With less than six months to go until the Beijing games, the international spotlight turned on Tibet. On March 10, Tibetan monks launched a series of peaceful demonstrations to advocate for greater autonomy from Beijing. Details remain sketchy, but clashes erupted between demonstrators and security forces in Lhasa, and these spread to other cities in Tibet and surrounding provinces. The Chinese government responded with an ongoing crackdown that included shooting, beating, and arresting suspected dissidents. According to China’s state-run news sources, just over twenty people have died in the fighting, but Tibet’s government-in-exile says the death toll is over two hundred.
Human rights groups and governments around the world condemned China’s actions, calling them a flagrant violation of human rights. The United States, which submits a report to Congress each year on the status of talks between China and the exiled Dalai Lama, urged Beijing to refrain from violence and to respect Tibet’s cultural heritage. The U.S. Congress formed a new “Tibet Caucus” and began debating a number of measures aimed at holding China accountable for the conduct of its security forces in Tibet.
Some human rights groups have called on the United States and the European Union to react more forcefully and boycott the Beijing Olympics. Some prominent leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have said they will not be attending the games’ opening ceremony. In April, U.S. President George W. Bush said his plans to attend the games “haven’t changed” (Newsweek.com).
While the crackdown in Tibet is ongoing, it was overshadowed in May by an earthquake (WashPost) in China’s Sichuan Province. Experts say that despite Olympics-related pressure, China is unlikely to reverse its position on Tibet, given its increasing entrenchment in the region and investment in an expensive train to carry tourists there that opened in 2006. The Indian city of Dharamsala is planning to host an Olympics for Tibetans in exile.
Beijing has been criticized for doing business with the Sudanese government despite ongoing violence in Sudan’s western region of Darfur. More than 200,000 people have died, and another 2.5 million have been displaced. In 2006, a report (PDF) from a UN Panel of Experts implied that China was Sudan’s main arms dealer, though China’s special envoy on Darfur says that China is only supplying 8 percent of Sudan’s total arms imports. Regardless, China is Sudan’s largest trading partner, purchasing up to two-thirds of the country’s oil exports.
Some national Olympic teams, including the Americans, plan to arrive only at the last minute and to bring their own supplies of food and water.
Because of China’s investment in Sudan, Mia Farrow, an actress and former UNICEF goodwill ambassador, has led a campaign to dub the games the “Genocide Olympics.” She says she hopes to shame Olympic sponsors into getting China to divest in Sudan. U.S. director Steven Spielberg has also expressed concern with China’s investment in Darfur. In February 2008, he publicly withdrew as an artistic adviser for the games, claiming that China “should be doing more” (BBC) to end the “continued human suffering” in the war-torn region.
Experts disagree on the efficacy of such outside criticism. Pei suggests Beijing may moderate its Sudan policy to a slight degree, but adds that “if the level of shrillness is too high, then nothing will be accomplished.” He believes increased criticism from abroad will only serve to unite the Chinese government and its people. In an interview with CFR.org, former Olympic CEO Mitt Romney notes that Olympic sponsors are financially “locked in” for the Beijing games, regardless of any attempts to shame them. He adds that “taking action which in any way disrespects China—or is seen as being disrespectful or ‘taking away face,’ if you will, from China—would have the exact opposite effect than had been intended.”
But other experts say Beijing is watching U.S. public opinion on how it handles Khartoum. In a January/February 2008 article for Foreign Affairs, Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small write that Beijing has already changed its Sudan policy because of the public outcry on Darfur. In 2006, China abandoned its policy of noninterference and began pressuring Sudan into accepting the deployment of more than twenty thousand UN and African Union troops in Darfur. China has also sent close to three hundred of its own military engineers to Sudan. “China’s shifting diplomacy reflects not a fundamental change in its values but a new perception of its national interests,” they say.
