“Who’s changing who?”
That’s the question an anti-China activist recently asked while being arrested by Greek police. He’d been at a brief protest at this week’s ceremony to light the Olympic flame at Ancient Olympia. And it’s a very difficult one to answer.
He went on: “The Chinese government is oppressing me even in a free country, the Chinese government is spreading its oppression and dictatorship like a cancer around the world.
“Instead of the world changing China, China is changing the world – dragging it in the direction of oppression.”
See? It’s not so easy is it? Who IS changing who?
By allowing our Olympians to compete in Beijing are we legitimising an oppressive regime, or opening up the Chinese people to new ideas like democracy and basic human rights?
You probably know the first argument quite well.
Plenty of people argue China’s behaviour in Tibet, its oppression of religious groups, and its complicity with the slaughter in Dafur should disqualify it from the honour of hosting the Games.
It was this final issue that led Steven Spielberg to quit as the Beijing Games’ artistic advisor.
But what about the opposite case, the one put by IOC President Jacques Rogge that the Games will be a great catalyst for change in China, opening it up to the scrutiny of the 25,000 media who’ll cover the event?
It’s probably a bit of both. It’s probably a bit more complex. Maybe the communist demagogues in Beijing have bitten off more than they can chew, so exposed to protest as they now are.
Consider that the Olympic flame has to visit 130 countries – that’s hundreds of opportunities for people to rail against the regime for their own populations’ domestic consumption.
And more importantly it’s hundreds of opportunities for people to begin to ruminate on China’s rise in the next 20 years to superpower status.
To think about the effect a world dominated by China and its value system – one that doesn’t include the basic human rights we take for granted – will have on all of us.
But also for us to think about the difficulties in modernising a country like China, one where implementing the environmentally essential ‘one child’ policy would be impossible were it a democracy.
To think about Tibet and whether we really want to return it to the Buddhist priests who once wielded absolute power. A theocracy headed by the Dali Lama who might not quite have the modern views we might expect – with regard to homosexuality for example.
To contemplate how Olympic committees worldwide are at this moment trying to get their athletes to agree to gag themselves with regard to politics while in China.
Even our athletes will need their team managers’ permission to talk politics in China.
It’s all worth thinking about. Because long after the Olympics are over, ‘who is changing who’ is going to be a question we will all be forced to face.
