Tibet and the Beijing Olympics: A Sporting Chance

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Photo from Chinese government official media, via blog.sohu.com. More Chinese government officially published photos are here.

The Economist, the only Western publication with an accredited reporter in Lhasa when riots first erupted, identifies a silver lining (albeit a thin very thin one) in the fallout over China’s crackdown on Tibetans:

It is now plain that this month’s rioting in Lhasa was not an isolated venting of anti-Chinese spleen (see article). It was part of a broader outpouring of fury felt across the Tibetan plateau. China has responded in time-worn, depressing fashion: with massive numbers of troops; with the trundling out of Cultural Revolution-era political invective (“The Dalai Lama is a jackal wrapped in a habit, a monster with human face and animal’s heart.” For pity’s sake); and with the exclusion of the foreign press from affected areas. But it has not quelled all protest, nor suppressed news of clashes, in some of which Chinese troops have opened fire. In the age of the mobile phone and internet, photographic evidence soon circles the globe.

That is one reason for China’s relative restraint, compared with the last big protests it faced in Lhasa, in 1989, and indeed in Beijing later that year. But the Olympics are another. China may rail against those seeking to “politicise” a sporting occasion. But it knows that it has itself introduced the most political elements: a torch relay taking the Olympic flame round the world and, provocatively, through Tibet; and an opening ceremony to which it has invited the world’s leaders.

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