EDITORIAL:

Beijing 2008 and the Art of Unknowing

There is a strange unreality these days about being a "westerner" visiting China for a few weeks each year and experiencing a tiny glimpse of life there... then returning home to be told (by implication) that you imagined the whole thing. After swimming in the sea of joy that was the Beijing Olympics (followed a week later by the "the greatest Paralympic Games ever") I left to return home while the TV monitors in the airport showed the first Chinese astronaut to walk in space. This must be the biggest "face gain" for China in 150 years.

When I got home I couldn't avoid noticing that if China was mentioned at all in the local media it was all negative. It was the evil empire, it was "don't look sideways at them or they'll shoot you!" it was "whatever they say - they're lying!

During my visit to Beijing (September '08) Hu Jintao was reported as criticising any tendency to put profits before people - particularly in the context of food safety. The local response here was "They knew all along - they just hushed it up until after the Olympics!"

I was talking to a friend in Beijing (well educated, in her mid 20s) about the Three Gorges Dam Project - which I suggested was a disaster almost comparable with the Cultural Revolution. She said she and many of her friends were also concerned about it and were looking at foreign websites because they did not believe Chinese sites were telling the truth. Since the attacks on the torch relay, the riots in Lhasa and the way the western media portrayed these events have convinced her that it was the Western media that was telling lies.

I think there is an element of panic in the way China is being reported in the West - beginning with the torch relay and continuing throughout the overwhelming success of the games. China is being too successful while the US appears to be failing economically and losing its status as world leader.

Perhaps as a result of the games China seems to have become aware of having a world audience. Hu Jintao says party officials should become media savvy, but can western media overcome its anti-China bias to adequately report what they have to say?

Also, I think as a result of the torch relay and the attacks upon it, China seems to have realised that it must publicly confront the Free Tibet movement - hence the counter-demonstrations by overseas students. At first I was surprised that the Chinese did not seem to have expected the attacks on the Torch Relay, then I read a report that prior to the Games, in talks between the Chinese Government and the Dalai Lama's representatives, the latter had undertaken "not to support any activities which will disrupt and undermine the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games."

Now you know why the volunteer torchbearers were so angry whenever the "Free Tibet" thugs tried to grab the torch. Then the tables were reversed; flag-waving Chinese students protected the torch and the Free Tibet" thugs tried to tell them "We aren't demonstrating against you, just your government" - as though there was any difference between the two in the Chinese mind.

So now we have George Bush telling us the free Market is STILL the best system (curiously reminiscent of the US political line after the 1929 stock market crash) while his country's economy heads down the toilet and drags the rest of the world with it. All this as a result of collective greed and stupidity. Now we have that sleazy little crook Rupert Murdoch on Australia's Public Broadcaster lecturing us on how to run the country and telling us the free market system is still the best etc. etc..

Perhaps if President-Elect Barack Obama is to truly "restore America to its position of moral leadership of the World" (and Americans really use phrases like that) he must first teach his business leaders to keep their fingers out of the till.

And finally, now we have the Western media continuing to treat the aging Dalai Lama as a cross between Jesus Christ and Father Christmas as it tamely reproduces his almost daily press releases (however incomprehensible). This man is a CIA puppet without a country and clearly not a player - why are we still hearing from him on Tibet and nothing from Beijing?

Dialogue between his supporters and the Chinese Government is a futile exercise because there is no way Beijing can accede to his demand for 25% of the land surface of China (bet you didn't read THAT in the Murdoch press!) to be ethnically cleansed of all but the seven million ethnic Tibetans - and no army to keep out the now dispossessed ethnic Hui, the Han and the Mongolians who have lived there for centuries.

But the Dalai has to persist with this nonsense and refuse genuine negotiations or his CIA funding will dry up. The next media blitz we can look forward to is from the Taiwanese who resent being eclipsed by the Mainland and want to persuade us that their slightly Americanised version of Chinese Culture is the true one. Don't say you weren't warned!