This will have to be a super-quickie. The caption to the photo in this article reads, “Demonstrators gather outside of the Chinese Embassy in London, on February 12, calling on China to intervene in the Darfur crisis before the Olympic Games in Beijing.”

Expect to see a lot more images like this in the months ahead. The Darfur movement is picking up tremendous steam thanks to Spielberg’s unfortunate decision. (I encourage you to read an excellent new post about that decision over here.)

Finally, before I disappear again, I want to direct readers to an interesting article from Foreign Policy magazine that puts this issue into a slightly different perspective. Many indignant protesters lay all the blame on China. I lay a lot of the blame on China, too, but is it so black and white? What are America and its allies doing themselves to step up to the plate to create change in Sudan? Should the outrage be directed mainly at China and the 2008 Olympics?

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I never thought Obama would do this well, and he now appears more invincible today than Hillary Clinton appeared six months ago. I truly believed she was going to wipe him out, and I was completely wrong. Of course, now that his star is in the ascendant it is only a matter of time before the honeymoon ends and the media and the Republicans go after him with everything they’ve got. This is a familiar refrain in US politics. Let’s hope Obama gets through it in one piece, and with enough strength left to beat McCain, the only Republican who could conceivably win in November.

I am in another crunch period where posting will be next to impossible, at least for the next two days. Apologies for the unanswered emails and relative silence. No choice. And big thanks to Jeremiah, Sonagi and Raj, etc., for filling in.

Part of an irregular series here at The Duck. Ideas for a suitable caption?

Source: That’s Beijing

I thought you all might get a kick out of a passage from a longer reading I (Jeremiah) assigned to my history class this week. It was written by Liang Qichao in 1903 after a trip to the United States.

Now, freedom, constitutionalism and republicanism mean government by the majority, but the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people are like those in San Francisco [the behavior of the Chinese workers in Chinatown horrified Liang]. If we were to adopt a democratic system of government now, it would be nothing less than committing national suicide. Freedom and constitutionalism and republicanism would be like hempen clothes in winter or furs in the summer; it is not that they are not beautiful, they are just not suitable for us. We should not be bedazzled by empty glitter now; we should not yearn for beautiful dreams. To put it in a word, the Chinese of today can only be governed autocratically; they cannot enjoy freedom. I pray and yearn, I pray only that our country can have a Guanzi, a Shang Yang, a Lyucurgus, a Cromwell alive today to carry out harsh rule, and with iron and fire to forge and temper our countrymen for twenty, thirty, even fifty years. After that we can give them the books of Rousseau and tell them about the deeds of Washington…”

A few thoughts:

1) It’s now been almost 60 years of authoritarian rule, clearly Liang’s timetable was a bit off in terms of seeing the benefits of a strong state. So, what’s the new schedule? CCP ideology also called for a period of ‘tutelage,’ part of which was a stage of democratic centralization.* At this point should we completely forget about it: the CCP can scrub the whole ‘political tutelage’ part of its ideology and simply admit that it wants to rule unchallenged forever? Or is Liang’s optimism shared by others and progressive liberalization of the political system is a desirable course for both state and party? Will there be a day when Rousseau takes the place of Lenin as a political model?

2) Along those lines, I hear sentiments similar to Liang’s, both in today’s China and on this very site, to the effect of ‘most Chinese couldn’t handle western-style freedoms/political systems’ it would be ‘unsuitable because it might lead to chaos.’ And I’ve heard this in many places: from people in villages all the way up to professors at universities and businesspeople in Beijing. Here’s the kicker: No matter whom I talk to it’s always other people ‘who aren’t ready.’ Nobody says, “I’m the problem.” The professor blames the businessman, the businessman blames the peasants, the peasant blames his neighbor, the mingong blames her old uneducated uncle, the uncle blames his less-educated wife. But I’ve never heard anybody say, “Yeah, I’m an idiot and I can’t handle freedom. Please keep the Party ruling in perpetuity lest I pull a nutty.” Everybody’s afraid of chaos, but nobody thinks they would be the cause of the chaos.

3) If, as so many commenters here suggest, the CCP is doing such a fine job these days, better than the US government even, why not relax controls on speech, media, unblock the internet, etc. in China? What’s the downside? And I mean this as a sincere question: If CCP support is so widespread among Chinese (and Tibetans and Uighurs) inside and outside China, as some here have maintained, then the Party shouldn’t have anything to worry about, right? Some might argue, “well, they don’t want the debate because it would be divisive.” How would it be divisive if the Party is so universally acclaimed?

These are questions that I think about a lot. I’m not throwing any bombs here, I’m simply interested in learning the rationalization behind some of the rhetoric that I’ve heard and read, and hope to understand better the thought process. Finally, I am not advocating any one position, all I’m doing is looking for some perspective.

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Interesting article from the Guardian:

McCain pro-military, but worries defense firms

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, strongly supports the war in Iraq and those in uniform, but his investigations of major weapons deals have defense industry executives uneasy.
Privately, some defense company officials say they are backing Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, one of the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, who they see as a better ally for the industry in the longer-term.

Do firms see Clinton as being able to keep the gravy-train running and turn an eye to dodgy-deals? Certainly if there is evidence it would prove useful to McCain in a show-down against his colleague from New York. At the least McCain can use his past investigations to buff his own defence credentials. Few would vote against someone because they cleaned up procurement, and veterans/servicemen and women would like the idea of money going to buy them more equipment rather than boost company profits.

On the other hand the fact Clinton clearly leads the field in donations from defence firms could raise voter suspicions, especially if this were to increase after the Democrat nomination closed.

Raj

A guest post from Sonagi

Koreans and Koreaphiles woke up last Tuesday morning to horrific images of beloved Sungnyemun, one of two large city gates located in downtown Seoul, charred and smoldering from a fire set the night before by an arsonist. Serious vandalism is rare in Korea compared to North America and Europe, so no guards were posted at this gate, accessible to the public.

The large stone gate topped with a two-story wooden pavilion painted in Korea’s traditional green-dominated palette is a standout historical landmark surrounded by gleaming high-rises and a swirl of people, cars, and buses. Sungnyemun is denoted as National Treasure #1, but this reflects the order of registration, not the significance or value of the structure. Adjacent to the gate is Namdaemun Market, whose shops and restaurants occupy several city blocks.

Over the last few days, Seoulites have gathered somberly to view the ruins, an atmosphere one expat blogger likened to a wake.

Curious to see how this tragic event was being covered in the Chinese media, I visited some internet portals and after browsing the news stories, I read the comment threads and was shocked at the almost uniformly nasty vitriol spewed by Chinese netizens: scornful jokes about the unimpressiveness of the gate and put-downs of Korean culture and history, punctuated by the epithet “¸ßÀö°ô×Ó” (gaoli bangzi), a favorite anti-Korean slur.

The anonymity of the internet is the refuge of scoundrels everywhere; however, one would expect message threads on major portals like Sina and Tianya to contain some voices of reason, yet nearly every Chinese netizen posting on the threads used the loss of a historically important city gate as an excuse to ridicule Korea and Koreans, revealing themselves as a classless and mean-spirited bunch.

This story is certainly going to pump new life into the Boycott the 2008 Olympics movement. The Chinese were full of pride that Spielberg was going to help choreograph the much anticipated Opening Ceremony on August 8, and that pride will be tranformed into resentment and indignation very soon. (It appears, by the way, that nearly every link to the topic on Google News activates the dreaded “Server not Found” window.)

The question of a boycott is a difficult issue that brings out a lot of raw emotion on both sides. The Chinese government is often unjust, unfair, deceptive, inhumane and oppressive beyond words. Should it be punished by an international boycott of the Olympics? Should advocacy groups be using the Games to press their causes? Who would such a boycott serve? How accountable should China be for the behavior of its allies? You can find lots of ammunition to call for a boycott, but to what end?

In the shadow of the $440-million “bird’s nest” Olympic stadium, migrant workers toil for a few dollars a day. A few miles away, bulldozers destroy a neighborhood where petitioners gather to seek justice from the government. Farther afield, foreign journalists endure sporadic harassment despite promised press freedoms, with Chinese reporters, bloggers and activists facing far greater restrictions.

As Beijing prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics in August, planners hope the outside world sees the glam architecture and ignores the poverty and social tension in the shadows.

“The Chinese way to say it is, we’re looking for ‘big face’ from the Games,” said Liu Junning, an analyst with the Chinese Cultural Studies Institute in Beijing.

New concerns emerged Tuesday when film director Steven Spielberg announced his withdrawal as artistic advisor for the Games over China’s support for the Sudanese government despite ongoing violence in the Darfur region.

The public relations blow came as eight Nobel Prize winners, 119 U.S. lawmakers and several entertainers signed a letter urging Chinese leaders to use their “significant influence” with the African nation to halt the genocide.

China doesn’t have a monopoly on attracting the anger of activists or on attempting to put its best foot forward. But the enormous gap in this restless country between wealthy 21st century cities and benighted 19th century rural areas, between egalitarian rhetoric and the reality of today’s cutthroat capitalism, raises the stakes.

Beijing is working much harder to airbrush out the negatives than previous Olympic hosts, reflecting in part a regime accustomed to controlling its media and critics.

China has courted, as I’ve said many times here, the murdering scum of the earth. Its engineer-leaders see the nation’s foreign policy in mathematical terms; the grid shows them where the resources are, what they have to pay to get them, and what their return on investment will be. The grid does not factor in human suffering, genocide or crimes against humanity. The question is, should the Olympics be used as a mechanism for punishing China for its sleeping with butchers?

A hard question. If someone asked me in 1935 if I would recommend boycotting the Games of 1936 I’d have a hard time answering. In 1936 we still did not know what history had in store for us, no matter how loathsome Hitler was. Maybe we’d have thought the Olympics would have a healing effect, injecting some badly needed sanity into a deranged Nazi Germany. (Of course, it didn’t turn out that way.) Had the Games been scheduled for 1938, however, and I were asked the same question after Kristallnacht I would have been the first to insist on a complete boycott. The German government was an accomplice to premeditated murder.

I am not comparing the policies of the CCP to the Nazis; if I could do that, I would be calling for a boycott. Rather, I’m trying to deal with the question, when is a boycott called for? In my opinion, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan did not make the grade, and America’s invasion of Iraq doesn’t either – i.e., these oppressive and stupid acts merit condemnation but not across the board boycotts, even of sporting events, that punish the entire nation. We can list the iniquities of modern-day China and find a lot of grounds for outrage. But do we make them grounds for boycotting the Olympics?

As I argued in another thread, it isn’t that hard to find horror stories about the US under Bush, and of many other nations. (And no, I am not saying the US is as bad as China.) Should all these nations be boycotted? Should the Olympic Games be seen as a bargaining chip for advocacy groups? Should other nations shun America for the policies of our dim-witted president, and should our athletes be punished for it the way they were under Carter? Would the US boycott of the Beijing Olympics serve as a healthy precedent?

As I write about this, I have to admit I have mixed feelings. China has made a pact with the devil, pumping money into a regime that promotes genocide and then putting up pictures all over town of giraffes and elephants celebrating China’s harmonious and joyful partnership with Africa. But pacts with the devil are nothing new. What are our criteria for demanding an international boycott of any event in any country? Would we feel so comfortable with those criteria to have them imposed on our own country, whatever that may be?

Bottom line for me at this moment: China’s relationship with the government of Sudan is not sufficient grounds for a boycott. I think it would create many more problems than it would solve, and it would certainly do little for those suffering in Darfur.

As a disclaimer, I work with more than one company here that has a stake in the 2008 Olympics. I try not to let that affect my perception of what’s happening here in China. In fact, my work has only caused me to be more critical than ever of the incompetencies and stupidities of the Chinese bureaucracy. And no, I do not in any way, shape or form answer to anyone involved in the government here, despite harebrained reports that I am on the CCP payroll. That is utter nonsense.

Apologies in advance for not taking a super-hard stance either way on this question. This post is more about questions than answers.

The news just out is that Mitt Romney has withdrawn from the Republican race after he failed to make sufficient gains in the Super Tuesday contests. John McCain is now effectively assured the nomination. In contrast neither Clinton nor Obama were able to claim a decisive victory, with both teams pointing to reasons to look positive.

This is a complete reversal from the end of last year. Back then Hillary was still viewed as the clear favourite for the Democrat crown, whilst the Republican race had a large number of candidates fighting for the top spot. Now it is the Republicans who are rallying around one figure, whilst the Democrats could have to wait until August for the final result.

So, good news for John McCain. Mitt Romney’s comments appeared directed at encouraging GOP conservatives to back him to defeat the Democrats, even if he didn’t refer to the senator by name. McCain’s only opponent, Huckabee, poses no real threat as he lacks national appeal. Support of certain anti-McCain commentators did little for Romney, so it won’t help him either even if they try to rally around the minister. This gives “Mac” time to rally the party around him.

Because time is important. Currently a significant number of Republicans are sulking about some of McCain’s political leanings. These aren’t for show, because some of the moderate views he expressed were more likely to hinder rather than help his nomination campaign. If he had been cynical he would have acted conservative in the nomination round and then stressed more liberal policies later. But what you see is what you would get with him – and he’s not afraid of speaking his mind. So, with the Democrats still focusing on the nomination the Republicans will have the opportunity to band together and start looking for those crucial swing-voters.

As for anyone who is disappointed at McCain’s success, I would say that it is better to have two good candidates for America’s presidency than one good and one awful, even if in the former situation your personal choice loses out.

Raj

We all knew this was inevitable: there was no way China would invest gazillions of dollars in all things related to the 2008 Olympics and then leave themselves vulnerable to charges of mass censorship, which would obviously rise up in a deafening chorus as the thousands of foreign media who will be here seek to get on their favorite web sites only to encounter the dreaded “server not found” page. Just as the “Juden verboten” signs were quietly removed from the storefront windows in 1936, the cybernanny will go on temporary leave come the summer. (And no, I am not equating the CCP with the Nazi party, but this comparison of how each prettied things up for the Olympics is a valid one.)

China is debating whether to relax control of the Internet during the Olympics, allowing access to banned websites such as the BBC, a spokeswoman for the organising committee said Tuesday.

Plans to tear down the so-called Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon, said Wang Hui, head of media relations for the organising committee.

“We are studying this now based on suggestions of some journalists and a study of the experiences of other countries, so during the Olympics there may be some changes,” she said. “This is one of the ways the Olympics may promote progress in China.”

China tightly polices cyberspace and Chinese web surfers see a stripped-down version of the Internet minus some news sites such as the BBC and those belonging to human rights groups or any other sites judged subversive by the country’s communist rulers.

Wang said that changes were expected to be in place in time for the Olympics for the 20,000 foreign journalists planning to cover the Games.

Hard to imagine a more cynical move, nothing short of an admission that much of what visitors will see in August 2008 is window dressing. But it was totally expected and totally consistent with the way they are choreographing their 18 days in the sun. It will be interesting to see just how far they go with this. Will they even unblock the Free Tibet, Tiananmen Square Ma@@acre, Taiwan Independence and F@lun Gong sites?

Happy New Year, everyone.