Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda or the “fierce one” travelled to Beijing to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympics on August 24.

Some Nepalese newspapers have described this as a diplomatic victory for China and a cause of worry for India. This is hardly the truth, at least for the moment. The new Nepali coalition government comprising the CPN (M), the CPN (United Marxist–Leninist or UML), and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), have had little time to hammer out even a basic foreign policy template. All three political parties and coalition partners have different foreign policy views and nuances. Other than the CPN (UML), the other two coalition parties are new entrants in democratic politics and will take time to learn the word plays and stances in the world of diplomacy where there is no place for guns and street protests.

The Times of India takes a different view, however:

The political overflight of New Delhi has not gone unnoticed here — Prachanda would be the first Nepalese leader to make Beijing his first stop and not New Delhi.

However you look at it, it’s a snub, particularly since New Delhi had invited him to visit much earlier. It doesn’t begin the new government’s ties with India on a promising note. Prachanda even chose to ignore signals from India that it would not be “helpful” in relations with New Delhi.

The Nepali Foreign Minister will travel to India this week where he aims to smooth over relations. Read also “Nepal Says it Will Maintain Equal Ties With India, China” from VOA and “Prachanda’s journey begins in Beijing” from Asia Times.

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Post tags: nepal, Olympics diplomacy
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Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping has tiptoed on to the world stage this Olympics, rubbing shoulders with U.S. President George W. Bush and foreign heirs apparent but making sure he doesn’t steal President Hu Jintao’s thunder.

China’s parliament re-elected Hu as president in March and gave next generation leader Xi a five-year mandate as vice-president.

Xi, China’s point man on the Olympics, has kept his head low because nothing is certain in the opaque world of successionist politics in China.

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Post tags: Olympics diplomacy, Olympics politics, Xi Jinping
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The two presidents have spent a lot of time together here: at the dedication of the new U.S. Embassy in China, dinner with the U.S. ambassador, lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The two also watched swimmer Michael Phelps smash a world record and attended the big U.S.-China basketball game on Sunday night with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a longtime Bush family friend.

[...] The visit to China, his 22nd since leaving the Oval Office in 1993, has served as a kind a nostalgic homecoming for the senior Bush: As the U.S. envoy in China in the mid-’70s, Bush put in practice an approach to personal diplomacy that reached its apex nearly 20 years later, when as president, Bush called in a lifetime’s worth of chits with other world leaders to marshal the grand coalition that evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

The report includes a video segment.

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Post tags: George H.W. Bush, Olympics diplomacy
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President Bush’s visit to Beijing almost looks like a vacation — right down to a family reunion. But his three-nation Asian trip also takes him to the doorsteps of two troublesome regimes while forcing him to balance the Olympic spirit with the delicacies of diplomacy.

It will be mostly business first, with a one-day stop in Seoul to meet with President Lee Myung-bak. Getting North Korea to live up to its promise to continue dismantling its nuclear weapons program will be high on the agenda. . . .

Then comes a little break to be the First Fan at the Olympics, where the president will attend the opening ceremonies. His wife, brother and one of his daughters are going along, and they’ll meet his father and sister in Beijing.

The 62-year-old president, who says he’s “sprinting” to a strong finish to his term, plans to do a little of that literally. In an echo of his first trip to China in 1975 with his father, when he says he spent his time bicycling around Beijing, he said he hopes to take a spin on the Olympic mountain bike course.
Bush has been an unwavering supporter of the Beijing Olympics, agreeing nearly a year ago to attend and sticking to his decision despite calls to stay away to protest China’s rights lapses or its rule over Tibet.

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Post tags: George Bush, Olympics diplomacy, Olympics politics
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Vice Chairman Liu Te-shun of the Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei on Thursday said “Zhongguo Taipei” — a name in the Chinese language that strongly suggests that Taiwan is part of China — “is not acceptable to us.”

A month from the Aug. 8 Olympic opening ceremonies, spokesman Yang Yi of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said that “Zhongguo Taipei” is just as valid as an Olympic designator as the previously used “Zhonghua Taipei.”

“Zhongguo Taipei” means “Taipei China” and uses “Zhongguo,” the name China calls itself, implying Taipei is a part of China. “Zhonghua Taipei” uses “Zhonghua” — a more ambiguous word that applies to a deliberately undefined Chinese nation.

The dispute — arcane to many outsiders — goes right to the heart of the battle over Taiwan’s identity, which has been fought over by the sides since they split amid civil war in 1949. It also casts a shadow over recently improved economic ties, in the form of the first direct flights between the old foes in nearly six decades.

Read also a report from Taipei Times.

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Post tags: Olympics diplomacy, Olympics Taiwan, Taiwan status
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Mr Sarkozy told Chinese President Hu Jintao he would go to Beijing during a half-hour meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Eight industrialised nations summit in northern Japan.

Mr Sarkozy had threatened to boycott the August 8 ceremony following a Chinese crackdown in Tibet in March that sparked international outrage, leading to speculation that some world leaders might shun the games.

Mr Sarkozy has left open the possibility of holding face-to-face talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, who has met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President George W Bush.

See also an AP video on the topic:

Meanwhile, the French Foreign Minister has asked for a meeting with the Chinese ambassador over comments he made threatening “serious consequences” if Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama.

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Post tags: France, Nicolas Sarkozy, Olympics diplomacy
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China’s resistance to sanctioning Sudan for the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and the continuing violence toward and repression of Tibetan monks have prompted a world outcry against China. The reason is clear. The spirit of the Olympics is about bringing together nations and people from all over the world in peace. China’s support for the genocidal regime in Khartoum, and its own actions in Tibet, run contrary to that Olympic spirit. But as host, China puts itself in the international spotlight and invites questions about its own commitment to human rights.

Here is AP footage of the torch arriving in San Francisco under cover of darkness early this morning:

“FREE TIBET” Giant Banners on Golden Gate Bridge, Apr.7-2008

SF mayor Gavin Newsom has said the torch route will be altered to minimize protests.

While Germany’s Der Spiegel writes in an editorial:

After the Chinese government’s suppression of a rebellion in the Tibetan capital Lhasa and in the huge country’s western provinces, the West is suffering the shock of realization. Many thought that China, as it emerges to become a modern economic power benefiting from Western-style globalization, was moving beyond a past littered with human rights violations. Now, it is suddenly being revealed once again as a depressingly ordinary old-style dictatorship — and as a perfectly functioning police state in which raising one’s head in protest is a dangerous undertaking.

Almost every day brings new, bitter disillusionment for foreigners who have been only too willing to admire China, and to marvel at the Shanghai skyline, at the frenzy of modernization that has gripped the Chinese economy and at the late-night traffic jams created by the proud owners of new cars in China’s mega-cities. Now, however, Chinese authorities are busy dashing hopes that China’s ascent to affluence and global power might automatically lead to political liberalization. Or that Starbucks coffee shops would inevitably encourage democratic discussion. Or that Audi sedans could guarantee unlimited freedom. Any such aspirations are now clearly a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, in the International Herald Tribune, Philip Bowring writes about the potential domestic consequences of the nationalistic sentiment that has flared as a result of recent events in Tibet and Olympics protests:

Nationalism is more often aroused by setbacks than success, so the Tibet problems and the possible threats to a triumphal Olympics are stirring it in China.

On the horizon is the possibility that these will combine with high inflation, stagnating exports and trade tensions with the United States to create a perfect nationalistic storm.

The Chinese leadership faces a difficult balancing act.

The Earth Times reports on the government’s efforts to counter the protest messages:

The state-run news agency Xinhua condemned protesters for “vile misdeeds” while Wang Hui, spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee said, “We strongly condemn the disgusting behaviour of a handful of Tibetan separatists who have tried to sabotage the Olympic torch relay.”

“Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world,” Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu added Tuesday.

Pro Tibet protesters climb Golden Gate Bridge april 7 2008

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Post tags: Darfur, Olympics diplomacy, Olympics torch, Tibet protests
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China said the United States is unfit to present itself as a “defender of human rights” and a senior official accused Western critics of conspiring to use the Beijing Olympic Games as a tool to subvert Communist Party rule.

The U.S. State Department’s latest report on human rights across the globe, issued this week, did not name China among the world’s very worst offenders but said its record remained “poor”.

But with Beijing due to host the Summer Olympic Games starting August 8, training intense international attention on China’s often harsh restrictions on dissidents, religious groups and disgruntled citizens, Chinese officials hit back on Thursday with sarcasm and their own accusations.

“We humbly suggest that the U.S. desist from posing as a ‘defender of human rights’ and pay more attention to the United States’ own human rights record,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement issued by the official Xinhua news agency.

Read also Cardinal: Olympics Chance for Rights from AP.

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Post tags: Olympics diplomacy, Olympics human rights
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For the last 20 years team members have been obliged to sign a contract as a condition of taking part in the Games. But for the first time a clause had been inserted into the Team Members Agreement stating athletes must not comment on politically-sensitive issues during the event in Beijing.

…Chief executive Simon Clegg said the BOA had “no desire to restrict athletes’ freedom of speech”.

Clegg’s comment came after Opposition politicians and human rights organisations had accused the BOA of pandering to the Chinese.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg told BBC1′s Politics Show: “We have to be very clear with the Chinese: they now play a significant role in the world economy and international affairs. That brings certain domestic responsibilities with it and I think for us to sort of gag ourselves is a real abdication of our moral responsibility to push for human rights wherever they are being abused.”

Adding his own voice to the cacophony of criticism, Angry Chinese Blogger also points out it is not just the UK that planned to keep its athletes from joining the Beijing 2008 political fray: Belgium and New Zealand have similar clauses in their Olympic contracts.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Beijing’s Olympic organizers seem to like the idea of keeping athletes quiet, according to an AP report. Also, upon being told to keep his mouth shut, a British Olympian immediately made his views about Darfur known. From AFP:

Richard Vaughan, a quarter-finalist in badminton at both the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and currently ranked 30th in the world, said in a statement released Tuesday that it was “very difficult to keep a polite silence about a conflict that continues to cost so many lives.”

His comments came just days after the BOA backed down over its plan to prevent the country’s competitors from commenting on “politically sensitive issues” surrounding the Games in Beijing this summer.

[Image: An political re-working of the 2008 Olypmics logo, from uomolinux]

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Post tags: England, Olympics diplomacy, Olympics human rights
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The Prince made his decision known to campaigners for a free Tibet, who had been calling on him to show solidarity with those who believe the Games risk obscuring China’s human rights record.

He gave no reason for his decision, and neither did he say whether he had received a formal invitation.

(...)
Read the rest of Prince Charles’ Olympic-sized Snub to China (75 words)

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Post tags: England, Olympics diplomacy, prince charles
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