Moment of Destiny for Western Journalists

UNDER INTENSE international pressure and at the 11th hour, China has relented, restoring international journalists’ access to certain irksome websites like the BBC and Amnesty International. But the grudging and partial concession to press freedom is not enough to disspell the sense that New Zealand – and other countries – should have boycotted the Beijing Olympics long ago. Over the past month, China has clearly demonstrated it had no intention of honouring the pledges that convinced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that a repressive dictatorship were the right bunch to hold the games.

China promised open media access during the games, but it turns out a simple voxpop on a Beijing street could land western journalists in jail.

China promised unfettered access to the internet for foreign journalists, yet went ahead banning sites after all, and major hotel chains have been ordered to install systems to spy on internet traffic.

IOC president Jacques Rogge feebly claims the Olympics have already wrought changes in China’s media laws and personal freedom, and raised awareness of child labour laws, but instead an increasingly twitchy government has swung into authoritarian mode. Banners are banned from Olympic venues. A 54-year-old woman died during a police round-up of 1500 petitioners. A “citizens’ army” of 600,000 has been enlisted to keep close watch on visitors. For those who weren’t paying attention to the brutal response to the Tibetan uprising, this is China showing its true colours.

Curiously, now that New Zealand’s free trade agreement is signed and sealed, Helen Clark is finally emitting signals slightly less accommodating of China. In June she contributed her signature to an anti-Chinese “Olympic Legacy Banner” organised by Amnesty International, and she will not attend the opening ceremony.

Full-scale Olympic boycotts have barely been seen since their heyday in the 1970s and 80s. Remember that 26 nations refused to attend Montreal in 1976, because of the presence of New Zealand, which was still playing rugby with apartheid pariah South Africa. (China and Taiwan boycotted too, after a squabble over which was really the Republic of China.) The US-led boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980, because of the USSR’s war in Afghanistan, knocked out more than 50 countries and four years later the Los Angeles OGames were hit by the Eastern Bloc’s retaliatory boycott. But since then, turnout has been surprisingly unaffected by geopolitics; it could be argued that New Zealand’s lack of spine this year has as much to do with political fashion as free-trade cynicism.

In any case, Clark’s Clayton’s boycott will barely be noticed in Beijing. China is having its cake and eating it. And yet there is cause for some optimism. One of the most appealing characteristics of western journalists is that they hate being told what to do. Among 30,000 foreign hacks looking for an angle, there must be a few who will slip their minders, turn right when they’re ordered left, and leave recorders and cameras running when they shouldn’t.

Illicit filming of an opening ceremony rehearsal by a Korean TV station was a pleasing reminder of the impossibility of blocking information in the electronic age.

The new crackdown shows Beijing is far more concerned with controlling opinion inside its borders than seeking approval beyond them. Inside China, international coverage of the Tibetan uprising and the messy Olympic torch relay was successfully spun as some kind of western media conspiracy to destroy the games.

China’s masters will have a far harder time selling that sort of nonsense to the locals once foreign journalists set up their Trojan horse in the capital. It won’t be as good as a boycott, but a dose of Fleet St may still have a salutary effect on Beijing.

(c) 2008 Sunday Star – Times; Wellington, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.