08-01-2008

OLYMPIC DREAMS, HARSH REALITY

Bao Tong, formerly director of China's Office of Political Reform and an aide to Premier Zhao Ziyang, was the most senior Chinese government official jailed for opposing Deng Xiaoping's violent crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement. He served seven years in prison, and has been under house arrest since his release in 1996. This piece is adapted from his chapter in the anthology "China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges."

By Bao Tong

The current regime was founded in the pursuit of communism, now a bankrupt ideology. Today the Chinese government continues to demand sacrifices from the majority of the people, but no longer in exchange for a future communist society. Instead, the new purported goal is a stronger nation, one to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Yet the Chinese government's desire for improved international standing is, at present, essentially an aspiration of the elites. In contrast, the majority of the people, particularly in rural areas, are still overwhelmed by poverty, disease and economic insecurity. While at least 200 million people in China earn less than the equivalent of $1 a day, the Chinese government has in the last six years spent tens of billions of dollars and mobilized the population to hold a grand Olympics Games.

The Chinese people have paid a tremendous price for these Games. Migrant construction workers have built the glittering new Olympic venues for paltry wages and under harsh conditions, often on land the government acquired by forcibly evicting citizens -- often without offering them adequate compensation. When the shiny new buildings and temporarily clear skies of Beijing are displayed to the world at the 2008 Summer Olympics, let us not forget that they were built on a pyramid of sacrifices, made by people who are most likely to be carefully shuffled out of view for the event.

There are sadly few signs that the Beijing Games will push China any closer to an open society, though temporary permission has been given to foreign journalists to interview Chinese citizens without official sanction until the end of the Games.

Since then, while rules have indeed been relaxed for foreign journalists, the crackdown on Chinese journalists, activists and lawyers has continued unabated.

The modernity of China to be showcased during the hosting of the Olympics stands in stark contrast with the Chinese Communist Party's antiquated way of ruling. Too much of the government's legitimacy is based on misconceptions and historical untruths. To keep up its increasingly complicated version of truth, censorship and the systematic induction of mass memory loss has been necessary.

Will the enthusiasm of millions of Chinese television viewers captivated by the Games erase the dark memory of the government's crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square? The Chinese government apparently thinks it can achieve this goal of collective amnesia. Using the Games as an instrument of propaganda can only serve the government to improve its image cosmetically in the short term, but it will help very little to resolve China's real problems in the long run.

After 50 years of major policy reversals, the Chinese Communist Party has not delivered any kind of equality or basic universal social programs such as education, medical care and economic security, though it did nationalize all lands and huge sectors of the economy during Mao's reign.

Endless promises to the rural poor have been made and forgotten, while their hard work has built China's industries and modern cities. The government has constructed state-of-the-art sports complexes, opera houses and Internet firewalls, but has failed to build roads in the nation's poorest villages or to keep the nation's social security system from bankruptcy.

Finally, there has been little progression of civil liberties, which is the only way adequately to address issues of injustice in an open and equitable way.

While there is little doubt that gold medals won by Chinese athletes and the presence of foreign dignitaries will make China's elite feel ever more glorious, the true success of the Beijing Games will be measured by whether the Olympics lead in time to a more just and open China. 

© 2008 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES