Welcome to the Orwell Olympics

Now that every dissident within a hundred miles of Beijing has been intimidated, jailed or internally exiled; now that the Chinese communist party has shut down formerly legal means of citizen redress, like petitioning the government; now that free assembly has been banned, unsightly small businesses have been bulldozed, hotel computers have been bugged, and the foreign press has been bamboozled, the "quiet diplomacy" favored until this week by President Bush and International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has given way to Mr. Bush's "deep concerns" about human rights in China.

Prodded perhaps by Condi Rice's veepstakes vetting, the president is finally saying in public, in Thailand, what he says he has been saying in private: "America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists. We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly and labor rights -- not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential."

It's about time, cowboy.

In 2001, the secretary general of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee said that journalists will have "complete freedom to report." What a difference seven years make. According to the Washington Post, spokesmen for Beijing's Olympic Organizing Committee and for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said at a recent press conference that "reporters did not actually need to visit blocked Web sites to do their jobs." Sure enough, journalists arriving at the Olympic media center last week found that their Web browsers could not connect to sites like Western news outlets, human rights organizations, Wikipedia and Chinese dissident groups like the Falun Gong and Free Tibet.

Ever since Beijing won the venue for the games, M. Rogge has been telling everyone who'll listen what a swell development this will be for free speech and human rights in China. Instead, foreign news crews have found their access to Tiananmen Square sharply curtailed -- lest those images remind viewers of the tank crackdown of dissidents in 1989 -- and thousands of non-violent protesters across China, according to a new Amnesty International report subtitled "Broken Promises," have been persecuted, punished and jailed.

Last week Sen. Brownback (R-Kan.), whose rages I have previously not shared, released documents showing that international hotel chains have been required by the Chinese Public Security Bureau, under threat of harsh punishment, to install Internet spyware designed to capture Beijing's hotel guests' Web browsing history, their Googling, even their keystrokes, which means their e-mail.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the keystrokes of foreign tourists, athletes' families and NBC executives were being captured today by the Chinese security apparatus. Nearly 30 years ago, soon after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing, I went to China as part of the highest-level official U.S. visit to date. The Chinese housed us in a campus-like compound of guesthouses, where we took walks between events. One member of our delegation, a National Security Agency staffer, pointed out to me a picturesque bridge where Henry Kissinger had often paused to chat privately with aides during his visits. Turns out that bridge, like all the places we stayed, was bugged. The upside of this was getting to go to a meeting in the new U.S. embassy in Beijing, where confidential conversations were enabled by entering a floating clear-sided room-within-a-room that totally reminded me of the cool cone of silence in the television series "Get Smart."

China has come quite a distance since 1979. Economically its story is breathtaking, and freedoms like travel and property ownership have made demonstrable gains. But China's human rights record remains depressing, its tolerance of dissent and minorities is minimal, its environmental damage to the planet is terrifying, its intransigence on the genocide in Darfur is unconscionable and its cheap exports are candy to American consumers.

The $900 million that NBC paid for the rights to broadcast the Olympics, like the billions that China spent to get ready for the games, have created a Potemkin village for the world to admire. From Rupert Murdoch's kowtow to the Chinese police state, which enabled him to crack the Chinese market by eliminating BBC News from his satellite television programming; to the complicity of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco with Chinese Internet censors, the rationale has always been the same: The more we engage with China, the more free their people will be. Once those 1.3 billion people develop a taste for openness, there'll be no stopping them.

Why do I have the feeling that if hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese imports and of American business investments in China were not at stake, "quiet diplomacy" wouldn't have become the slogan du jour?

President Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" wasn't particularly quiet. President Bush doesn't have to ask Mr. Hu Jintao to tear down the Great Wall of China, but the least he can do -- now that the opportunity represented by the years running up to the Olympics has been squandered -- is to use in public, in China, some of the lovely human rights language he claims he's been saying in private.

Our president never let the bully of Baghdad crimp his freedom-agenda rhetoric. Why did it take him so long to send some public pro-democracy love to the Big Brothers of Beijing?

Read more HuffPost coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

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An earlier version of this appeared as my weekly column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. If you'd like to email me there, or to read about eating Bambi, it's only a click away.

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[MagisterLudi]

China is a country that lifted a BILLION people out of poverty in 25 years! In a process the Communist Party of China gave their citizens total economic freedom, while keeping the country united and free from chaos. It is usually well-fed petty bourgeois liberals, out of touch with aspirations of common Chinese that are spreading this bellyache.

[MagisterLudi]

So far the Beijing Olympics are PERFECT, both in management and logistics. The Chinese government and people have a lot to be proud of. Never mind the sour grapes from some neurotics.

[7x7]

Try finding a working Beijing based WebCam with live footage of the venue the great grey games.
You won't find one.
Here's probably why.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iS4WkCV2k3VRFauV7yprOz5c-tHQD92DH4S01
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7506925.stm

I particularly like the contrast to the imagery presented in the "photo gallery" here.
http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/beijing/index_uk.asp

The IOC says the air is fine. Just jump on in. Don't upset the hosts. They clearly have enough problems on their plate.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-08/08/content_6914932.htm

[ShawnMichel]

Bush isn't "lecturing" anybody. His words were tepid, poorly delivered, too late in coming. All three were signals to the Chinese that it's perfectly okay to do what they're doing. Actions, after all, speak louder than words.

When our moral behavior is guided by economics, then we rightly deserve the misery we get. When *should* or *should not* is guided by the almighty dollar, as it is for 99 percent of the populace, then what we get is, ultimately, corporatism. What we get is the Genocide Olympics of '08.

Refuse to watch, folks. Show that you at least have the backbone of a noodle.

(For the minority of you that do.)

[alphax]

GW Bush lecturing China on human rights ... now that is funny!

[OgreDaddy]

The 2008 Olympics should be a riot!

[cylindar]

Non of what Bush does in China or out of China is important. Neither was Reagan's "Tear down that wall" We all know that Reagan had literally nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Wall going down. He was a good politician vampire type however who knew how to take credit with good timeing of speeches. Now Bush does not even have that. He is a political slut and you are wasting your time Kaplan even attempting to posit a position for Bush. How silly of you. Bush is a has been.What he has to say nobody wants to hear. Even if it's good news. Your heart is in a good place Kaplan but you are a little behind the times. Look to Obama for that message, not Bush.

[circusfifthfloor]

Asking Smirkey to speak publicly what he does in private is akin to asking Charley McCarthy to sing without him sitting on Edgar Bergen's lap....CFF

[icemilkcoffee]

Why are people so concerned about human rights in China suddenly? China is not spreading its ideology, and has not invaded any other countries. All its crimes are against its own people- and they are far, far from the worst human rights violators (like, for example, Congo). Why do so many people feel the need to demonize China? Is it to feel better about ourselves? or is it an innate fear of the rising yellow race?

[spiderbucket]

Let me guess which party you are gonna vote for.....

[copesthetics]

maybe icemilkcafe won't vote; this way he can express his solidarity with the authoritarian, anti-democratic regime oppressing the people he seems to wish to defend. maybe we're better off without'em.

[copesthetics]

invaded: xinjiang tibet (xizang) targeted: taiwan

[edtastic]

All the above were part of China a long time ago. Perhaps you should go read a History book so you could stop being angry at the Chinese people. This behavior pattern of Americans hating anybody the media tells them too, is going to lead to World War III and people like you who consume without thinking will be to blame.

[copesthetics]

the issue is that a country with a sixth of the worlds population proactively persues its interests at the expense of issues of human rights and with utter disregard to the -- dare i say it? -- feelings of the rest of the world. furthermore, this mantra (excuse) of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs is an ideology, which absolves the government from the responsibility of dealing with the distasteful characteristics of some of its unsavory partners, and china intends to spread this ideology as best it can.

[appleknocker]

I don't understand this controversy at all. The notion of George Bush lecturing anyone on human rights is so preposterous that it could only provoke howls of derision. If anything, it would give human rights a bad name.

[copesthetics]

true dat

[deeppeace]

Excuse me... concerns for human rights from the man who mocked Karla Fay Tucker? From the governor of hang-em-high Texas? Don't make me laugh.

[lovethesinner]

If Bush actually had a pair, he'd walk down the steps from Air Force One, pull his hand back at the tarmac greeting from Hu Jintao (in the thumb over the shoulder "take-a-hi­ke-you-loo­ser" gesture alla "Muggs" from the "Dead End Kids"), then turn around, dragging Laura waving back up the steps, turn around and...

flip 'em off. (Bronx style)

But, Bush isn't really a cowboy. He's a weenie. He sold us out to the Chinese so him and his pals could play army in the dessert.

So he'll smile, and kiss the emperors ring.

And, they call us "lefty bloggers." "The Cheetos Brigade."

[Ramus]

Yeah well China may be evil and repressive but Bush is hardly the leader to be lecturing them after all the deceits and torture and snapping up of people off the streets of Italy perpetrated by this administration. On a brighter note, the flag bearer for the U.S. in the Opening procession will be one of the Lost Boys from Sudan, a track star, who was resettled here and became a citizen thirteen months ago. I think he's a Muslim. A brilliant choice for the U.S. flag bearer.

[S1m0n]

Rogge was lying, and knew he was lying as he did so. Host nations routinely make promises about the environment, human rights, or games financing that they never, ever keep. The promises are for the suckers; neither the IOC or the organizing committees ever intend to fulfil those promises. They don't care about that stuff. To the IOC, it's nothing but PR.

[marignymitch]

Mr Kaplan:

The current administration and its authoritarian allies in congrees have suspended habeas corpus, OK'd laws that U.S. citizens can be designated enemy combatants and therefore don't have rights to trial guaranteed under the 6th Amendment. And Bush illegally wiretapped private phone conversations without court approval, violating citizens' rights against illegal search and seizure guaranteed under the 4tth Amendment, while violating the spirit and the law of the Geneva Convention. Oh, yea, and turned the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party.

Yet you believe that Junior has the moral authority to lecture the Chinese on human rights? I don't. But I can easily see how he might envy their leaders' power. I wonder if he'll be taking notes.

The Chinese face a long road to freedom, it's true, but now so do we. After the past 7.5 years we need a human rights movement here at home instead of hypocritical speeches abroad.