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China’s Revealing Spectacle of Lies
With communism comes an almost pathological need to propagandize on an Olympic scale.
When the Olympic Games kicked off in Beijing and the arguments commenced over how one should respond to such an event being held in an authoritarian, human rights-violating state, it was difficult to know where one’s sympathies would be best invested. The ardent protesters who rattled off China’s various crimes, who criticized its role in the Darfur genocide, and who railed against the ban on ethnic Tibetans working the events most certainly had their hearts in the right place. But so did those who argued that there was reason to restrain the outcry; that the Olympics are supposed to represent a supra-national ideal; that there was value, too, in proving that national pride could coexist alongside civilized, rule-driven competition.
The supposed lesson of the restraint camp was, of course, that if we can mutually respect our nation, our fellow countrymen, and our international competitors in the swimming pool or on the uneven bars, we can do it in the politico-economic sphere as well. Since the Games commenced last week, however, an entirely different set of far more cynical lessons has been on display, courtesy of the Chinese themselves. From faked CGI opening ceremony fireworks to “16-year-old” gymnasts, China has squashed the arguments of the supra-national idealists like it squashed the Tiananmen Square protests: ruthlessly, decisively, and with a brazen disregard for how bad it makes them look on the world stage.
The first question that comes to mind is: should this come as a surprise? It isn’t as if China thinks we’re ignorant of their internal repression and human rights abuses. It also can’t be that we think those gymnasts are 16. Coming as it has in a time when formerly communist Russia has brutally flexed its own muscles for the world to see, not only should none of this come as a shock, but it can be read as part of an emerging and consistent theme. Hubris, these days attributed almost exclusively by most of the world to the United States, is not indigenous to America. Communist empires were never exactly humble and, despite their deceptive makeovers, their post-’89 incarnations aren’t either. China’s behavior at the Games reminds us that, in the great game of power politics, looking big is often more important than not looking bad.
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Josh Strawn is a writer and musician based in New York. His band is Blacklist.
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25 Comments
1. ic:Wait till we have a Citizen-of-the-World for president, and contribute .7% of our trillions GDP to the UN, which by the way is controlled by the Russians, the Chinese, and Arab countries. Of course, we sit there too. But we can’t even keep our Human Rights Commission seat. Oh, it’s all Bush fault to irritate the world with his Americentric cowboy policies.
Aug 21, 2008 - 2:00 am 2. A Bull Shop in China:[...] Read the whole thing. Posted by Dan Collins @ 11:52 am | Trackback Share This [...]
Aug 21, 2008 - 4:52 am 3. Andrea Fuzzi:Obama’s advisors are eager to exploit the Olympic effect:with 70 campaigning days remaining,nobody will discover the truth.
Aug 21, 2008 - 4:54 am 4. Saltherring:McCain has unmasked such a celebrity,vain way to withdraw politics away from the people to treat the voters as watchers
A note to the Olympics organizers, sponsors and the news media: I and many Americans like me do not tolerate cheaters. Subsequent to observing the Chinese “16 year-olds” compete in the initial gymnastics events, I turned the channel and watched no more of the gymnastics competition. Win fairly, like the Chinese divers appear to have done, and I will applaud your effort and skills. Cheat and I will turn my backside to you. The Olympics instituted drug testing in response to public outcry over heavily muscled and bearded Soviet and East German “women” dominating international athletic events in the 60’s and 70’s. They now need to deal with the Chinese cheaters with the same resolve.
Aug 21, 2008 - 7:05 am 5. Concerned Citizen:One World, One Dream
Which world and Whose dream?
Aug 21, 2008 - 8:41 am 6. John Moore:I don’t think Communism is the point here, since neither China nor Russia are Communist. The issue is authoritarianism. Hitler, not a communist, did the same sort of thing with the 1936 games.
The authoritarians derive their “legitimacy” by creating a “superior” government. They need to constantly reassure their citizens (and themselves) that they have done so. Hence the irrational quest for perfection of image.
Aug 21, 2008 - 10:45 am 7. Susan Katz Keating:Everything you write is true. But the IOC is deeply complicit. For reasons I have yet to fathom, the Cheating Chinese have either hijacked or hypnotized this august body into ignoring, abetting, and even encouraging the flauting of rules. China now understands that is indeed special. Watch for increased international rule-flouting on all fronts from an empowered China.
Aug 21, 2008 - 11:25 am 8. Überkompensiert « Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft:[...] communism breeds paranoia and paranoia creates an almost pathological need to lie and propagandize. Pajamas Media » China’s Revealing Spectacle of Lies Dieser Eintrag wurde von Daniel Fallenstein am Do, 21. Aug 2008 um 23:39 geschrieben, abgelegt [...]
Aug 21, 2008 - 2:40 pm 9. Joshua:For all our imperfections, America is the most amazing social experiement the world has ever seen. It is so sad that simply because we have imperfections and have made serious mistakes along the way, Americans… Americans that directly benefit from all this great country has to offer, want to condemn her at every turn. These so called Americans wouldn’t last 6 months in China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea etc.
What an amazing testimony to the goodness of American athletes (gymnasts in this case) to compete, stand beside and even congratulate a “sixteen year old” Chinese gymnast who is missing a baby tooth and 2-3 appear to be very young and still act as if cheating was NOT taking place. When I saw this little Chinese girl on T.V. missing her tooth I was blown away. I said to my wife, OUCH! the Chinese govt. must not be able to afford dental work to replace the missing tooth of that 16 year old girl!
Aug 21, 2008 - 3:14 pm 10. Steynian 228 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] More evidence of fakery in Beijing; and “China wins the Gold in oppression”! China’s Revealing Spectacle of Lies …. [...]
Aug 21, 2008 - 4:46 pm 11. Joshua (a different one):SKK: For reasons I have yet to fathom, the Cheating Chinese have either hijacked or hypnotized this august body into ignoring, abetting, and even encouraging the flauting of rules. China now understands that is indeed special. Watch for increased international rule-flouting on all fronts from an empowered China.
I have my own conspiracy theory about this, which I mentioned in a different thread. Namely, that the IOC is trying to build up a nasty USA-China Olympic rivalry to replace the old USA-USSR one, in order to rekindle flagging TV viewership of the Games in the U.S. The kinds of shenanigans the IOC is apparently tolerating from the Chinese are more than a little reminiscent of those practiced by the sports machines of the Soviet-bloc nations.
Aug 21, 2008 - 5:57 pm 12. Wahaha:While I agree what chinese government did was wrong and stupid, the article is 100% self-righteous BS.
China has thousand years of history, to change chinese’s mind, you better bring up something that is convincing, What happened 40 years ago or some BS “commie, commie” wont make any chinese listen to you.
Hu Jia, the famous human right warrior in China is considered a traitor in China, get picture ? Of course, you can talk to yourself.
Aug 21, 2008 - 8:40 pm 13. yepyep:That kind of reasoning strikes me as “Leftist”.
What disgusts me about such kind of leftist reasoning is inclination to abuse politics for self-marketing. Leftists care little about what kind of consequences their theories and ideas have in the real world, as long as they look good while promoting those theories and ideas. “I care about single teenage moms from ethnic neighborhoods, so the government should support them.” Fine, so the gov supports them, and as a result hundreds of thousands of female teenagers get the idea: “If I have a child with some dude the government will give me money!” (which is bad, btw) But lefties don’t care. All they care about is how they come across – as “caring”.
It is basically the same with conservatives criticizing the Chinese government. “I am for a free press in China!” – How noble! How courageous! But what would happen if China had a free press? – The current government would be overthrown.
If you are aware of those consequence, and you actually want those consequences: Fine, go ahead, voice your opinion!
If you are not aware of the consequences – meaning what a democratically elected Chinese government would look like – then I would ask you to reconsider.
This is my imperfect opinion: I used to live in rural China for a long time. I speak Chinese and many of my friends are Chinese. In my personal opinion a democratically elected Chinese government would be utterly corrupt (even more so than it is now), ultra-nationalistic, socialistic (because of all the poor farmers), hostile towards Western values and maybe expansionist – at least in East Asia (Vietnam, Korea, Mongolia, Russia). And what’s worst such a government would be paralyzed in its own ways. Any hope that China would become pro-Western would have to be abandoned as soon as the first vote is cast. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am. But it does not seem likely to me, judging from my own experiences and the discussion I have had.
So, yeah, being pro free speech is glorious. But this not about you, this is about 1.3 billion Chinese.
You could make the same case for the Saudi Arabia … etc.
Aug 22, 2008 - 2:54 am 14. progressoverpeace:What I mean to say: you have to snap out of that mentality that democracy always and everywhere will support Our Western Values. It will not.
OK, Democracy was THE SOLUTION during the Cold War, when having democratic election meant having anti-communist election, since nobody in his right mind would support hard-core communists. But that was then, this is now.
I would just note that the last Olympics in which the home country took to such unabashed cheating was in Seoul. That was the dirtiest olympics I have ever seen and caused me to lose interest in the games for a good while. Now, the Chinese have rivaled the Koreans in blatant cheating that is so obvious it’s offensive that anyone would even attempt it. They insult our intelligence.
So much for concepts of honor out there. Sheesh.
Aug 22, 2008 - 5:24 am 15. Bill Corr:The contributor *yepyep* discusses what he believes would be the consequences of a free election in mainland China [i.e. excluding the ROC on Taiwan, already a functioning democracy].
He also mentioned Saudi Arabia, a reference I found interesting. I am in Saudi Arabia now; I’ve worked intermittently in Arabia, plus Oman and Kuwait, since 1975. Forty or even thirty years ago free elections in Peninsular Arabia would have led to the emergence of Arab Nationalist states on the model of Nasser’s Egypt or Kassem’s Iraq.
No longer; these days free elections in Saudi Arabia would return an Islamist majority with a strong tribally-based minority interest. The nearest thing there have been to free election here were limited municipal elections in Jeddah a few years ago; Jeddah is the most superficially ‘Westernized’ Saudi city. The elections were won resoundingly by men who denounced their more ‘liberal’ opponents as Westernized ’secularists’.
In post-liberation Kuwait, where the Americans and their allies insisted on free elections, it was assumed that a Conservative majority would be opposed by a Liberal party. In fact, the Big Rich hold most of the seats, largely through unashamed patronage, then the Islamists [who are very keen to stamp out the teaching of art and music in schools and prevent the building of any new churches] form the second bloc. The third element, the tribalists, are occupying parliamentary seats primarily to ensure that as many local Hatfields and McCoys get on the government pension / payroll / subsidized housing list as possible.
An Arab liberal – they are rare but some DO exist – is said to have told the following to Robert Fisk: “The Americans say they want democracy here in the Arab World. Don’t they realize that if there were democratic elections here then every Arab government would be against them?”
Aug 22, 2008 - 6:05 am 16. always right:progressoverpeace@Aug 22, 2008 – 5:24 am
…in blatant cheating that is so obvious it’s offensive that anyone would even attempt it. They insult our intelligence.
So much for concepts of honor out there. Sheesh.
I think the spectacles from the past two weeks may not be a bad thing.
It showed clearly to the world that China is not ready for the role of world’s 2nd superpower yet, even though they are bound and determined to do so. To borrow a phrase from baseball “There is no
cryingdishonor in winning.”All those holding anti-American rhetoric may reconsider a bit, “Do we really want a ChiComm (and Russian-sphere) world police?” We will see if they change their views in more acceptable “Americanism” (warts and all).
BTW, right now ChiComm is not interested in winning the world opinion over. They still need to project their brand of superiority to boost the own population – their economic power translated in the process of building up militarily to world’s 2nd power (if O elected, he may gut ours to world’s 2nd).
Yeah, the embarrassing performance in the Olympics (I don’t mean how many medals they won) makes us cringe, but they wouldn’t think it strange at all.
Aug 22, 2008 - 6:56 am 17. progressoverpeace:Good points, always right. One would think that China’s actions, especially with respect to something of such minor significance as olympic medals, would force many to rethink their ideas of how reasonable China is and how trustworthy they are. I hope the lesson sinks in.
Aug 22, 2008 - 9:10 am 18. Wahaha:Carnagie report clearly claimed that the current government is no longer driven by idealism, it is a technocracy.
ChiComm this, chiCom that really sounds really extremely ignorant, as you know nothing about China.
go read some reports by scholars and businessman who went to China, here is good one by British scholar :
China’s new intelligentsia
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10078
BTW, may I ask : did any of you try to search “nonstandard” opinions about China on internet, for at least 1 hour ? If not, then you are brainwashed.
What is the point of free information if you dont even try to listen to the other side of story ?
Aug 22, 2008 - 9:51 am 19. Lily:Well I dunno, China seems to be impressing some people here in the West. I believe that Barack Obama said yesterday that China has a great infrastructure. He seemed impressed.
But, seriously, I agree that a democratically elected Chinese government would not necessarily be an ally of the West. What they perceive as their best interests may not coincide with ours. Russia did not exactly leap to join us in democracy after their empire went by the wayside, although many of their repressed former satellites have.
Aug 22, 2008 - 10:44 am 20. Wahaha:As a student what joined the demonstration in 1989, I have to inform American people that We loved everything about America then, from watches, to houses, to skyscapers, to your political system.
What your medie is doing now is pushing Chinese away. Cuz of your propaganda machine, lot of Chinese dont trust America and West anymore.
There was a report that there are about 15,000 to 25,000 dissidents in China. If you multiply it by 50, it is not even 0.1% of the population in China; even you multiply it by 500, it is not even 1% of the population. get the picture, Mr. Shrawn ?
I know you hate communism, but you cant even find a chinese who care about communism. So, please dont push China and Russia hugging each other. That is not good for America.
Aug 22, 2008 - 11:04 am 21. Merry:Wahaha is right on this: anyone who cites the “Chicoms” (with one or two “m’s”) doesn’t know enough about China to comment on it. I automatically ignore anyone using that term (or committing gross spelling errors on such important words as “Tiananmen”).
I suspect that Yepyep is right about the immediate prospects for democracy in China; when I lived there, everyone from my neighbors to my taxi drivers told me that China wasn’t ready for it. Maybe someday… not yet. The ROC does have a functioning democracy, but it has a fraction of the population, has not functioned for long, still has fistfights in the Legislative Yuan, and has massive problems with corruption from both major parties (most recently, from former President Chen Shui-bian, whom DPP loyalists have been claiming was falsely accused of corruption for years; last week he apologized for campaign finance fraud, in which his wife wired millions to a Swiss Bank Account). There are still some kinks in the system, but both the ROC and South Korea are inspirational examples of what is possible. I hope it happens for China, but I suspect it is going to be a while. And I suspect that’s probably okay. When patriotic Chinese talk about how much their country has improved, they are often using a different standard of human rights – yeah, there’s no free press yet, but the standard of living has improved drastically.
Aug 22, 2008 - 1:43 pm 22. ReCon USMC:You can not made this up on what Obama said here in VA Yesterday . Frankly I was completely astounded any man could be that shallow with a Harvard education .Silly me !
I heard the Videos 3 times on both these huge issues points below . It was not a “” Gaff “” at all in his comments .It is how he sees America and the world sadly .
Ladies and Gentleman this is a grown man with a child like highly delusional mind at best .
You may want to forward this too those that believe Obama is a Citizen of the world and understands Foreign Affairs .
We will fix that stupid thought now .
Yesterday Obama here in VA made the most misinformed Moronic statement since President Jerald Ford said Russia didn’t have Missiles . Huh ?
Obama said China has a far better “Infrastructure “than does America with their fast Trains , modern Ports , new Air Terminals and Super Highways .
{And } that will cause American Cos to move there ??? I swear he said it !!!
Earth to Obama . China has no Unions or worker rights , Minimum wages , retirement funds , Vacation , Sick pay or pay or right to work laws . Much less Clean Air and environmental regulations . Most workers work 12-14 hours a days 6 days a week and made a $ 6-7 dollars a day in horrible conditions like no American has known since the 20’s .
70 % of all small cites an Villages don’t have any highways going to them , running water , heat and AC , schools or Hospitals near bye .
Their Ports are managed by Dubai (not China )and most of the Major Manufacturing plants are in small towns not in Big cities since The Government is trying to keep people in the county side since the cites already have too many people in them with no jobs available . China has to made 25 Million new jobs each year and inflation rates are triple America’s . You are allowed one child per couple so killing baby girls is done often since families need male workers to help support families .907 million are hungry .
The Marxist State controls all of the above mentions ..Obama .
So that is what Obama wants for America as President ? Get him out of here America !
Earth to Obama part 2 .. Later here in VA in CHESTERFIELD , OBAMA also said Russia should leave Georgia but ‘”Who” is America to tell any country not to invade another Nation ?
Aug 22, 2008 - 7:34 pm 23. always right:Russia invaded Georgia Barack H Obama ! Russia didn’t go to the UN 3 Times like America did and three times before Congress as well with any grievances . Not one . Where the hell were you ? At CHURCH .
Georgia didn’t brake 16 UN Violations like Saddam did or Fly planes into the No Fly Zone and shoot at those American planes with Missiles and brake the Peace Treaty and regulations 321 times and not allow the UN inspectors to inspect his secret places . Georgia also didn’t Murder , rape or steal all the citizens money like Saddam did while,he lived in 121 palaces .
Georgia is a model Democracy with a elected Congress , President and a friend to America .It also had 4,500 troops in Iraq supporting our Troops there . We Liberated Iraq and got rid of one of the worst Thugs in world history …Obama ! Russia did no such thing in Georgia …Oboma .
Too compare America and Russia on like ground is beyond Stupid and uniformed ……Get him out of here .
This would be funny if he were not so dangerous and could be our next President ….. or appeasement candy for Russia , Iran and China . Since He sees America as the obvious problem and appeasement agreements with hostile proven long time enemies of Democracy and freedom Obama asposties . One suspects much like lord Chamberlain did with Hitler .We know how that turned out , Putin is STALIN .
ReCon USMC@Aug 22, 2008 – 7:34 pm
No surprise here. Both are only interested in façades. Both are rotten scary when you dig a little deeper. And Obama can only wish that his administration has the same kind of authoritarian tight control over the population.
This should be a major focused ad buy for the RNC. Obama thinks ‘infrastructures in Beijing’ is the attraction for business. Not cheap labor (some could say slave-like), not high tax code (and in the process of getting higher, windfall anyone? ‘for a FAIR share’), not environmental nazis (regulations).
Still can’t believe more majority here think Obama has the better economic plan!
Aug 23, 2008 - 4:31 am 24. always right:What attracted me to come over here was the Constitution, the experiment of a new form of government in America, the Founding Fathers’ believes that the Constitution is uniquely suited for a moral and religious Americans.
“We The People” thus spoken, the right of individuals to pursuit happiness, and the resulting responsibilities for their own pursuit of happiness. A reward system mostly based on the merits of each individual, not who he knows (relationship) and how old he is (time put in the system). Not the watches, nor the houses, cars, ‘skyscapers’ etc. Certainly not the artificial equalness (the Fairness so beloved by socialists, marxists)
Who advertises Chinese themselves are ready for INSTANT democracy? We are talking about a people who go along with the chicoms and still denied Tiananmen Square ever happened. Yes, I use chicom because the ruling government there calls themselves the communist party whether YOU like it or not. Whether they try their new capitalist approach there is no denying the totalitarian (authoritarian, whatever) brutal regime.
Chinese themselves rationalize that instant democracy is chaos and use that excuse to give the government their authorities. Bringing up corruption in other countries and the “improved standard of living” argument have no bearing on the discussion.
Aug 23, 2008 - 5:25 am 25. Pajamas Media » Cheating Chinese Gymnasts Bring Out Anti-U.S. Bias:[...] there’s more at stake here than just cheating. As my colleague Josh Strawn points out, “communism breeds paranoia and creates an almost pathological need to lie and [...]
Aug 24, 2008 - 1:10 am