From The American:
From August 8 to August 24, China’s capital city will host the 29th Summer Olympics. It promises to be as much a political event as an athletic spectacle. With that in mind, THE AMERICAN asked eight China experts to answer this question: Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? Here are their responses.
DAN BLUMENTHAL
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, 600,000 armband-wearing citizen volunteers will join 90,000 police, military, and paramilitary forces in Beijing, flush with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on security technology to help enforce the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) writ. No one should be under any illusion that the Olympics will pry China open. On the contrary, the party’s repressive techniques will grow stronger thanks to Western technology and training. The requirements for security technology in Beijing are large, and Western companies are rushing in to meet them. Some American companies are installing surveillance systems, while others are providing networks of security cameras.
As the former head of criminal intelligence for Hong Kong puts it, “They are certainly getting the best stuff.” The “best stuff” is similar to the technology that was supposed to liberalize China throughout the 1990s. It didn’t. Instead, Internet and telecommunications technology was put to work by the Communist regime against its citizens. The news that grabs headlines—for example, when Western companies provide Chinese authorities with the IP addresses of known dissidents—tells just part of the story of a Chinese security apparatus that has grown stronger through international commerce. Even before the Olympics, tens of thousands of Internet police monitored antiparty activities each day. During and after the Olympics, this number will certainly grow.
