The policemen were friendly and polite: they accompanied him on shopping trips, carried heavy bags for him, even bargained for him at stores and helped him install an air-conditioner at home. Since they followed him anyway, at my suggestion, Jianguo would sometimes ride the police vehicle when he went out. I did it with him a few times as we went to meet friends at restaurants. In the restaurant, the policemen, usually two on a shift, would take a table at the other side of the room, and eat their meal while keeping an eye on us.

“They called me dage (big brother),” Jianguo told me, “but of course they are just doing their job, and they would ransack my place or arrest me anytime if an order is issued.”

The escort vanished after the Olympics, with sporadic reappearances:

Once in 2009, for reasons not completely clear, they took him to the police station for a twelve hour “inquiry,” and confiscated his computer and mobile phone. But when I asked him what happened at the police station, Jianguo laughed: “Oh, I just gave them a big long talk about my views on politics and democracy, while they kept filling my tea cup, and also let me take a few breaks.”

The account is taken from Jianying Zha’s Tide Players, to be released in Spring 2011.

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Ms. Huang was released from the hotel, the Lizhou Cement Factory Rest House, on July 17. She said she expected to remain under a form of house arrest for one year in her hometown, under police surveillance. The case is one of several that starkly illustrate how the Summer Olympics and the Paralympics in Beijing last year failed to expand freedom of speech in China, despite assertions by the international organizers of those games that the events would push the Chinese government toward more democratic policies.

Ms. Huang traveled with 10 others from the town of Liuzhou in Guangxi Province to Beijing last September to protest four cases of property seizure involving local officials. But after being interviewed by an American journalist, they were seized by plainclothes police officers who had followed them from Guangxi. Ms. Huang, two older sisters and their 79-year-old mother, all of whom had traveled to Beijing, were arrested.

The mother was soon released, but Ms. Huang and her infant son were kept for 314 days in a hotel in Liuzhou. Her two sisters were held in a detention center.

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He Weifang, a celebrated law professor and lead signatory to last year’s Charter 08 petition calling for democratic reforms in China, said the ruling Communist Party was currently engaged in a fresh wave of repressive internet and media censorship.

Even allowing for the Communist party’s highly conservative approach to any kind of reform – embodied in Deng Xiaoping’s famous phrase “Crossing the river by feeling for stones” – he said China was moving backwards on basic freedoms.

“The situation at the moment is that the river has deepened and the Party has got scared, so it has pulled back, fearing that the waters will rise up and drown them. In the last two years this pulling back from the water has got worse,” he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

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Why the official paranoia, why the theatre, why the intense security which made life so difficult? The need for security against international terrorism, while legitimate to a degree, was exaggerated to become the official cover for manifestations of extreme xenophobia. To many conservative Chinese leaders, status is more important than goodwill; form more meaningful than substance; the perfect theatrical performance, the technically perfect Games, more important than the individual spectator’s sense of wellbeing and enjoyment. This is particularly a feature of those bodies involved in the Olympics organisation, the Ministry of State Security, the Bureau of Public Security and the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, normally the cosmopolitan, enlightened and diplomatic leader or intermediary in international events, was less in evidence.

But it was more than just a conflict between organisational cultures. The Chinese Government is struggling to maintain its rule and at the same time guarantee social cohesion without political rights. This is particularly difficult now when leaders perceive a need to balance rising inflation against the requirement to create more jobs. In a country where unemployment is now endemic, inequality a source of rising discontent, and corruption and land seizure are a daily scourge, the Government is engaged in a two-line struggle to maintain popular support. It is allowing its citizens ”freedom of expression” on discrete issues decided by the Government on the basis of their potential to promote a unifying chauvinism.

In other words, the rights of foreigners before and during the Olympics were abused because it was more important for China’s leadership to send a message to its own citizens: That the international community recognised the legitimacy of its rule over the whole country, including Tibet.That China was now a country with sufficient international status and power to put on the most technically impressive Olympics ever.That, in the process, no foreign or domestic political dissent would be tolerated.

Dr Kent is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International and Public Law, College of Law, Australian National University and the author of Beyond Compliance: China, International Organisations and Global Security (Stanford University Press, 2007).

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The immediate impact was both positive and negative.

On the plus side, tough restrictions on foreign journalists were lifted in the run-up to and during the Games, giving much greater media access. (Those more liberal rules expire in October and an important question is whether they are renewed.)

Also, the looming Games made China more sensitive than usual to international criticism. That eagerness for the Games not to be “spoiled” may have contributed to progress in other, more general, areas.

[...] But there were obvious negatives. The forced evictions which made the Olympic construction possible. The bolstering of security forces throughout the country and especially in Beijing.

The pressure on dozens of activists, who, according to reports, were forced to leave Beijing for the summer, confined to their homes or even arrested as part of the general suppression of dissent.

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The United States on Saturday urged China to release immediately eight American nationals detained after pro-Tibet protests in Beijing during the Olympic Games.

“We have asked for their immediate release and are continuing to follow their cases closely,” embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson told AFP.

Beijing police said earlier this week that 10-day detention terms were handed out to six foreigners for “upsetting public order” after a small pro-Tibet protest on Tuesday.

Two other Americans were detained at a separate protest on Thursday near the Olympic area, along with a German national and a Briton.

The Wall Street Journal also reports:

China won the right to the host the Olympics in part by promising to improve human rights. Human-rights advocates say instead the government has staged a crackdown on dissidents, and detained or harassed Chinese applicants for special protest zones set up by the government during the Olympics.

The government has deported most of the foreigners who have managed to stage scattered, brief protest. Among the most active have been those pushing for a free Tibet. Extended detention for foreigners under such circumstances is unusual.

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Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 300 Bibles on Sunday from four American Christians who arrived in a southwestern city with plans to distribute them, the group’s leader said.

The Bibles were taken from the group’s checked luggage after they landed at the airport in the city of Kunming, said Pat Klein, head of Vision Beyond Borders. The group, based in Sheridan, Wyoming, distributes Bibles and Christian teaching materials around the world to “strengthen the persecuted church,” according to its Web site.

The group arrived in China on Sunday and had intended to distribute the Bibles to people in the city, Klein told the AP in a telephone interview while still at the airport.

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China has also broken its promise to allow “complete freedom” to the media. No one expected the domestic media suddenly to be unshackled for the Olympics – the heated debate in China over the two young singers was duly excised from local websites and banned from the state-controlled media – but foreign journalists did think they would operate freely. That has not happened. It has been easier than ever for visiting journalists to enter China, but they are often hindered and harassed if they try to cover issues other than sport, and some websites are blocked within the main Olympic press centre.

The Chinese Communist party’s approach is not a surprise. But the IOC’s casual attitude towards the promises it received seven years ago from Beijing on human rights and press freedom (it has done slightly better on monitoring Beijing’s poor air quality) is an embarrassment for the whole Olympic movement.

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Public involvement on a variety of issues is on the rise here, with the government in a few cases viewing activist groups as partners rather than groups that need to be controlled.

But critics say the government’s desire for control means there are limits to how much it will work with activists.

[...] By many measures, the Olympics have not brought about hoped-for changes in China, from its policies on human rights and Tibet to its support for outcast governments such as those in Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Myanmar.

Wang, whose native Shanxi province is dotted with small coal mines, knows it will take more than marches to clean the environment. But she credits the Olympics with an important first step: raising awareness.

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It was easy to spot in Sichuan, and it will undoubtedly be prominent as the Olympics unfold. When the Olympic torch toured the earthquake-ravaged province just days ahead of the games, thousands of onlookers sported identical “I (heart) China” T-shirts. The shirts aren’t just a fashion statement in this Olympic moment, but a political statement.

“I (heart) China” serves as the Beijing regime’s succinct public response to foreign criticism of China’s human rights record: If our people love our country, then you meddlers from outside ought to just shut up. It’s a fair point.

…A much better way to try to change China would be to eschew public criticism and, as the Olympic behaviour guide for Beijingers recommends, avoid public displays of affection for the Chinese leadership. In other words, effusively praise China for its cooperation with the US on North Korea nuclear disarmament, for example, while privately condemn human rights abuses and deny it propaganda victories like appearing at the Olympics, unless earned by specific actions. Rather than meet publicly with five freed dissidents at the White House recently, Bush should have demanded privately that China release the dozens of dissidents it has arrested as part of its pre-Olympic cleanup effort before he agreed to board Air Force One for Beijing.

If Beijing meets the demands, you’ve won a significant victory and Beijing gets a reward. If Beijing doesn’t cooperate, you’ve denied the regime the oxygen of propaganda so vital to maintaining its grip on hearts and minds. The less potent the propaganda, the more likely China’s public will be to question what they hear from the official media. But, no matter what you do, it’s up to China’s people to start asking the questions. Eventually, they may come to understand that for Chinese as well as foreigners, there’s nothing incompatible with challenging the government while wearing an “I (heart) China” T-shirt.

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A housing activist who applied for permission to hold a demonstration in Beijing’s specially designated Olympic protest zones has been detained by police.

The detention of Zhang Wei, whose home was demolished two years ago to make way for an upmarket development in Beijing’s Qianmen district, highlights the Chinese government’s crackdown on dissent ahead of the opening of the games on Friday.

Police detained Ms Zhang on Wednesday for allegedly “disturbing social order”, a member of her family said on Thursday. She was told Ms Zhang would be transferred to a detention centre in south Beijing, family members said.

She was detained just days after Ms Zhang and fellow Qianmen residents applied for police permission to hold a demonstration in one of three designated protest zones to be set up in Beijing parks during the Olympics. Police rejected the application.

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China’s intense efforts to block any protest that would mar the Olympic Games were challenged Wednesday by foreign activists equally bent on diverting attention to issues as varied as Tibetan independence, the crisis in Darfur and religious freedom.

Two American and two British protesters slipped through a smothering Olympic security net, climbed a pair of lampposts and unfurled banners demanding freedom for Tibet near the new stadium where the Beijing Games are to open Friday night. In Tiananmen Square, three American Christian activists spoke out against China’s rights record and protested its population control policies. The four pro-Tibet protesters have been deported, while a second demonstration by Christian activists on Thursday was disrupted when plainclothes police removed the protesters from Tiananmen Square.

In Bangkok Thursday morning, President Bush spoke directly to the issue of human rights in China, hours before heading to the Chinese capital for the opening ceremony. “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists,” he said.

Meanwhile, a day after Beijing revoked a visa for Darfur activist and former Olympian Joey Cheek, the U.S. Olympic team selected a Sudanese refugee to be the American delegation’s flag-bearer at the opening ceremonies, a move that will further highlight China’s role in the war-scarred region.

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China’s actions over the past year — its tight controls on dissent, the detentions of dissidents, restrictions on entry into China, crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang, the obsession with staging a protest-free Olympics — have shown that China’s authoritarian political system is not opening up.

On the surface, this may sound like an old story: China’s Communist Party leadership didn’t tolerate political opposition 10 or 20 years ago, and it still doesn’t today. What’s new here? Yet the run-up to the Olympics does mark a milestone in China’s relations with the rest of the world: China has reached the point where it no longer seeks to mollify or accommodate the international community’s expressions of concern about human rights. Instead, China can now repress political dissent while virtually ignoring what the rest of the world may think.

To see the change, consider how the underlying dynamics have shifted over the past 10 years.

Read a CDT interview with James Mann about his book The China Fantasy.

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Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.

Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.

“My bet is the authorities won’t let them out until after the Olympics,” said Wang Xiahua, a veteran anti-government agitator from this farm town 180 miles southwest of Beijing and a supporter of the imprisoned farmers.

Read also Under Olympics House Arrest from RFA.

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Nine German Olympians have posed with pictures of Chinese dissidents held up in front of their faces to protest the country’s politics.

The nine responded to a Suddeutsche Zeitung magazine request sent out to 200 German athletes to pose for a spread headlined “We are all Chinese,” which was published Friday.

The headline was a reference to the famous 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner)” line from then American President John F. Kennedy during a speech for freedom after the Berlin Wall was built.

Sabine Spitz, a mountain biker, chose to hold up over her face a picture of Yang Tongyan, a writer sentenced to 12 years for demanding democratic change in China.

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