Chinese scholar Wu Jiaxiang wrote in a recent blog article that the West’s resistance to the Beijing Olympics is feeding China’s nationalism. He also accused western countries of using the concept of human rights as a political tool to suppress China’s rising power, translated by CDT.
The West has been trying to play a political game with Beijing over the Olympics ever since Spielberg announced his resignation from directing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. On the surface, western players associate human rights issues with Beijing’s qualification for hosting the Games. However, in fact, they are linking the Olympic Games with China’s rising power and status in the international arena.
When China vetoed U.N. sanctions on Sudan over Dafur, Western politicians couldn’t have not know the reason behind China adopting such a position. [China] is absolutely not following the German Fascist example, to intentionally act out the role as the assassin of universal human rights, but mainly to protect China’s national interests.
When they bashed the Beijing Olympics by comparing it with the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, and ideologically beleaguered a rising superpower which has not yet been democratized, it shows that western politicians and media have not made much progress in their political wisdom in the past hundred years.
They should not forget that the rise of Nazi in Germany were propelled by winning countries of World War I. Their excessive fear of Germany’s emerging power led to their excessive punishment on the nation, causing German nationalism to change into to hatred and revenge, which were the best catalyst for Hitler’s rise.
Admittedly China was somewhat over-confident when it planned a massive world route for the Torch Relay. And it’s undeniable that China’s propaganda department was rather stupid in censoring the media. However, these should not be excuses for western observers to reach a dumber conclusion: that the Chinese government purposely created unrest in Tibet and then rushed to oppress it.
Every country would wish for a peaceful world when it is countdowning the days to the opening of the Olympic Games it hosts. A Chinese has reasons to believe that the unrest was instigated by some western politicians who suffer from insomnia over China’s rising power. Thus they used some puppets to create trouble, and then exploited it humiliate China, intending to change the Games from a merry wedding into a gloomy funeral.
… If your concept of human rights means that one nation should sacrifice its own interest for another country’s domestic conflict, in the case of Darfur; or a nation must accept separation, in the case of Tibet;or the host country of the Olympic Games should be humiliated all over the world during the Torch Relay, then you use the concept of human rights as a political tool for international competition, rather than promote it as a moral value.
The Olympic Games was created to end wars, rather than start them. Sports are supposed to diminish hatred, rather than cultivate it. You can choose to boycott the Olympic Games. But what would be the consequences? The consequences would be: your athletes would have no chance for gold medals, and your country would be hated by Chinese people all over the world. Have you thought about what would grow out of the national hatred of a rising superpower that is being humiliated?
Fifty-three-year-old Wu Jiaxiang has written several books and hundreds of commentaries on a wide range of topics, including international politics, economic policies and business strategies. He got his bachelor’s degree in economics from Beijing University in the early 1980s. He once worked as a researcher for a CCP office, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University from 2000 to 2003.
