British Olympic rowing great Sir Matthew Pinsent recently visited Beijing’s Shichahai Sports School (a special school that trains gymnasts). In a subsequent BBC report, he alledged abuse of the students and a harsh Soviet-era ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality at the school.

“It was a pretty disturbing experience. I know it is gymnastics and that sport has to start its athletes young but I have to say I was really shocked by some of what was going on. I was wondering whether the western approach compared to the eastern approach is a bit different but I do think those kids are being abused.”

“When I talked to the vice principals they said hitting was against the law, but then there were parents who want you to do it. They said this is what they needed to do to make them hard.”

One boy at the school admitted that beatings were sometimes administered following serious mistakes but went on to say that it only meant that the coaches cared about them. Perhaps shockingly, China has more than 4,000 similar sporting schools training potential Olympic medal winners.

The school’s director, Mr. Liu Hongbin, responded by declaring the need for “discipline and order” among his young charges and that sometimes beating children was necessary to improve performance. Another offcial was quoted as saying: “This is the breeding ground of our Olympic heroes. They make us proud of being Chinese.”

The I.O.C. expressed concern about the reports but refused to condemn China, saying that people should not jump to conclusions. The British Olympic Association also distanced itself and refused to discuss Chinese methods. Only the International Gymnastics Federation said that they would talk to the Chinese about the allegations.

If widespread, then certainly China’s ultra-strict methods are not for the faint-hearted. However, where does one draw the line? At what point does one accept cultural differences and/or declare outrage at the beatings of children and a Soviet-type quest for national glory? Certainly, schools like the one Sir Matthew describes are a far cry from the famed and much-envied Australian sporting academies of excellence which have made the country a dominant force in many sports. Is it naive for Sir Matthew to question his earlier belief that giving the Games to China would help open up the country to the rest of the world and have a positive overall effect?

UPDATE: Britain’s culture secretary Tessa Jowell has advised a full investigation into the allegations: “”We simply can not have young people in a sense being sacrificed in the interests of medal glory.”

This will make the war bloggers bristle. From the quite conservative NRO:

Don’t know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha’s very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn’t air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he’s a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we’ve had enough, it’s time to come home. He was hell on the president too.

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to — and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who’s about the same age, and his hunting buddies — then the president is in big trouble. I’m sure there’s going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.

Let the swiftboating of Murtha begin! But mark my words, this may well be a turning point. Murtha is not Cindy Sheehan, and the usual anti-liberal invective won’t stick in this case.

Readers may have noticed ACB‘s first comment on the current open thread regarding the whereabouts of a Mr. Liu Qibing – a London-based copper futures trader who worked for China’s State Reserve Bureau (SRB) at the London Metal Exchange. Mr. Liu gambled that copper prices would fall – and stands to lose a huge Nick Leeson-esque amount of money after the gamble backfired spectacularly. He then mysteriously disappeared.

China’s consumption of copper has surged 23% over the last two years (compared with 10% globally) and China’s growth has played a large part in driving up world prices.

Reports are contradictory, but all agree that Mr. Liu committed China to sell up to 220,000 tonnes of copper at the end of the year. Mr. Liu, sold the copper at, allegedly, US$3,300 a tonne. He gambled that he would be able to buy it more cheaply when it was needed (known as going “short”). However, this year, copper prices actually increased by 38% (3 month delivery prices recently jumped to US$4,119). As demand is still raging, who knows what the prices will be at the end of year? Therefore, the losses are potentially huge – they could reach the best part of US$1 billion.

No surprise, therefore, that China’s SRB recently started to sell copper openly on the spot and futures markets – trying to drive prices down. A long-held Chinese policy made even more pressing considering recent developments. Also, this very scandal has caused copper prices to rise as speculation continued with regard to China having to buy more copper in order to meet trading commitments.

More intrigue, the SRB, initially denied that Mr Liu existed: “We do not have such a person working for us.” However, that then changed to a statement saying Mr. Li’s actions ‘were the responsibility of this trader and not the SRB’. Nevertheless, despite this wriggling, the debts will have to be met eventually.

In the meantime, poor Mr. Liu is rumoured to be at home in Shanghai. The latest reports claim that the SRB still maintains that Mr. Liu acted independently and they refuse to take responsibility. Meanwhile, other reports add that copper prices may easily climb to over US$4,500 by the end of year.

Update here.

I’ve distrusted him for years now, ever since I read his obviously made-up story of an interview with William Casey right before he died. And then there’s the way he always gets himself in the limelight just as he has a new book coming out. Today’s news could be the nail in his coffin. The story of his newly discovered role in Plamegate is being blogged to death everywhere so I won’t reiterate it. Suffice it to say he is shilling for the Bush administration and he can never be trusted again.

Let’s not forget that Woodward has been accused of lying, sensationalizing and witholding news many times in the past.

Woodward’s dual role as newspaper journalist and book author has opened him up to occasional criticism for sitting on information for publication in a book, rather than presenting it sooner when it might affect the events at hand. In The Commanders (1991), for instance, he indicated that Colin Powell had opposed Operation Desert Storm, yet Woodward did not publish this fact before Congress voted on a war resolution, when it may have made a difference. And in Veil he indicates William Casey personally knew of arms sales to the contras but he did not reveal this until after the Congressional investigation.

Woodward has also been accused of exaggeration and fabrication by other journalists, most notably regarding Deep Throat, his famous Watergate informant. Before he was revealed to be top FBI official W. Mark Felt, some contended that Deep Throat was a composite character based on more than one Watergate source. Martin Dardis, the chief investigator for the Dade County State Attorney who in 1972 discovered that the money found on the Watergate burglars came from the Committee to Re-elect the President, has complained the book and movie misrepresented him. Woodward was also criticized for his deathbed interview with the now-deceased former CIA Director William J. Casey. Critics have said that Woodward’s interview with Casey simply could not have taken place as written in the book Veil, and that he fabricated the scene. And an investigation by the New York Review of Books found that Woodward fabricated a sensational story about Justice Brennan in The Brethren, among other issues.

What Woodward did is inexcusable, right up there with Judy Miller – sucking up to and protecting at all costs their “sources” at the expense of the readers they’re supposed to be serving. To borrow a phrase from Kos, “Screw them.”

And who says I don’t have good things to say about China’s government? They are becoming less and less atrocious in opening up about cases of bird flu in humans.

The Chinese government announced late today that it had confirmed the country’s first three cases of bird flu in people, an admission that marked a potentially far-reaching change in how China handles the emergence of new diseases.

The handling of all three cases contrasted markedly with China’s handling two years ago of SARS, which provincial Chinese officials here in southeastern China concealed for four months until the disease became an international epidemic. But when reports began circulating late last month of several mysterious illnesses in central China and provincial officials there were reluctant to investigate, Beijing authorities responded by seeking help from the World Health Organization and quickly sending in a team of national and overseas investigators.

“I think this is exactly what countries should do,” said Dick Thompson, a spokesman at the Geneva headquarters of the W.H.O., a United Nations agency. “They should be transparent. They should report early.”

China’s Health Ministry said this evening that bird flu had been confirmed in a 9-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister in central China’s Hunan Province and in a 36-year-old woman in Anhui Province in east-central China. The boy has recovered and was released from the hospital last weekend; the girl and the woman died.

In confirming all three cases as infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Chinese authorities went even further than the W.H.O. was willing to go.

This is really good. Credit where due. It’s just a shame that the best we can say is that they are finally doing what they should be doing as opposed to following their traditional pattern of secrecy and deception at the expense of the lives of their citizens. (Check out their track record on AIDS, for example. And we all know the SARS story.)

How cool.

The latest article from Ross Terrill, author of The New Chinese Empire, is quite superb – please read it all. As usual, he ponders the rise of China and all its implications. The U.S. economy is 7 times the size of China’s and the Japanese economy is 3 times bigger. China is also still a Leninist regime, politically stifled and dependant on economic growth and nationalism to survive.

According to Terrill, China’s national goals are (1) stability (2) economic growth and (3) a working peace with all of China’s 14 neighbours. However, two further foreign policy goals would include the displacement the U.S. as East Asia’s premier power and also the “return of lost territories” including Taiwan, the entire South China Sea and, eventually, perhaps the Russian Far East which was formerly ruled by the Qing Dynasty. After all, China only accepts historical changes and progressions in its favour.

Whether Beijing can achieve these goals depends on how long its rigid political system can survive, and on the reaction of other powers to China’s ambitions. A middle-class push for property rights, rural discontent, increased use of the Internet, huge numbers of unemployed, and a suddenly aging population bringing financial and social strains all dramatize the contradictions inherent in “market Leninism.” Traveling one road in economics and another in politics does not make for a settled destination.

China’s economy may continue to grow at its present rate. Or China may retain its Leninist party state. But it can hardly do both. Either the economic or the political logic will soon gain the upper hand.

So far so good. However, the most interesting of Terrill’s observations is that it is not only China’s ambitions and capabilities which will make or break its potential superpower status but also the acquiescence of the other affected and existing powers:

The United States will not allow an authoritarian China to become the new world leader and has allies to call on. Japan’s new assertiveness and India’s weight are major factors. Washington could also count on Australia, Indonesia, and Vietnam for balancing weight. US-China policy should blend full engagement with preserving an equilibrium in East Asia that discourages Beijing from expansionism.

The expansionist claims of Beijing are unique among today’s powers. But the Chinese regime is a rational dictatorship that has, for the past quarter century, been patient in fulfilling its goals. It surely realizes that others — the United States, Japan, Russia, and India — have a variety of reasons for denying China the opportunity to be a 21st century Middle Kingdom. If Beijing continues to be faced with a countervailing equilibrium that keeps the peace in East Asia, it will probably act prudently.

It’s nice to hear him talking sense to China. Even if it was a nudge-nudge, wink-wink moment.

President Bush, speaking days before a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing, called on the communist nation’s leaders today to ease restrictions on free expression and religion, and cited Taiwan as a possible model.

But his remarks reflected more of a nudge than an ultimatum — underscoring the increasingly delicate balancing act of weighing China’s expanding influence in the world against demands by religious conservatives and human rights advocates at home, who want Bush to be more confrontational.

And the first comments from Chinese officials did not indicate great concern about Bush’s pronouncements.

“As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well,” Bush said in a speech today in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital.

“I have pointed out that the people of China want more freedom to express themselves — to worship without state control — and to print Bibles and other sacred texts without fear of punishment. The efforts of China’s people to improve their society should be welcomed as part of China’s development. By meeting the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness, China’s leaders can help their country grow into a modern, prosperous, and confident nation,” Bush said.

He punctuated his comments by drawing an unusually direct parallel between China and Taiwan, an island democracy claimed by China that the U.S. has pledged to protect.

Bush did not mention China’s ongoing military buildup, viewed in the region as a signal of Beijing’s intention to fight for control of Taiwan. Nor did he alter U.S. policy backing “one China” that includes Taiwan, reiterating that stance at a brief news conference. But using potentially provocative terms, he said the island had fostered a “free and democratic Chinese society” that could be a model for the mainland.

“Taiwan is another society that has moved from repression to democracy as it liberalized its economy,” Bush said. “This opening to world markets transformed the island into one of the world’s most important trading powers. Economic liberalization in Taiwan helped fuel its desire for individual political freedom — because men and women who are allowed to control their own wealth will eventually insist on controlling their own lives and their future.”

Bush and other officials sought to balance the president’s relatively tough language with assurances that their overall relationship with China was progressing.

I like what he said about Taiwan. (It goes to show, if Bush says enough things, at least one or two of them might end up being right.) And I’m sure Hu Jintao is feeling totally apoplectic about it. Good.

No more posts today. Blogged out and overwhelmed with work. (Guest bloggers, are you listening?)

Ah, modern art.

It’s really quite unimaginable.

Suspected Muslim separatists stormed two houses in a southern village early Wednesday and opened fire on the families with assault rifles, killing nine people and injuring nine others, a regional governor said.

Authorities had not yet entered the area where the attack occurred because about 500 villagers had gathered and were blocking them from entering, said Narathiwat Gov. Pracha Terat.

“The assailants cruelly murdered these villagers and spread rumors among other villagers that state officials did this,” Pracha told The Associated Press.

Just imagine if we hadn’t bankrupted the country (in more ways than one) with out excellent Iraqi adventure. Imagine if we were able to focus our once-vast resources on fighting the real war on terror, the huge difference we could be making. Meanwhile, terror is flourishing, given a big shot in the arm by our floundering efforts in Iraq, and to say that the world is a safer place because of it is nothing less than bizarre.