Tibet Tests World Ties to China, Olympics: Nations, Mindful of Beijing’s Economic Might, Temper Their Protests and Threats to Boycott Games

By Evan Osnos and Bay Fang, Chicago Tribune

Mar. 20–BEIJING — With images of Olympic stadiums amid footage of Tibetan protesters and Chinese riot police, the U.S. and other governments face the thorny question of how much support to give to the 2008 Summer Games and their powerful host, China.

The Olympic spotlight that China coveted for years has swiveled to cast an unflattering glare on China’s image around the world. Moreover, even before the Tibet crisis has faded from the headlines, China is bracing for an ominous prospect: With five months to go before the opening ceremony, what issue will be next?

“The question is not whether these problems tarnish China’s image around the world, but how much?” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Less than one week before the Olympic torch is scheduled to be lit at Olympia, Greece–the start of a torch relay that is to run through Tibet–French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner caused a stir this week by suggesting that the European Union should consider a boycott of the opening ceremony, though not the full Games, to signal displeasure with China’s handling of the Tibet protests.

President Bush and European leaders have said they would not support a full boycott of the Games–something even the Dalai Lama opposes–and the International Olympic Committee is appealing to countries to avoid talk of boycotts.

On Wednesday, in a nod to global pressure for a peaceful resolution in Tibet, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that he is prepared to hold discussions on Tibet with the Dalai Lama under certain conditions, Brown said.

But China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs swiftly added that Wen’s remarks represent no policy change: China has long maintained that it will talk to the Dalai Lama if he renounces independence and recognizes that Tibet and Taiwan are part of China, which China contends he has failed to do.

The diplomatic predicament facing the U.S. and others carries echoes of 1989, after Chinese leaders cracked down on protesters in Tiananmen Square; in that case, foreign powers all but universally condemned the crackdown.

But in the years since that crisis, China has risen to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, a holder of some $1.5 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves and a powerful voice on global issues stretching from Tehran to Pyongyang.

“The U.S. needs China for a number of other issues, with North Korea at the top,” said Derek Mitchell, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “So they’re trying to keep the relationship stable. But Bush will face the same test that his father faced in 1989, whether or not to underplay the human-rights issue.”

Litany of reproach Complaints are stacking up: Human-rights activists are criticizing the continuing arrests of dissidents and critics of the Olympics; press-freedom advocates are blaming China for barring journalists from visiting Tibet since the unrest; and a global campaign against violence in Sudan’s Darfur region is calling this the “Genocide Olympics.”

Those activists want China to bring more pressure on its ally, the Sudanese government, which has failed to quell violence in the Darfur region.

China has responded most forcefully against the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan exile leader, who has accused China of a “cultural genocide” that seeks to destroy Tibetan culture through a campaign of ethnic-Han migration. Wen, in a news conference this week, denied that and blamed the Dalai Lama for the unrest, which Chinese authorities say has killed 16 people. The Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile estimates that 80 people have died.

“There is ample fact and we also have plenty of evidence proving that this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique,” Wen said.

That message–the phrase “Dalai clique” has been all over Chinese papers this week–highlights a yawning perception gap between audiences at home and abroad. Within China, invoking the name of the Dalai Lama to explain violence and disorder is widely accepted because it squares with years of official criticism that the Tibetan spiritual leader is a “splittist” intent on dividing the Chinese homeland.

But that message finds less traction abroad, where the Dalai Lama is better-known as the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. That gap is reflected in a poll released this week by WorldPublicOpinion.org, which is overseen by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

The survey found that 64 percent of respondents in six countries agreed with critics of China’s Tibet policy, while only 17 percent said their views were closer to Beijing’s. The poll, which was conducted before the latest unrest in Tibet, sampled respondents in France, Britain, India, Indonesia, South Korea and the United States.

Yet the response by foreign governments to the unrest has been relatively muted, reflecting the growing ties and interdependence that China has with the world. Officially, Australia, Japan and France have offered versions of the sentiment expressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, in a statement, called on the “Chinese government to exercise restraint” and urged “all sides to refrain from violence.” Bush has given no indication that he will scrap his plan to attend the Beijing Games.

Although the protests in Tibet have received wide coverage in Western Europe, governments have not taken a sharp stand. European Union officials meeting Monday in Slovenia gave the Chinese government a lift when they came out strongly against a possible boycott of the Olympics. But, a day later, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering said “all options should be kept open” about possible signals of displeasure over China’s policy.

Britain’s conundrum Britain’s Prince Charles had previously announced his own boycott. The prince, a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama and supporter of Tibetan human rights, said he would not attend this summer’s Games.

Prime Minister Brown is in a trickier position. The Dalai Lama is expected to visit London in May, and the Chinese government has made clear that it does not want the prime minister to meet with him, according to news accounts in London. Like other European leaders, Brown is deeply interested in strengthening trade relations with China.

Likewise, Tibet was front-page news in Israel early this week, with the three major papers devoting two additional full pages to the developments there in their Sunday editions. But the Israeli government, which has been cultivating relations with China, said nothing of substance about the clashes.

For its part, India’s government, also seeking greater ties with Beijing, has detained more than 100 pro-Tibet activists attempting to march to Lhasa from Dharamsala, the seat of Tibet’s government-in-exile in northern India. Dharamsala is home of the Dalai Lama and many Tibetan activist organizations, and hundreds of protesters have rallied there in recent days at the Buddhist Tsuglagkhang temple.

Russia’s blessing Few have supported Beijing as vigorously as the Russian government, which regards China as a strategic ally and a burgeoning economic partner. Earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it hoped Chinese authorities would take “the necessary steps to stop illegal actions and ensure the soonest normalization in [Tibet].”

Shoring up foreign support is a priority for the Chinese government, which considers a good turnout of foreign dignitaries to be a measure of the Games’ success. In response to the flurry of criticisms that China faces, Wen, the premier, also appealed for the world’s understanding.

“We are still a developing country, and it’s inevitable that we may have some problems when organizing the Olympics,” Wen said. “We need to respect the principles of the Olympics and the Olympic charter; that is, we shouldn’t politicize the Olympic Games.”

But the full impact of the Tibet crisis on China’s diplomatic standing may not yet be clear, say China analysts, and Beijing leaders will be straining to contain the Tibet news to as brief a period as possible.

“What they are now concerned with is secondary protests in places like Xinjiang,” said Minxin Pei, director of the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, referring to China’s restive northwest province, where the ethnic Uighur minority is pushing for greater autonomy.

“So far,” Pei said, “it’s a three-day story. But if it becomes a week story, or a month story, that’s bad news for Beijing.”

Evan Osnos reported from Beijing and Bay Fang from Washington. Tom Hundley in London, Laurie Goering in New Delhi, Joel Greenberg in Jerusalem and Alex Rodriguez in Moscow contributed to this report.

eosnos@tribune.com

bfang@tribune.com

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