Whose Dream, and Whose Nightmare?

“One World, One Dream,” is the official slogan for the 2008 Summer Olympics to be held in China. May one wonder what that slogan means?

Preeminent civil libertarian Nat Hentoff offers an understanding:

…Memories of blood-soaked Tiananmen Square have faded around the world. But for those who remember, the Chinese government's massacre of thousands of students in June 1989 - horrifying as it was - pales in comparison with the more than 400,000 black Africans obliterated by China's close partner, Sudan, in Darfur - along with the mass rapes of so many painfully surviving black African women.

I expect the present Chinese leaders - as the glories of the 2008 Olympics approach - would not want any references to their complicity in the ongoing holocaust in Darfur….

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First and many other humanitarian organizations, religious groups and deeply concerned people around the world have been working insistently, without success, to stop this genocide. Focusing on the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, they can organize a last-chance rescue of the Darfur survivors by an international shaming of China. And I hope there will be nations who boycott the summer Olympics.

Here’s Amnesty International’s comprehensive report, “2008 Olympic Shames.”

Last weekend I was at a party where one of the guys was wearing a Tommy Bahamas shirt, usually over $100 at U.S. stores, that his wife bought him in China for $8. I commented that, aside from property infringement, purchase of such knock-offs exploited Chinese laborers at paltry wages. He replied that such knock-offs often come from the same factories as contracted for the legitimate items. We then discussed how difficult it is these days to buy anything not made in China, for example 5000 of Wal-Mart’s 6000 items come from China, and how such cheap products help the American poor and restrain American inflation.

There’s just part of the conundrum for Americans. We’re also of two or more minds about Chinese military and strategic capacities and plans, or how seriously China’s mercantile politics impacts world order or human catastrophes such as in Darfur (where China has been a block to firmer UN Security council action). We’re, as well, unsure about how much of China’s touted economic dynamism and growth is real, or how much masks economic weaknesses, bubbles, or coming problems that will affect the world’s economy and, even, environment.

Jack Risko brings together some of the major economic concerns:

We have previously discussed the Investor’s Business Daily claim that China’s GDP numbers are seriously overstated. This is very troublesome, as is China’s high money supply growth, and as are the other evident imbalances in China’s economic structure. In our view the extent to which China’s numbers are cooked will have a major impact, perhaps the single greatest impact, on how severe the next global economic downturn is, whenever that should happen.

Reporters Without Borders points out a “French website blocked for warning of risks of investing in China.”

“Internet filtering is not just a problem for political activists, it also affects those who do business with China,” the press freedom organisation said. “How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information about social tension, corruption or local trade unions is available? This case of censorship, affecting a very specialised site with solely French-language content, shows the government attaches as much importance to the censorship of economic data as political content.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The free flow of information online is not only a human rights issue, it is essential to lasting economic growth and the creation of solid trade relations with other countries.”

Reporters Without Borders, also, exposes the censorship of foreign media that sets the stage for Olympics 2008 coverage being close to whatever Beijing desires.

Disturbing lapses in application of new rules for foreign media
Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about a series of incidents that show that some officials within the state apparatus have no intention of respecting the new regulations for foreign journalists. In the past few days, a BBC crew was expelled from a city in the central province of Hunan, the correspondent of a website based abroad was banned from working and two news media were prevented from covering the recent People’s Congress meeting.

"The government clearly has not done all that is necessary to ensure that the correspondents of foreign news media really are able to move about and work freely," the press freedom organisation said. "What was the point of proclaiming new regulations if they are not respected?

Here’s Reporters Without Borders’ 2007 comprehensive report on Chinese internal repression.

I’m a big fan of China’s films, shop at Wal-Mart, and will be glued to the screen during the Olympics. At the same time, the 2008 presidential campaign will be entering full steam. Will any of the candidates have even a mention for China’s other impacts on human rights at home (and here from Human Rights Watch) , self-enriching political exploiters, its gross pollution, its mercantile trade and politics overriding world order, its burgeoning military capable of winning against the U.S. in a takeover of Taiwan by 2010?

China's rapid beefing up of its military might should give it the edge over Taiwan for the first time by 2010, Jane's Defense Weekly said Tuesday…. a boost aimed at making its forces capable of a quick, decisive invasion of Taiwan while deterring US intervention, the authoritative magazine said.

"China is working hard to transform its Vietnam War-era defense establishment into a credible regional military power with a new generation of indigenous equipment, designed to thwart more advanced adversaries," said Jane's.

For details on China’s military buildup, see the Defense Department’s “Annual Report To Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2006.” (Will the Democrats claim in 2010 that they were misled, or will they read it?) Heritage Foundation, previously, published an extensive evaluation of “China’s Military Power.”

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has an update for subscribers today, Activists Turn Up Heat on Beijing Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is trying to distance itself from political causes. "We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments in how they behave," Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC's coordination commission for the Beijing Games, said yesterday. But after being asked about the Darfur and Tibet protests, IOC president Jacques Rogge admitted, "We certainly are going to have more of this. We know that."…

China's Olympic organizers say this isn't the proper forum for a discussion of international affairs. "I heard some people are saying they would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to protest China's policy over Darfur. They are either ignorant or ill-natured," Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun told reporters after his trip to Sudan.

“Hurumpf” say those being starved and murdered.