Olympics
23 Apr 2008

Time to Douse the Flame

By James Leibold
Keywords: 
australia
china
olympics
olympic torch
international students
The torch relay might look like a "farce" to us, but for the Chinese it is no laughing matter, says Chinese Politics professor James Leibold
As the Olympic torch and its entourage prepare to descend on Canberra today, it's time for everyone to take a cold shower.

The Australian and overseas media have struggled to interpret recent demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne by Chinese students and their supporters. Some have questioned their spontaneity, while others have made much of the strong political rhetoric employed by a few calling for a "people's army" to guard the flame from pro-Tibetan "splittests" and anti-Chinese "scum".

While commentators in Australia warn that this type of incendiary language will only strain relations with China, the internet chatrooms and talk-back radio lines are filled with equally strong language. Here the torch has been dubbed a "symbol of Chinese thuggery and lies", its attendants examples of the "aggressiveness, arrogance and single mindedness" of the Chinese people, and IOC officials "apologists" for the Communist regime in Beijing.

For us here in Australia the torch relay might look like a "farce" or "fiasco", but for the Chinese it is no laughing matter.

Perhaps it is time for us to pause and consider some of the factors behind this wellspring of emotion among the Australian-Chinese community and other Chinese around the world. Overseas students from the Mainland were at the forefront of the April demonstrations and the rally to defend the torch on Australian soil. Although most of the 50,000 Chinese students studying here are favorably inclined towards Australia, many still feel alienated from Australian society: like cash-cows spun through the turnstiles of universities, only to be abandoned and discriminated against until the time they are told to return home after finishing their degrees.

More broadly, Chinese communities around the globe view the Beijing Olympic Games and its torch relay as an important and proud symbol of China's re-emergence on the world stage. For over a century now, China has seen itself as a victim of the international system: the yellow-skinned coolies force-fed opium while being treated literally like dogs and refused entry to their own parks. Mao claimed that the Chinese people had finally stood up in 1949, but the chaos of the Cultural Revolution left China looking like the joker in the pack of the nation-state system.

Feeling increasingly proud of their country's achievements since the death of Mao, the Chinese view the 2008 Olympics with a sense of great confidence and pride. Thus, it should surprise few that the embarrassing and sometimes violent attacks on the torch are interpreted as yet another affront to Chinese dignity. In the eyes of most Chinese people, the recent unrest in Tibet has little to do with the Olympics, and they cannot understand why the Western media insists on linking the two.

Didn't we have our own unfinished business at the 2000 Sydney Games?

Our new Prime Minister is right to challenge China on its human rights record in Tibet and elsewhere. The brutal nature of the recent riots shows that all is not well in Tibet. Like other rapidly modernising states, China has its share of serious problems, and they deserve both international scrutiny and urgent domestic action. Yet Rudd's call for Australia to be a tough-talking, "true friend" (zhenyou) of the Chinese people also requires a bit of empathy and understanding at home. As a start, we can begin to make our society and economy more open to overseas students while addressing the serious decline in Asian languages and studies in our universities and schools.

Just as Western fantasies about the loss of some unspoiled Tibet Shangri-la are misguided, so too are our fears about Chinese "thugs" and "goons" descending on our nation's capital today.

Forget about extinguishing the flame; emotions on all sides need to cool off.

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This user is a New Matilda supporter. dazza
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 17:41

Sorry, you are not going to change my mind. The Olympics, supposedly a symbol of Peace and Harmony, and absolutely NOTHING to do with politics, is nothing of the sort. It is used by nationalist Governments to parade their political and economic strength before the world, and China has shown this time just how much strength they do have, with Governments of all persuasions bowing before them like straw in the wind. The Chinese arrogance is chilling, but I suppose we have become used to this from Yanks, so we must accept it from the new Great World Power, China.
Each day we are treated to what are called 'misunderstandings' by Australian Government figures, in that every time a Chinese spokesperson says anything, they insist that their Torch Protectors WILL have operational control during all aspects of the farcical parade around Canberra streets. I guess we will see tomorrow who is correct, them or the Australian Government apologists.
I also object strenuously to the quite incredible costs to Australia incurred by this garbage. If it is so good for China, let them pay for it. Better still, cancel the whole damned thing!
Dazza.

Tom McLoughlin
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 20:29

This reads like so much special pleading to me promoting China Inc's commercial brand.

Personally I reject the Chinese Govt weasel words. Rich people to get more rich whether Chinese, IOC, AOC and leading athletes. It's all big business. My guess most Chinese have no free information to go on and the pro China protesting locals are mostly privileged party drones.

The arrogance and racial intolerance inside China to their satellites and foreigners is quite well known too.

The Sydney 2000 Olympics is not remotely comparable because my 2 folders of clippings of that time show all our local shames were ventilated in the free press here, all the dirty laundry. The Aboriginal folks had a protest camp in the city park no less, blessed by the City Council. They wanted the Olympics to work off. Do that in Beijing? As if. And they weren't tame folks either led by Isabelle Coe and others. They were very willing critics of the Australian Govt.

The grassroots conversation in 2008 needs to be peaceful and honest. There need to be as many forums as possible, not artificial pandering to anyone. I hope SBS Insight does a show. Yes it should be lawful, and indeed peaceful.

And those military spies with the torch - I hope they get prosecuted and jailed for any illegal menaces of Australian residents.

It's obvious it's the China cheer squad who want to censor and overwhelm the human rights protest message.

It's the Chinese central government that's ripping off Tibet's resources and trashing their environment and taking over the place with immigrants. Even with the material advances the preferred govt in exile acknowledges are major improvements.

Not once did you mention democracy and open governance as the purpose of voting for China to get the westernised Games.

What bothers me is the fantasy of one China motherland. Taiwan is not part of one China. Hong Kong is not either in their heart. The people of Burma and North Korea want China out of their affairs with their evil dictators. The Uygurs have been over run too. All the double talk is dishonest.

China Inc know it and reveal their guilty feelings.

China should stop co opting their national symbol the Panda, it should be the dragon, as you know.

If people here don't feel like partying or praising the torch relay, except for the athlete spruikers of the AOC/IOC Inc, and the brainwashed diaspora, then it's because THEY REALLY DON'T FEEL that way. Probably a billion struggling Chinese know just how the Tibetan's feel too if only they had the free media to really learn about it. 0.3 billion don't care.

China Inc should reflect on that sincere response. Like the ACOSS people.

This torch might be a great symbol of the achievements of China Inc but so what? The Olympics is a big commercial entertainment circus based on high finance. They have no serious moral case. It's all self interested big business.

Everyone knows people tug the forelock in China because they are scared of the military, and every protesting Chinese student or dispora will know they will be supported and rewarded by Big Brother back home the bigger the song and dance made here.

Let the international press wander around Tibet, and North Korea and Burma and Darfur safe and free to go anywhere. Get that ship of arms away from Zimbabwe.

Release all the Falung Gong from all prisons. Allow a UN investigation of organs harvesting murder.

rmg1859
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2008 - 09:15

I'm with Dazza and Tom on this. I had a much older English cousin who used to go on about how much better off the Irish would be if they had stayed under English rule. The English brought them civilization, he claimed. The Irish were just primitive savages, semi-feudal serfs to brutal local chieftains, they didn't know how to use a bath (how's that for the pot calling the kettle black !?!), they had been illiterate before the English brought sweetness and light to their shores, etc. And anyway, they were all Roman Catholic, Papist agents trying to undermine the C of E (did it need it ?), the true Catholic church or something. He wanted to start an organisation to get Ireland back for the British Empire and was always on at me to join. But I was only six, so it was a bit of a waste.

So when we see crowds of young Chinese students demanding that the world recognise Tibet as forever part of China, it all comes back to me, what my crazy cousin was on about.

There are something like eight million Tibetans, in Tibet, and in the bits of it that have been sliced off to form 'autonomous regions' etc. etc. under Chinese provinces. Chinese imperial control never extended far or lasted long, in spite of repeated attempts to enforce it.

Actually, if you look at a language map of China., it's amazing how much of it is NOT Han, how much is either Tibetan-speaking, or Mongol-speaking, or Uighur-speaking, even Farsi-speaking, and a hundred other languages (not to mention Taiwan). i.e. that Han imperialism did not penetrate very far at all (except in militiary and trade outposts) before Mao's revolutionary forces took over and proudly continued - extended - the ancient feudal and imperialist policies of the Emperors in the name of the workers' and peasants' state..

But what has been the historical fate of empires ? They don't last, even though their adherents never seem to give up yearning for power over others and their territories. I suppose this applies to Bulgarians (with their vast central Asian empire of a thousand years ago), to the Serbs, to the Petchenegs, Parthians, Khazars, Huns and Seljuks of today who hanker after what once was, vast empires which are still rightfully theirs, so some might think.

Joe

rmg1859
Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 - 09:37

And did you notice all the Tibetans in amongst the pro-China crowd ? In fact, in every pro-China demonstration during this relay ? No ? Not one Tibetan supporter of China, of Chinese control of their country ? What does that say ?

Joe

Bob Karmin
Posted Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 18:52

Thanks James.

If Monsanto is indirectly poisoning children in order to pay its employees and shareholders, we don't ask parents to empathize with the companies predicament.

Why should we have empathy for governments that brutally repress their own citizens in the interests of "rapid modernization"?

EarnestLee
Posted Thursday, May 8, 2008 - 13:50

"Forget about extinguishing the flame"

Brand "Olympics" has just doused itself.

From this time on Olympians will not be seen as demi-gods but scarcely human. Oilless cyborgs.

If you want to avoid or boycott "Made in China" as a private protest, check out the local Op-shop and start recycling.