Boycott Silliness From Hillary Clinton
In a press release dated April 7th, Hillary Clinton called for President Bush to personally boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics "absent major changes by the Chinese government". Should Bush agree, he would join German chancellor Angela Merkel and British prime minister Gordon Brown in absentia during the games' kickoff event. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has yet to announce his plans.
At first glance, whether or not Western political leaders attend the ceremonies strikes me as irrelevant. Nobody will be tuning in to catch a glimpse of Bush, after all.
But what does Clinton hope to accomplish by proposing Bush boycott? Does she really think the Chinese government will be sufficiently embarrassed to compromise with the West on policy goals? If anything, their reaction would be the opposite: China is known for digging its heels in the face of international criticism.
Of course, Clinton is in the middle of a hard-fought presidential campaign, so perhaps she felt that blustering about China would help among certain constituencies.
Meanwhile, as the Olympic torch winds its way through Europe and the Americas, public support for boycotting seems to be on the rise, with 31% of the US population in support according to a recent poll.
But here's a question about the boycott that I haven't seen raised: isn't this a slippery slope? The US and China, after all, are not sworn enemies. They have diplomatic relations and strong economic ties. They participate together in diplomatic endeavors, such as the Six Party Talks concerning North Korea. Is it appropriate to use the Olympics, an international athletic competition intended to foster global good-will, as a platform for humiliating a country with whom our interests are so great? Especially when everyone who follows Beijing politics understands that a boycott won't work.
Wouldn't Middle Eastern countries, say, then boycott the London games in 2012 in retaliation for Britain's role in the Iraq War? To me, the idea of a boycott seems like a dangerous precedent.
I have my differences with the Chinese government on a whole host of matters and will likely be somewhat nauseated by the display of jingoism at the Games, but really: what do people think will really happen if the world allows China to host the Olympics peacefully?
NOTES:
Hillary Clinton press release via The Washington Note
Reuters story via Passport
April 11th, 2008 - 11:31
I agree with you.
As a Chinese, born and raised in Kunming, I have my differences with the Chinese government on a variety of issues as well, and I too got nauseated by lame propagandas every now and then.
But this whole fanatic boycott thing across the western world has gone totally crazy. Judging from what I’ve seen on Youtube, it’s been escalated to the hatred and grudge between the westerners and Chinese ppl. Massive anti-china boycotts would actually do nothing but agitating the Chinese nationalism, which in turn would exacerbate the situation. On Youtube, It’s not unusual now to see derogatory comments like “f stinky brainwashed chinks”, “f fascist/Nazi China”, “evil commie monkeys”, or “stupid ignorant westerners should shut the f up”, “boycott French product”, and nothing get solved in all those anti- or pro- China comments. Things only get worse.
I guess westerners don’t quite understand this unique and complex Chinese nationalism/patriotism, so when they don’t understand why Chinese ppl go against them while they are actually defending the human rights of the Chinese, the only conclusion they draw is that all Chinese, domestic and overseas, are brainwashed. For Chinese ppl, westerners this time come off as condescending and ignorant, because Chinese don’t believe westerners really give a damn about the rights of xizang or Chinese and they’re only doing this to make them feel good about themselves, also Chinese think westerners are the ones who really are manipulated by western media which hold some “secretive” agenda. In addition, the common belief among the Chinese that westerners have no idea of the Chinese history also contributed to this communication mess. Thus nobody would listen to what the others have to say at all, which is very sad.
I believe it’s really a tricky, intricate and delicate art of dealing and communicating with Chinese on all sorts of matters, after all, Chinese and westerners are from opposite sides of the planet. So I think blatant boycotts against their very cherished Olympic may not be the No.1 choice to make any progress. We certainly don’t wanna see people hating each other and launching a boycott war simply because of the wrong way of addressing problems.
And I really hope this Olympic would make the Chinese government to reflect on its policies toward xizang and media censorship.
sorry I’m a kinda off the topic… Apparently, my mind keeps drifting away…:)
April 14th, 2008 - 11:25
I think the whole thing is a sham reeking of political posturing more than anything else. The US tried this in 1980 and Russia followed suit four years later. If we can learn anything from that debacle it’s that the athletes suffer on a far greater scale than do the political entities involved in said boycott.
“Chinese don’t believe westerners really give a damn about the rights of xizang”
Ouch, I do. Does that make me unique?
April 18th, 2008 - 16:30
Todd. I agree with you, and thank you for caring about xizang.
It’s just there are some ignorant people who have been obsessed with Anna Nichole Smith, Paris Hilton and American Idol for so long suddenly claim that they care so much about xizang and they wanna protest against China, even though they hadn’t heard about xizang before, and they still cannot locate xizang on a map of China(let alone a world map). I mean, xizang didn’t just appear out of the blue yesterday, if they do really care about xizang, they should’ve been helping xizang ren decades ago.
But I’m sure there are some ppl who genuinely care about xizang, and I guess you’re not unique.