not doubt, it would be impactful.
Wasn't President Clinton at the opening of the Olympics in 1996 when they were held in Atlanta?
The current grass-roots antipathy towards China stems from the repressive nature of the Chinese regime. They lost the public relations war at Tiananmen.
Everybody loves cheap stuff. The U.S. is willing to look the other way regarding human rights and environmental issues when it imports products from China. Why don't people protest the U.S.'s trade deficit?
Protesting the Olympics also just perpetuates the myth that China likes to promote, as victim.
To the caller:
You said: "...that is not peaceful"
And?
Does the correlation hold - America/Indians, Chinese/Tibetans, Australia/Aborigines? I think so. We can't go back and change the past, but we can prevent similar atrocities from taking place in the present/future. I think we should.
And before there are more calls of the hypocrisy of the Americans protesting the Chinese gov't, it might be useful to consider that these same Americans who protest Chinese gov't oppression are the same Americans that protest American gov't oppression and violence. And let us also remember, the current American administration is illegitimate.
However, I think we can credit George Bush and his obstinate, unilateral insistence on belligerent confrontation and hollow rhetoric to democracy as emboldening these protesters to take whatever action they deem necessary to bring about the democracy they so desperately feel the Tibetans deserve. Which they do.
What is the strategic importance of Tibet to China? i.e. Why did they take it over in the first place?
I think your guest is naive to say that Beijing wasn't expecting dissent. More likely, they were just expecting to be able to repress that dissent quickly and quietly, like they always do.
Your guest has mentioned that these protests are different from Tiananmen, in that from the Chinese perspective, the protesters do not occupy the moral high ground. In my experience this is absolutely true. However, I wonder if various members of ethnic minorities (i.e. inner Mongolians, Tibetans, Uygers (sp?), etc.) in China hold the same opinion.
this is the only time for protest. if not now no one will be listening after the games.
If the protesters really want to make an impact - boycott China import. This is way more effective. Sport is sport - leave politics out of this!
I agree with Professor Baum on many points, but take issue with two. First, the prior defects of Tibetan government don't have any bearing to justify the current Occupation. Second, the Olympics have always been highly political.
Why are the western countries as a whole being blamed for the actions of the protesters? Would the Chinese government only consider these nations to be good friends and trading partners if they crushed any attempted protests against their regime?
The Olympics have always been a political institution. Even the choice of host cities are political. Hitler tried to use them for his gain in the 30's. The U.S.A boycotted the games in Moscow. Every four years the spot light of the world sits on one place....
Brian you gotta get this guy off the radio... he is little more than an appologist for China.
To the guest:
Yes..."these are athletes, and somehow this has been lost in all this"
Awww...yeah....so have all the men, women and children being wiped out in Darfur...that's also "been lost in all this". But I guess you must be right...obviously athletes are more important than those people being wiped out in a genocide.
Did this man get his degree from a cracker jack box???
Oh and as for your earlier moral relativism: so does that mean that the Nazis were "partly right" when they were trying to murder every Jew in Europe? Huh? Were the perpatrators of the slave trade "partly right"?
P.S. This argument that China modernized Tibet and freed it from feudalism is a moot one. The majority of Tibetans clearly want autonomy/independence now. The U.S. and Europe have both had to learn that when an occupied people want independence, they're not so impressed by the modernity and benevolence of their occupiers.
American flags flied over Abu Gharib and do so over Guantanamo yet no American Humanrightists have thrown themselves in front of Bush's limo nor chained themselves to the Whitehouse fence. Yes we have the right to protest but are increasingly restricted to doing so in holding pens along the West Side Highway! And not the Great Lawn!!!
April 09, 2008 - 11:55AM
Istanbul, Turkey
The sole purpose of this Olympics from its inception is the political validation of China: to speak of the politicalization of the Olympics is nonsense. It is political per se.
Not to protest is a moral irresponsibility. A sin. If it were in Washington, I would protest. I am a service connected 100% disabled USA veteran and I did not sacrifice my life to see us shame our heritage in Iraq. I protest Iraq every day. It is sinful not to. I am not going to commit the sin of not speaking out against a government which denies basic human dignity to its own people and enforces its own atheistic ethically challenged corrupted culture on other nations with military rule.
There is no moral justification for China's suppression and exploitation of Tibet, of Uygur, etc. and of its entire population except for the select few who profit from its corruption. So yes the rich Han Chinese, living in complete absence of normal information, are protesting the protest. They profit from the Olympics just as Halliburton, and our Secretary of State who serves on its board and all the oil companies on whose board she serves, and all of the Bush family thugs on the Supreme Court profit from the war in Iraq personally.
They have no ethics so the proposition that someone other than the Chinese have sullied the Olympics is indefensible. the only ethical and the only moral response is protest as useless as that is. They do not make room for anything else.
I thought the motto “we report, you decide” is only used by Fox News Network. I was wrong. The reports on the Mar. 14 unrest in Tibet show most media want to report what the readers should decide.
As most news outlets heavily relied on the Dalai Lama and his advocates, they forgot his holyness doesn’t have better source of information due to the Chinese censorship. Instead they could rely on the western journalists who were there or eyewitnesses on the ground. Contrary to common belief, they do exist. James Miles from the Economist magazine was there in Tibet and offered this interview to CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/tibet.miles.interview/
Later on the report that appeared in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875823
For eyewitnesses’ recounts, Washington Post published this better-late-than-never report:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/26/AR2008032603275.html
These reports however have been largely ignored or quoted in a selective manner that it can only support the opinion of the journalist quoting it.
"American flags flied over Abu Gharib and do so over Guantanamo yet no American Humanrightists have thrown themselves in front of Bush's limo nor chained themselves to the Whitehouse fence."
well I beg to disagree. not true. many veterans like myself, 100% service connected disabled veterans have protested in every way we can, and we have voted against Bush and his fascism and given money, but just as in China the USA rulership has acted to suppress dissent here as the Chinese have there. It is 100% the same: profits over people. Corporate rights over human rights. Bush was installed by five thugs working for Bush and their own "opinion" states outright in plane that it was done without reference to law. Yese the Bush 8 years is treason and yes the Chinese Olympics is obscene. Guantanomo or Lhasa: inhumanity is inhumanity and humans have a moral responsibility to say no.
Ask yourself two questions:
1. Are you against human rights abuses in Tibet before 1959?
2. Do you want to support another Taliban?
Here are some history facts about Tibet from Michael Parenti, a history professor from U.S:
“In the Dalai Lama’s Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of arms and legs — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, runaway serfs, and other “criminals.”
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. (20)
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan people were under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression” and “a barrier to all human improvement.”
More on:
http://www.swans.com/library/art9/mparen01.html#019
Zach,
Since you quote:
“The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. (20)
Should it follow that China should "liberate" Europe? Obviously, Europe worked it out on its own, and is no longer "medieval". And most people understand that colonization of an area does not in general improve human rights. Look, there were some benefits that accrued to India through the British occupation, but at what cost to both parties? it's naive to think that India NEEDED to be colonized, or that it was right to do that to them.
Zach,
One more thing: Michael Parenti is hardly the final word on ANYTHING.
Tibetans, like all people do not live by bread alone.No economic gain could make up for the loss of self that Tibetans have suffered since the Chinese invasion. We should boycott the Olympics and do all we can to let china know and understand that Tibetans must have self determination.
Please, WNYC, do a program with a group of Tibetans who can explain the real nature of the actual and cultural genocide inflicted by China for the past 50 years.PLEASE
I had to laugh yesterday when yet another caller had the stones to say that the United States, and thereby US citizens, had no standing to criticise the Chinese for their actions in Tibet. This lack of standing would be due to "our history."
Funniest thing about this joke masquerading as ethical reasoning is that I NEVER hear it repeated from any other point of view. Never once did I hear it when the French with their longer history of colonial involvement objected to, for instance, the escapade in Iraq. Nor when anyone from England with their history raised objections Nor Germany. Nor Russia. So at least as far as I am concerned, it's an argument intended only to silence one set of critics (and a pretty lame argument, too) in a limited set of circumstances. Usually when someone is ojbecting to a totalitarian state.
So why is this argument posed? I also can say that there seems to be no nuance to the argument. No shadings of grey. After all, what about the standing of an African-American to object to China's policy? How about an Irish-American?
And has anyone ever heard it used in the smaller world of the day-to-day? I'd love to hear an example. Because I've never heard it used.
And the why of China's having asserted its claim of ownership--less important than the when. One of its earliest moves as a totalitarian, feudalist state under the rule of Mao and the CCP. And at a point in history when the rest of the world could be trusted to be too tired or too engaged in other struggles closer to home.
And Tibet had no oil. Hard to get to also.
To all he Chineese who are "angry" about how the torch is being treated in London, Paris, S.F.....Stay out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. Citizens in the free societies through whom the torch passes do not owe anyone blind reverence. The protesters may seem to some to be rude or un-civil or "not in the spirit of the games" but they are only just that...protesters and participants in the street threatre that always occurs in free societies when powerful nations (in this case China) sponsor celebratory spectacles (in this case the torch run) in foreign countries that they do not control. By French / Paris standards this protest seemed remarkably peaceful.
Also....just look at the billions spent and flashy architecture that went into these games. It's not just about athletics. Also, I'm sure the vast majority of protesters have deep admiration for the Chineese in general.
Yes, it is fascinating. China seems to want to be considered a "great nation" but wants to be able to go wee-wee-wee all the way home when the actual record of this great nation is examined. After all, that China exists as a nation is the result of two thousand plus years of military campaigns, forced encorporations, and rewriting of the history of other peoples so as to make the history of China seamless.
Of course, that legacy won't ever be the cause of anyone saying China must be silent in the face of criticism because of its legacy.
As I said, or attempted to communicate, that's an argument posed by the gutless in defense of the indefensible.
The invasion of Tibet was the first step to modernisation if one accepts that removing clerics and replacing them with party functionaries is modernisation. What exactly is the substantive difference between a prayer wheel and standing about waving the Little Red Book? Does the modernisation lie in the ability to kill 80 million of your own citizens?
The "invasion" of Tibet is an act of a country making real of its historical claim, which maybe disputable, but certain much more valid than any claim European colonialists on the land of America. The "invasion" of Tibet may have been brutal, but it paled in comparison to the genocide of most of the Native Americans. If a majority of Tibetans' preference should determine the fate of Tibet, than the majority preference of what's left of the Native Americans in the reservations should determine the fate of US and Canada. Are we all ready to "go back to where we came from?”
Is the kitchen hot enough now? Come on in!
I have a big plan, and that's to repeat the following:
China in 1950 was a feudal state. The ruling class was the CCP. I have no doubt that things were rough maybe even horrific in Tibet, but for the crowd of implicitly self-satisfied commentariat-types, well, in 1950, half of the world was about as primitive, maybe a little less so. In fact, you might have to get down on your knees and thank god for capitalist colonialism because that's the way that things were. In 1950. But then African-Americans might have to thank god for slavery, too. Hell, let's invade Nepal as I think they still sometimes sell their children into slavery.
I have a question: do criminals have legal rights? Do you get to beat someone to death with no fear of legal consequences if the victim has done some wrong and not even to you? Because I live in a country where quite occasionally people take the police to court even if they are criminals because there are things that the police are not allowed to do.
So please take a look at China. And then can you say "That's the pot calling the kettle black"?
Leave a Comment
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Back to EpisodeEmail addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. WNYC reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the WNYC.org Comment Guidelines before posting.