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Watching You

mao-eye.jpgI wanted to alk-tay about ina-Chay, but as it turns out, they’re listening to everything we say here. 

China’s intelligence services are gearing up for next year’s Beijing Olympics, gathering information on foreigners who might mount protests and spoil the nation’s moment in the spotlight.

Government spy agencies and think tanks are compiling lists of potentially troublesome foreign organizations, looking beyond the human rights groups long critical of Beijing, security experts and a consultant familiar with the effort said.

They include evangelical Christians eager to end China’s religious restrictions, activists wanting Beijing to use its oil-buying leverage with Sudan to end the strife in Darfur and environmental campaigners angry about global warming.

The effort is among the broadest intelligence-collection drives Beijing has taken against foreign activist groups, often known as non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. It aims to head off protests and other political acts during an Olympics the communist leadership hopes will boost its popularity at home and China’s image abroad.  [AP, Charles Hutzler]

It’s going to get interesting if thousands of foreign tourists who  happen to be  politically active on Darfur, North Korea, Tibet, religious freedom, or human rights are denied visas or turned away on arrival, or if they’re followed, harassed, or arrested  when they’re there.  Can Beijing stop every poster and leaflet from getting into every event?  Can they keep sufficient control over the foreign media to prevent multiple  small “guerrilla” demonstrations from being staged  before cameras? What kind of publicity will it mean for China when the police arrest them and further publicize their causes?  The AP found one of the Thought Police to give this disingenuous response:

“Demonstrations of all kinds are a concern, including anti-American demonstrations,” said the consultant, who works for Beijing’s Olympic organizers and asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The government, he said, is “trying to find out what kinds of NGOs will come. … What are their plans?”

I have to wonder how likely it is that anti-American demonstrators would pick Beijing as their ideal site, unless of course the Chinese government decided to stage anti-American protests as a distraction.  I certainly don’t put that past them. 

What we are talking about here is peaceful speech and assembly,  things that are  tolerated everywhere in the civilized world.  We’re about to find out just how far China will go to silence it.  What we’ve seen is that China is increasingly prepared to censor views it doesn’t like right here in the United States.  Yet ironically,  stories like this are starting to make me  more glad than disappointed that Beijing  was chosen as the site of the Olympics.  No, I wouldn’t go.  No, I wouldn’t  urge others to go.  Yes, I hope  the games are  a financial and public relations flop of  historic proportions for China.  But I  see the  potential for this  to plant revolutionary seeds in Chinese society and publicize the very issues that China want to remove from the public discussion.

11 Responses

  1. Joshua, this doesn’t exactly pertain to the story above but I just recalled a book that you might find interesting: “The geography of thought: how asian’s and westerners think differently, and why” by Richard Nisbett. Perhaps it, even if it would not moderate your critical views against China and alike, would help delineate how regimes are judged differently from their own subjects than from countries of a radically different heritage…

  2. “I have to wonder how likely it is that anti-American demonstrators would pick Beijing as their ideal site, unless of course the Chinese government decided to stage anti-American protests as a distraction. I certainly don’t put that past them. “

    Seeing how the government-approved anti-Japanese demonstrations got out of hand so quickly, I think it is highly unlikely that the Chinese government would permit or sponsor any demonstrations against any nation during the Olympics. I don’t think the Chinese are anti-American enough to organize themselves, either. The Chinese feel anger and disgust over US military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, but they aren’t going to take to the streets over an issue that does not directly involve China. Save for the anti-Japanese demos, every single internationally publicized recent mass protest in China was against local government corruption or other abuse of power. All politics is local in China.

    “But I see the potential for this to plant revolutionary seeds in Chinese society and publicize the very issues that China want to remove from the public discussion. “

    My perception based on conversations with ordinary and educated Chinese face to face and online is that even Chinese who are suspicious of their government circle the wagons and defend the motherland against foreign political and economic criticism of China. That is why I am extremely doubtful of any attempts by Western organizations especially to “plant revolutionary seeds” in Chinese society. The seeds of change must be planted by Chinese themselves if they are to take root, and I do not believe there is a critical mass of Chinese willing to take risks to promote radical change. Emigration and exile provide a safety valve for flushing out of the country educated and high-profile Chinese with dissident views and the potential for leading opposition movements.

  3. Sonagi, I think your last comment is correct, and Rebecca MacKinnon makes the same point. Chinese are probably turned off by screedy rhetoric like mine, but I’d bet you’ll agree that seeing examples of free-spirited lifestyles and thinking would exert a very powerful gravitational pull.

    That’s partly because most people are persuaded by emotion, not reason.

  4. On the plus side, your blog is not blocked in China…at the moment.

    I too am hoping for a flop and half-expect my 2008 visa request to be denied by the PRC

  5. “but I’d bet you’ll agree that seeing examples of free-spirited lifestyles and thinking would exert a very powerful gravitational pull.”

    Young Chinese who socialize with Westerners do admire our “free spirited lifestyles and thinking” yet at the same time feel patriotic and proud of China’s growing economic and political power. There is a strong emotional component to this patriotism.

    Americans often romanticize that others will fall in love with American values. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes, people who spend time in the US or around Americans are actually repelled by American values and lifestyles. To know me is to love me? Not always true.

  7. “Generalizing too much”? I used cautious quantifiers like “some” and “not always.”

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