“What happens when an authoritarian government and thousands of activists go head-to-head at the Olympics? China is about to find out.” From Foreign Policy:
You can always count on the Olympic Games to provide drama. Next year’s games in Beijing will be no different; they too will produce powerful stories and riveting television. But this time the images will not just be athletes overcoming the odds or breaking records. They will also focus on the clashes between the Chinese police and the activists who will arrive from all around the world. The causes that motivate their activism range from human rights to global warming, from Darfur to Tibet, from Christianity to Falun Gong. The clashes outside the stadiums are likely to be more intense and spectacular than the sports competitions taking place inside. And the showdown will be captured as much by the videocameras in the cell phones of protesters and spectators as any news agencies’ camera crews. In fact, the Beijing Olympics will not just offer another opportunity to test the limits of human athletic performance; it will also test the limits of a centralized police state’s ability to confront a nebulous swarm of foreign activists armed with BlackBerries. A governmental bureaucracy organized according to 20th-century principles will meet 21st-century global politics. Lenin meets YouTube.
…… No public relations campaign, regardless of how massive, can alter reality. And the reality is that thousands of protesters with causes that enjoy public support around the world”and in China”will stage highly visible and creative protests during the Olympic Games. It is equally true that the Chinese government will try to suppress them. Inevitably, thousands of videocameras will record the ensuing battle. The path from the streets of Beijing to YouTube will be almost impossible for the regime to monitor and blockade. [Full Text]
Read also:The YouTube Wars: Beijing, 2008 by blogger Adam Teslik.
