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Why we shouldn't boycott the Olympics in any way
Here is the story. Here are further ramifications and don't worry they'll be happy to give up their coal factories too.A wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer has rocketed to national fame after fending off protesters in Paris, becoming a symbol of China's defiance of global demonstrations backing Tibet.
Jin Jing, a 27 year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer has been called the "angel in a wheelchair" and is being celebrated by television chat shows, newspapers and online musical videos after fiercely defending the Olympic torch during the Paris leg of the troubled international relay.
Protesters denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet threw themselves at Jin. Most were wrestled away by police but at least one reached her wheelchair and tried to wrench the torch away. Jin clung tenaciously to what has become a controversial icon of the Beijing Olympic Games until her attacker was pulled off. Her look of fierce determination as she shielded the torch, captured in snapshots of the scene, has now spread throughout China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests. "I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing's radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!" said one of tens of thousands of Internet postings about the incident.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 15, 2008 at 11:31 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Who funds and organizes the global pro-Tibet movement?
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Apr 15, 2008 12:05:22 PM
Graham-Harrison calls him a 'protester denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet'. I call him 'Chinese agent provacateur':
http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2008/04/forget_it_its_c.html
This episode is exactly one of the reasons why a boycott might not be such a bad idea.
Posted by: US at Apr 15, 2008 12:08:42 PM
The outpouring of pro-Chinese posts by Chinese ethnics on every website that I've seen write about these protests has been pretty impressive.
Posted by: Sideways at Apr 15, 2008 12:13:07 PM
It makes me uneasy to see the level of jingoism emanating from China.
Posted by: gunther at Apr 15, 2008 12:22:52 PM
I thin Ezra Klein has the best insight on the Chinese Olympics:
But this Olympics [boycott] idea is the worst of both worlds. It's a high profile snub that will piss off the Chinese without actually exerting any real pressure on them. Why bother?
Even worse, as Tyler's post suggests, defiance of international criticism on such a grand stage may actually further embolden the Chinese and engender more blind patriotism, encouraging would-be Tibet sympathizers to side with the Chinese government on purely nationalistic grounds.
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Apr 15, 2008 12:34:18 PM
Anyone who thinks a boycott against China will change China's behavior for the better is just plain nuts.
If anything, the Chinese will double up in areas that are under protest, e.g. being even uglier on Tibet, investing more in Sudan etc.
For the Chinese to "give in" would be to lose massive face, something they simply won't do.
In the meantime, as TC pointed out, they are inflaming Chinese naitionalism and stoking already existing xenophobia. If people insist on treating China like a dangerous enemy, it may well indeed wind up becoming one.
Also, boycotts can be a two-way street. The Chinese "people" are already organizing a boycott of French goods. So to those who want to boycott the Olymics, or the opening ceremonies, what is the point? You'll just make things worse, not better.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Apr 15, 2008 12:38:37 PM
Um, Tyler, would that be the attack that was apparently staged?
Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at Apr 15, 2008 12:56:23 PM
Actually, this type of hyperbolic nationalism is one of the innumerable reasons why China should not have been given the Olympics in the first place. I'm hoping for a massive disaster.
Posted by: wugong at Apr 15, 2008 12:57:53 PM
Wugong nails it. Why shouldn't we insult the Chinese with their brainless jingoist nationalism? They need negative feedback, and lots of it, now.
Recall that the only thing that cured the Japanese of their jingoism and nationalism was Hiroshima. I'd prefer some boycott/debate conflict up front with the Chinese in the here and now, rather than something really awful later.
Posted by: Keith at Apr 15, 2008 1:07:10 PM
Let's hear it for French bravery: They attack a Chinese female amputee in a wheelchair...and lose.
Posted by: Kevin at Apr 15, 2008 1:09:25 PM
Freedom fries for the chinese.
Posted by: Lemmy Caution at Apr 15, 2008 1:17:50 PM
Freedom fries for the chinese.
Posted by: Lemmy Caution at Apr 15, 2008 1:18:07 PM
I find it amusing (and disconcerting) that any American would have the audacity to call the Chinese jingoistic.
Posted by: meter at Apr 15, 2008 1:25:49 PM
No one, I repeat no one, gives a shit about human rights in China or Tibet.
The colonization and cultural destruction of Tibet was at its height during the ugliest part of Mao's rule, at the same time when 'progressive' student protesters where carrying little red books and calling themselves Maoists. What was happening under Mao was arguably the greatest mass-murder in history, and it went off with without a peep from so-called 'human rights activists'.
The conditions both in Tibet and China have drastically improved in recent times. While things are definitely not the best, human rights in both China and Tibet are probably the best they have ever been in history.
So how come social critics and 'human rights activists' who ignored 50 million dead in the Communist era, and often glorified China under Mao, are now suddenly all up in arms about China and Tibet? Because they are against free trade and free markets, or at least see China as an economic competitor they don't want to deal with! You can get away with the largest mass-murder and ethnic cleansing in history so long as you are 'socialist'... but as soon an permanently unemployed French xenophobes (and xenophobes in many other countries) think you are 'stealing jobs', well then every socially progressive knows the humane thing to do is to get thousands of people together to beat up handicap person.
And no, this attack wasn't staged! It was pretty much the only possible outcome to this sort of protest. Anyone who has seen a typical anti-globalization protest knows that this kind of stuff is exactly what you can expect to happen.
Actually, this type of hyperbolic nationalism is one of the innumerable reasons why China should not have been given the Olympics in the first place. I'm hoping for a massive disaster.
You mean, aside from the PR disaster that the protests created?
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Apr 15, 2008 1:32:42 PM
The nationalism that's coming out is totally genuine, not mindless jingoism whipped up by the Chinese government. What if the Chinese started aggressively agitating for the independence of Hawaii? What would the average American's reaction be?
Mixing up Tibetan religous freedom with the independence issue is massively counterproductive.
Foreign activists should feel perfectly free not to buy Chinese products though...
Posted by: PJ at Apr 15, 2008 1:36:03 PM
I don't know. It is ALL the worst of possible worlds. China as a nation doesn't deserve to host the olympics. Presumably the IOC moved it there because a ceremony in China would help to open the country up. I don't think that was a very sage decision. For one, I'm not sure that the thesis holds up to scrutiny. it SOUNDS good. More business connections and more international attention leads to more freedom in china, sunlight being the best disinfectant and all. But I don't think that it is substantively supported. Clearly the evidence in the year so far doesn't support it. china has locked out journalists in Tibet, endeavored to monopolize sources of information for reporters in Beijing and established limits for athletes and participants during the games. That is a sign that China is behaving in their best interest--they are treating the games like a PR coup and are managing the information accordingly.
But a boycott, certainly a boycott of the opening ceremony doesn't fix that. A total boycott might send a pretty good message, but that would be pretty hard to develop in 4 months and pretty expensive for all concerned.
We perhaps forget the history of the torch, forget that it was developed to help internationalize and showcase the third Reich. I'm not trying to make an implicit comparison, but we need to be aware of that before we get TOO weepy about the path of the torch being adjusted. Even as we are aware of the history we should be aware that we don't live IN history. China is not going to send thugs and soldiers to run the torch around the world. China is going to send patriots and success stories. they are going to send people who engender hope and feelings of nationalism for them and engender anger from us when they are attacked. It doesn't make them sinister, it makes them smart. Civil rights protesters did the SAME think in America in the 1950's and 1960's. When they were beaten up by the cops, they would have the woulds covered in such a way that it was apparent they had been brutalized. These are public relations advances.
Will any of this stop them from burning coal or suddenly cause them to allow dissent in the public sphere? Of course not. But that shouldn't be the decision rule for a boycott or for the selection committee. We should ask ourselves if it debases the spirit of the Olympics to have it held by an authoritarian country bound and determined to use the aegis of the games to shield past misdeeds from the world. We should ask ourselves if we REALLY speak honestly about a country whom we tread so lightly around as to refuse to acknowledge the statehood of Taiwan. We can't even accept that Taiwan is a country--50 years on--why should we grant ourselves the illusion that we would be able to talk about the games freely? We should ask ourselves what damage expediency does to us. What good is it to treat the games as though they were strictly sporting events when the question of politics comes up?
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 15, 2008 1:55:03 PM
The nationalism that's coming out is totally genuine, not mindless jingoism whipped up by the Chinese government. What if the Chinese started aggressively agitating for the independence of Hawaii? What would the average American's reaction be?
If people brutally attacked someone in a wheelchair carrying the torch for my country, the same way they attacked the Chinese torch bearer, well I can definitely empathize with those Chinese who want to see that person dead. To all those people who think these kinds of protests are good, imagine how you would feel if it was your country!
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Apr 15, 2008 1:57:39 PM
@ PJ
What does it matter if it is genuine or whipped up? China isn't east germany. People there ARE really excited about these games. But in my opinion that shouldn't be the threshold for hosting them. We shouldn't just check to see if citizenry would be stoked to have the games at country X, then host it there.
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 15, 2008 2:00:19 PM
@rex
Straw man.
Also, who gives a rip if someone is angry about that protester? This is the winners curse in effect. SOMEONE is going to be angry about it, somewhere. They might be justified, too, but the torch being attacked en route by protesters doesn't suddenly justify the Beijing Olympics. That's absurd.
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 15, 2008 2:21:47 PM
The issue under discussion is PROTESTS, the how and the why.
Consider also: Do these PROTESTS compare to actually DOING SOMETHING - physically doing something about the subject matter of the protests, something to ameliorate, physically oppose or destroy tyranny.
What happens when:
A repressive communist regime expands to Grenada and is removed - by force?
A repressive criminal military regime is displaced in Panama - by force
An invading and reprehensible tryant is expelled from Kuwait - by force
The vicious destructive genocide against Bosnians is stopped - by force
Murderous thugs wearing the cloak of religious zealotry are driven out of power in Afghanistan - by force
A repressive tyrant, murdering the indigenous and sectarian peoples in Iraq is removed - by force
More murderous thugs in the same disguise are thwarted in their reach for control in Iraq - by force
What happens? many PROTESTS against the "imperialism and arrogance" of the American people for doing what must be done if the objectives of any sincere PROTESTS are to be achieved.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
Posted by: R. Richard Schweitzer at Apr 15, 2008 2:28:59 PM
What if the Chinese started aggressively agitating for the independence of Hawaii? What would the average American's reaction be?
Umm... confusion? The Hawaiian movement to secede from the US isn't exactly robust. It's a silly comparison.
Posted by: Sideways at Apr 15, 2008 2:38:13 PM
@ R. Richard Schweitzer
So.....the primary NORMATIVE difference between support of the protest movements and support of the Us Government is that one has an army, air force and navy behind it and the other doesn't?
Come. On.
Posted by: Adam Hyland at Apr 15, 2008 2:41:07 PM
It seems that we are worried about how to accommodate China's rise to power. We are worried because historically, a rising power with a chip on it's shoulder has been a dangerous power. The Germans and the Japanese are the obvious examples. The hyper aggressive nationalism of Germany and Japan only ended after being crushed militarily. We all hope a softer landing can happen with the Chinese.
Is the idea that such hyper-nationalism is inevitable for some decades during the rise ... and will fade naturally with time? Is it like dealing with young aggressive males .. you just try not to pick a fight with them in their teens and early 20s and wait for them to mellow.
That seems to be the logic behind not "provoking" China.
But what if puncturing China's pride is a good thing, what if that will pop the balloon of their inflated self-worth? Perhaps kowtowing to the Chinese now only emboldens them?
Is the hope that China gets rich enough so it can produce it's own self-indulgent intellectuals who then attack their own country.
America is often called jingoistic. Yet we have millions of citizens who badmouth our country every day. Hollywood churns out a steady stream of anti-War America-bashing movies.
Is the self-hating elite an inevitable result of being rich? Or is it because of defeats in Vietnam?
Is it better to undermine the moral strength of China now or later?
Posted by: jim at Apr 15, 2008 2:49:38 PM
@PJ
"The nationalism that's coming out is totally genuine, not mindless jingoism whipped up by the Chinese government."
You could not be more wrong. "Mindless jingoism" is a perfect description of most education in China about Chinese history and modern China's position in the world that students there have received since they were about 5. I've lived there for lengthy periods and the notion that this reaction is some independently blossoming patriotism is crazy.
But as for TC's basic claim, it rests on the assumption that these proclaimed boycotts against French, US, etc. goods will actually happen. They won't. They didn't when students threw bottles at the US embassy in the late 90's and they won't now.
At quick look at the political directions of Chinese students in the past 40 years or so shows massive extremes and changes of direction. The notion that the current feelings are so deeply held that they will result in a change in the economic relationship with the US and Euro is just absurdly ill-informed.
A boycott of the Olympics won't get China out of Tibet (by a long shot), but it also won't have any long-term effect on China's relationship with the US.
Posted by: wugong at Apr 15, 2008 3:21:34 PM
"Yet we have millions of citizens who badmouth our country every day."
They're called patriots. They see the nightmares of this administration - our two-faced foreign policy coupled with rudderless domestic policies - and aren't hesitant to speak up about it.
"Is the self-hating elite an inevitable result of being rich?"
I don't hate myself. Just people like you.
Posted by: meter at Apr 15, 2008 3:26:23 PM
