Big Questions about China, Olympics, Social Media etc.
created on Tue, 2008-05-13 10:37 
Continuing on with the coverage of "China, The Olympics, Social Media, Symposiums, etc." mini-series, I'm am co-opting Olympic scholar Dr. Andy Miah's questions for the panel he is organizing at the 9th International Symposium on Olympic Studies, in Beijing, August 5-7, 2008.
My point in doing this is to stimulate some discussion to push my own perceptions and resolve my own conflicts. You see, I am big fan of amateur sports (personally i prefer winter Olympic events) and an ardent advocate of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and someone who hopes for a greener planet. In some ways, I see these three as not jiving within the China paradigm. On another hand, i wonder is it really my place to ask an ancient culture why they do things they way they do?
As such, I question my personal (not professional) emotional investment in the athletes' struggle. Should I watch them strive for greatness on the CBC while the background struggle seems so much weightier? Or are the Olympics a time for healing and celebration where understandings are fostered and differences sorted out? In other words, should i participate in the Olympics from my couch or from the streets!
I invite you to offer your answers to Dr. Miah's questions. The comments are open for your opinions on China, the Olympics, Social Media, etc. - be frank and polite (and avoid ticket selling and other spam).
Media Access and Control
* Briefly describe whether or not you see the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as a focal point for media transition in China.
* Will foreign journalists obtain the level of access they require to undertake their work?
* Will the temporary legislation designating additional freedoms for foreign journalists produce different coverage of China than we have seen before?
Politics and Focus
* Is political transition within a country a reasonable expectation to have of the Olympic Games?
* How will commentators summarize the Beijing Olympic Games in the closing minutes of television coverage at the end of the Closing Ceremony?
* Will the Olympic media focus, to the same degree, on sports, compared with other Games, or will other narratives dominate the coverage?
Social Media
* In what way are new media platforms enabling new forms of journalism to surround the Beijing Olympics?
* In February 2008, the IOC released blogging guidelines, which indicate that they do not consider blogging to be a form of journalism. Do you think there is merit in their assertion?
* What kind of convergence is visible around old and new media in China, in the context of the Beijing Olympic?
* Is citizen journalism politically prescribed in China?
* Claims have been made about China's rising Internet population and its surpassing the United States. In what ways do you perceive the utilization of new media as distinct within China, compared with other nations?
More Questions
* In this context of social media, freedom of press expression, and background of security and political posturing, what other questions come to mind?
contrarian opinions
China is not environmentally friendly
China's record of human rights is atrocious compared to the West
Here are my contrarian beliefs:
Contrariness breeds polarisation
I think it's a mistake to set oneself up as being either in camp A (ok to criticise China) or camp B (not ok to criticise China) because it misses the point entirely as to whether there's a problem or not. Sure, the West has made a mess of things so far - the 300 million North Americans whose lifestyles have an average carbon footprint that would require 9 planet earths to be globally sustainable are a problem. There's not much despute about that any more. A population of 1.3 billion represents a sizeable portion of the world's population so the reality is that trends in that population have a massive global impact. That's not a matter of opinion, it's just the way things are.
Also, the notion that you can't criticise any country/regime on a particular basis without making a thorough criticism of every other country/regime that is also worthy of criticism on that basis is absurd. There would be absolutely no scope for dialogue on any of these matters if that were how it worked.
As for Tibet, who's the Despot? The Dalai Lama? And the monks are the serfs? Come on. Even if that were remotely true, would invasion of the country have been justified? There's divided opinion over whether the invasion of Iraq was justified and there we were dealing with Saddam Hussein - do you really mean to draw a parallel between Hussein and the Dalai Lama? Or perhaps I completely misunderstood your point, in which case I apologise for having taken you up wrong ;-)
criticism
I think you will find, that almost any Chinese, whether the term refers to a person from China, or who is Canadian with ancestors who hail from China, would readily admit that they likely do not agree 100% with the Chinese government.
For many historical reasons, I probably ally myself somewhere in neverland probably closer to the 'West' but with some first-person understanding of Asia. My comments tend to point to China as them rather than me or we. A person from China, will look me straight in the face and go "But you are not Chinese!", as I have repeatedly heard from other Chinese.
Articles on Tibet
A different buddhism from the Republic of East Vancouver , Myth and Reailty, China and America: The Tibet Human Right PsyOp, Tibet : Enquête sur une photo manipulée, Using Tibet to settle scores with China
Youtube videos on Tibet
Tibet: the truth (a political history), Seven Lies about Tibet and his holiness, Riot in Tibet: True face of western media, Tibet is a part of China
One can find articles and
One can find articles and YouTube videos supporting pretty much any viewpoint these days. One thing that strikes me from the 3 or 4 of the links above that I clicked on is the contradiction underlying what seem to be the two main points of all of them:
1. Tibet has always been part of China
2. Tibet's culture and religion were bad anyway and we're better off without them
If we are to accept the outrageously sloppy claims in support of the second point, we must accept that to whatever extent Tibet was "always part of China", it had its own distinct culture within whatever wider geo-political entity, be it a dynasty or regime, was in ultimate power. So what I'm reading from all this propoganda is something along the lines of "Yes we are eradicating this culture but it's ok because it's a bad culture - look, the Dalai Lama once shook hands with someone who was subsequently accused of sex slavery". Frankly, that doesn't wash. Invading a country (or "land" or "place") and systematically murdering its people is wrong - and trying to justify it by claiming you are "liberating" its people from something worse... well, that's pretty much the oldest trick in the book and we've all heard it used many times in many different contexts for ultimately the same manipulative purposes.
China is not made up of one type of 'Chinese' person
Much of China also has it's own culture, as does Quebec in Canada, or BC as opposed to Alberta. The south part of China is distinctly different from the north, west, east, etc.
The history between Tibet and China is complex, and not as simple as first glance. Tibetan nobles have invaded what is considered China, and under the mongols and manchus for many centuries, the lands were under one empire/country. Nobles frequently intermarried even before the mongol and manchu empires, and the first Dalai Lama was installed by the Chinese army (Mongols). From 13th century until 1912 they were one 'country', if country really existed in the same way we think about it. What changed? Britain invaded the region of Tibet in 1904. Tibet declared independence in 1912, but some say that China never ratified this. In 1949-1951, the communist army was "invading" all regions, to get rid of external influences.
Nobody is eradicating the Tibetan culture, one only has to go to Tibet to realize that Tibetans are free to worship in the buddhist temples, and yes, my parents have visited Tibet recently. They retain much of their culture.
Yes, China did get rid of slavery, which was part of Tibetan culture, so part of that is true, but I cannot believe you could possibly support slavery, for the cost of retaining a 'pure' culture.
Where is the proof that China is systematically murdering Tibetans, there may be clashes between the people, and the Chinese government may be tough, as tough to Tibetans as to its own Han people, but it definitely is not genocide, nowhere even close.
I invite you to further review the links, they show how many of the news reports are not accurate, in their reporting of Tibet and China.
For more reading on Tibet and China, some student at the University of Toronto, has compiled a few links.