by Liu Xiaobo
Liu went on to remark with satisfaction, “I hear that many countries today are looking at China’s system and trying to learn from it.”
This kind of vain pride in power and in ethnic identity has exerted a distorting pressure on Chinese sports “not to lose at any price.” The popular uproar after Liu Xiang withdrew became a burden on him so heavy that humiliating apology was his only way out. The Chinese athletes who will head to London in 2012 will have to carry the further burden of “top dog in gold medals,” and, if China pulls down fewer than 51 gold medals in London, or worse, slips from its number one position, I don’t want to think about the hysteria that will ensue back home.
When sports have become so commercialized and so deeply colored by nationalism, a gold medal no longer stands for an athletic achievement alone. At the same time, a gold-medal count has become an unreliable indicator of a nation’s strength or its degree of civilization. During the Cold War era, the Soviet Union often won more Olympic medals, including gold medals, than any other country. At the Seoul Games in 1988, it won 132 medals, a record, and 55 of them were gold, also a record. East Germany, too, was once a mighty Olympic power. In Montreal, Moscow, and Seoul, East Germany ranked number two in the world in the medal haul. But what did these titanic achievements do for the authoritarian systems that produced them, when finally it came time for those systems to collapse?
The record shows that gold-medal nationalism is even more corrosive to sports culture than commercialization is, and this is especially true when an authoritarian country is playing host. “Whole nation systems” in such countries can indeed allow them to tower over others in a medal count, but these systems do nothing to promote human values in the country. On the contrary they can do disastrous harm: sport can turn into a tool for the self-promotion of despots, and the spirit of sports, which originally was a universal value, can be pressed into the service of narrow nationalism. The gleam of the gold can help a dictatorial regime to tighten its grip on power and to fan flames of nationalism that it can use for other purposes.
If Chinese officials and people continue to use a sports machine to pursue gold-medal glory, and continue to bask in the comments of foreigners who say we are “beyond compare” (or something like that, depending on our “translation with Chinese characteristics”), then sports in China can only go farther and farther down the road of a radical disjunction between ordinary sports for ordinary citizens and a super-politicized, super-extravagant elite gold-medalism. A nation obsessed with gold medals will never turn into a great civilized nation.
At home in Beijing, September 18, 2008
Originally published in Zhengming (Cheng Ming Monthly), September 2008
Translated by A. E. Clark
* At the opening ceremony, Ode to the Motherland was sung by the 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, but at the insistence of an official who deemed her insufficiently photogenic she was replaced on camera by the 9-year-old Lin Miaoke. Fireworks in the sky appeared as “footprints,” but, because these could not be captured on camera, their image had to be artificially added to the video feed.—Trans.
HONG KONG TEN YEARS AFTER THE HANDOVER
THE UPCOMING TENTH ANNIVERSARY of Hong Kong’s handover from London to Beijing is a splendid occasion for the regime in China but a sorrowful one for the people of Hong Kong.
On July 1, the day of the anniversary, China’s President Hu Jintao will visit Hong Kong to accept the tribute of its pro-Beijing faction and to flaunt the might of his dictatorship. Meanwhile, the people of Hong Kong will continue their ten-year struggle for democracy by greeting their mainland overlord with yet another expression of their aspirations. They have planned a protest march for this day to demand “twin general elections,” by which they mean one-person-one-vote elections for (1) the chief executive and (2) the legislature.
It is well known that the British legacy of freedom and the rule of law is the wellspring of Hong Kong’s economic prosperity. Yet the Beijing regime, despite its vaunted policy of “one country, two systems,” has been steadily eroding Hong Kong’s liberties ever since the handover.
The most glaring casualty has been freedom of the press. The Hong Kong media have become largely self-censoring in response to Beijing’s two-pronged approach of economic inducements plus political bullying. Another example is Beijing’s pretty-sounding policy of “free travel” between Hong Kong and the mainland. In fact this is a right only to semi-free travel, limited to things like tourism and shopping, and moreover is granted only to those who do not cause trouble for Beijing. It is denied to Hong Kong democracy advocates and to opposition journalists even if they are traveling for personal reasons. Beijing has revoked the Home Visit Permits of blacklisted pro-democracy figures like Szeto Wah, Martin Lee, and the editors of well-known Hong Kong political magazines.
Bribery Cannot Silence the July 1 Protest Movements
There is no doubt that China’s steady economic ascent since the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown eighteen years ago has bolstered the regime’s grip on the mainland. The Beijing regime, having seen how distorted reforms that favor the wealthy can have the effect of producing a surface stability inside China, has applied similar techniques of subornment in Hong Kong and invested in Hong Kong’s economic revival with the goal of silencing dissent. The policy of “free travel” that I just referred to is but one example. Never mind the political discrimination in the policy; it brings money to Hong Kong. Wealthy mainlanders who travel to Hong Kong inundate local hotels and gratify merchants with their lavish spending.
An unintended positive side effect of the travel policy has been to allow information-starved mainlanders access to accurate information. It has whetted their appetites for books and magazines that are banned on the mainland—especially exposés of Chinese Communism. Indeed, some sightseers from the mainland, intrigued by Hong Kong’s protest marches, demonstrations, and mass meetings, time their visits so that they can participate in the annual July 1 protest marches or June 4 candlelight vigils in Victoria Park. For mainland intellectuals, long closed off from the world, this political awakening is far more significant than the consumer aspects of travel.
Right from the start, Beijing has been doing what it can to backtrack on its original promise to Hong Kong of “one country, two systems” and has alternated between tactics of bribery and coercion in pursuit of the goal. Beijing insisted, for example, that Hong Kong’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, follow its model of repression by forcing the passage of an antisubversion law known as Article 23. In order to counter a protest against Article 23 that Hong Kong people had planned for July 1, 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Hong Kong in late June bearing monetary gifts like the “Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement.” Posing as a benefactor of Hong Kong and staging displays of solicitude, Wen hoped to win popular support for his regime’s dictatorial plans and to weaken the protest march.
But Beijing had miscalculated. It had relied on the self-serving advice of sycophants in Hong Kong who promised that Hong Kong runs on economics alone, and had badly underestimated the courage and commitment to freedom of the Hong Kong people. Half a million protesters came out for the July 1 march against Article 23, showing Wen Jiabao and the entire world that the ordinary people of Hong Kong were above the temptations of money and that Hong Kong remained a luminous “Pearl of the East.” The common people turned out to be the ones who possessed the true wealth: political wisdom and high principles. The tycoons who had been selling out to Beijing to line their own pockets have reduced themselves to the level of pawns and showed their moral bankruptcy.
The whole world witnessed the massive July 1 protest march, which hamstrung the Beijing regime and its puppet, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, forced to pragmatism, had to accede to Hong Kong popular opinion: Tung Chee-hwa tabled Article 23, following which high officials on the mainland made outward shows of “respecting the decision of the Hong Kong government.” Everyone knew that the only re
ason for this concession was that awkward public promise of “one country, two systems” that the regime had made.
“Patriotism”: A Bludgeon in the Hands of Scoundrels
In its search for ways to squelch freedom in Hong Kong, the Beijing regime has promoted a twisted definition of patriotism: “Love of Hong Kong is love of China.” Armed with this tool, the regime has incited its toadies and their media hacks in Hong Kong into a savage mudslinging campaign that accuses democracy advocates of a lack of “patriotism.” Their tactics have descended into ad hominem attack and character assassination and might be called “hooligan-patriotism.” Such abuse of the term “patriotism” has nothing to do with any ethical principles; on the contrary, it is a bludgeon in an assault on common human values.
While acknowledging that the vast majority of people who took part in the 2003 protest march were patriotic, the regime has singled out a small number as treacherous rabble-rousers. This reminds me of the regime’s distorted characterizations of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when it claimed that although the vast majority of protesting students were patriotic, a few “black hands” lurking behind the scenes had instigated “turmoil” and “rioting.” This is one of the regime’s favorite tactics in trying to build “united fronts.” In a speech about the 2003 demonstration, Liu Yandong, vice chair of the Party’s Political Consultative Conference, put it plainly: “Consolidate the majority and isolate the handful.”
Intense political pressure and economic appeasement are both manifestations of the extreme arrogance of a dictatorial system. Sometimes the display is personified in a high-handed, abusive tyrant, like Jiang Zemin when he excoriated Hong Kong journalists in 2000. At other times it shows itself in the image of the enlightened despot who poses as a benefactor of the common people. This was the case with Wen Jiabao and his show of solicitude during his 2003 visit.
Wu Bangguo’s Arrogant Proclamation
Emboldened by the burgeoning Chinese economy, China’s rulers have in recent years been chasing the pipe dreams that have been suggested in the television documentary called The Rise of the Great Powers [see pp. 228–239]. This month, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, Beijing delivered an unprecedented and arrogant statement at a conference on the first ten years of experience with Hong Kong’s constitutional document known as the Basic Law. Wu Bangguo, chair of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, declared at the conference:
The high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is not intrinsic, but is granted by the central government. China is a single country, united under one system. Hong Kong will have only as much power as the central government grants to it, and no more. Furthermore, Article 20 of the Basic Law is unambiguous on the issue of so-called “residual powers”: it stipulates clearly that additional powers that have not been specified may be granted only by the central government. In sum, the Basic Law is solely about the center’s granting of powers.
This declaration—a seeming death-knell for Hong Kong’s democratization and the “one country, two systems” policy—stimulated much comment in Hong Kong and around the world. Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain and a former governor of Hong Kong, Christopher Patten, both lambasted Beijing for trying to shelve Hong Kong’s democratization. Hong Kong democracy advocates Anson Chan, Martin Lee, Szeto Wah, James To, Albert Ho, Joseph Zen, Jackie Hung, and others all challenged Wu Bangguo’s claim. Even the mild-mannered senior journalist Lam Shan Muk published an article in the Hong Kong Economic Journal saying that Wu’s speech meant that China expected Hong Kong to move from “two systems” to “one country” and that Beijing’s tenth-anniversary “gift” to Hong Kong was but an attempt to enslave it.
Hong Kong’s democrats answered Wu Bangguo by launching a prolonged legislative campaign that called for “twin general elections” by 2012. The Democratic Party organized a conference to study the progress of democratization in Hong Kong, and the Civil Human Rights Front began to plan another march for July 1 so that Hu Jintao could hear the people’s voice during his tenth-anniversary visit. Surveys show that a majority in Hong Kong want these “twin general elections” and that their faith in Beijing has declined.
From my vantage point here on the mainland—still living under dictatorship—Hong Kong’s June 4 candlelight vigils and July 1 demonstrations are a heartening and rousing sight. To me, the eighteen years since the Tiananmen Square crackdown have passed like a single day, but have been illuminated continuously by the brilliance of Hong Kong’s candles. They burn with the determination of its people to treasure their freedom, uphold righteousness, and resist tyranny.
Looking back on the huge demonstration of July 1, 2003, the protest that brought down the iniquitous Article 23, it is clear that the people of Hong Kong achieved a political miracle for themselves and for all who seek freedom. It was a people’s victory over their Hong Kong puppet government and the dictatorial Chinese Communist Party, and it was achieved through a potent combination of organization, popular will, and momentum. A free political system is and will be the best protection that Hong Kong people can have for their personal freedoms; their own determination is their strongest weapon against tyranny; and world opinion is and will be on their side.
In the long run, there are two main projects that Hong Kong people must pursue in order to preserve their freedoms and to avoid being engulfed by the mainland. First, they must work together for the democratization of the Hong Kong government, especially the direct election of a chief executive. Second, they must promote political reform in mainland China, working indirectly but by every means possible. Preserving Hong Kong’s democracy should be the sacred responsibility of everyone in China, not just Hong Kong people; similarly, promoting political reform in all of China should be the sacred responsibility of people on both sides of the Hong Kong border. This is because the two sides are inextricably connected in the overall quest for freedom. Hong Kong will have no guarantee of freedom until the people of the mainland are free as well.
At home in Beijing, June 18, 2007
Originally published in Kaifang (Open Magazine), July 2007
Translated by Eva S. Chou
SO LONG AS HAN CHINESE HAVE NO FREEDOM, TIBETANS WILL HAVE NO AUTONOMY
In March 1959, the People’s Liberation Army of China crushed a popular rebellion in Tibet, an event that has made March 10, the day the rebellion had begun, a “sensitive” day in Tibet ever since. On March 10, 2008, about 400 Buddhist monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa took to the streets demanding freedom of religion and a reduction in the migration of Han Chinese into Tibet. The monks had strong popular support among the Tibetan populace, and protests continued until March 14, when scuffles between young Tibetans and Chinese plainclothes police turned into what Tibetans called “resistance” (with the admixture of some provocateur activity) and what the government called “riots.”
During the next few days, martial law was put in force, Tibetan neighborhoods were searched door to door, many people were beaten, more than a hundred were killed, and more than 2,000 were arrested. The foreign media were expelled from Tibet, while Chinese television showed repeatedly—all across China—images and accounts to back the government claim that Tibetan rioters, in an operation “plotted, planned, and organized” by the Dalai Lama, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” had attacked Han Chinese. The events were costly to the Chinese government’s image at the beginning of its “Olympic year.”—Ed.
AS OF TODAY, April 10, the crisis in Tibet has held the attention of the world for one month. If the regime of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao cannot come up with some acceptable responses, Tibetan resistance as well as the censure of the international community will likely extend through this summer’s Beijing Olympics and the world may very well take a dim view of the Games. The protests that have accompanied the Olympic Torch relay along its route outside of China already show how this can happen.
> Within China’s borders, the regime of course can quell Tibetan resistance by force and can stimulate Han chauvinism to draw popular support to itself. The regime’s tactics so far—replaying some carefully edited video footage of riot damage in Lhasa on March 14, finding a few errors in Western media coverage and blowing them out of proportion, mobilizing public opinion with a call to “Oppose Splittism and Protect the Sacred Torch,” and protecting its one-sided account of events by enforcing a strict blackout of news reporting from Tibet—have already been very successful in stimulating a frenzy of Han nationalism. A confrontation between freedom and dictatorship has been made to look like a clash between ethnicities.
But such tactics can do nothing to extinguish the resistance of Tibetans who live outside of China and nothing to earn support from the international community. Moreover, the regime is helpless to remove the root causes of the troubles in Tibet, just as it is helpless to eradicate the deep-seated crisis that grips China as a whole. The advantages that it gains from its tactics in Tibet are only short-term expediencies; they help to buy more time for dictatorship, but are useless in promoting peaceful governance of a multi-ethnic China in the long run.
It has been reported that, before the present crisis in Tibet arose, a special emissary of the Dalai Lama had met six times for “dialogue” with Beijing officials. Perhaps they were making some progress. But now, as the Hu-Wen regime sees it, a brouhaha in their Olympic year “smashes their stage” and ruins the glamour of their “big international party.” Beijing’s distrust, even hatred, of the Tibetan government in exile thereby deepens, and any resolution of the Tibetan question becomes ever more distant.