William Pfaff writes in the Australian:
THE International Olympic Committee's decision to grant China the right to organise the 2008 Summer Games was another unfortunate case of unwarranted faith in the power of good intentions: that treating China as a normal 21st-century political society would speed its becoming one.
The vote rested on the assumption that giving China the Games would strengthen what the democratic countries want to see as progressive forces in China, remaking that country on the Western liberal model.
This model, composed of respect for human rights, good governance and a prosperous economy, is widely (if erroneously) believed to be what all modern societies are on their way to becoming. Unfortunately - and to China's present discomfiture - this is not true.
That it is not true is being demonstrated by the Chinese reaction to large and violent demonstrations by Tibetans and by foreign sympathisers against China's occupation of Tibet since 1959, its annexation of it in 1965 and China's repression of Tibetan culture and accompanying transfer of huge numbers of Han Chinese to submerge and suppress Tibetan society and identity. China's authorities - and more importantly, its people - expected nothing like this.
The former are humiliated, their legitimacy undermined. They have hugely miscalculated China's international political reputation. The people are enraged, their assumptions about the West overturned. The world tour of the Olympic flame may be cut short. The effect on the Games is unforeseeable. The eventual effect on the Chinese Government may be considerable.
To red more:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23513667-7583,00.html
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