Beijing Boycott?
April 9th, 2008 by KimBBC reporting that PM Gordon Brown will not attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics on August 8.
President Bush is under pressure at home, most recently from presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, to skip the opening ceremonies. Congressman Neil Abercrombie has also joined a group of other House members in pushing for a hearing on a resolution calling for an Olympic boycott until China improves its human rights record.
Since winning the Olympic bid in 2001, China has come under pressure from numerous sources to address human rights before August. Protests in Tibet in the last few weeks have people focusing more and more on the idea of a boycott.
I have many more thoughts on this issue, but have to run to do a story/video. In the meantime, take a look at this site, Anti-CNN.com, which is dedicated to shaming the Western media’s coverage of the situation in Tibet. It gives a different perspective on what’s happening over there.
Tags: beijing olympics, China
April 9th, 2008 at 11:33 am
The unfortunate truth is that China has the power (a few trillion in US bonds? lol) to get away with it regardless of what a few plebs in the west protest. America is not in the position of power it was (globably) a decade ago and what we say carries a lot less weight now than before. Blame greedy lenders and banks for destroying the real estate and mortgage markets.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I agree with j… we messed up and now we are screwed as far as being the numbah 1 in the world.. We’ve lost that position for sometime now and our threats and innuendos will get us nowhere..
April 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Tell us something that isn’t one of headlines….around the world. This isn’t he front page!
What about the new turn signals in Hawaii Kai? Earth Day at Hanauma Bay? What about Djou running for Congress?
WTFO?
April 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Hillary’s call for Bush not to attend the opening ceremonies is just partisan politics. If she truly wanted to send China a message she would call for all the athletes to boycott the Olympics, and not just the Republican president. But she won’t do that as long as she’s still behind Obama in the nomination race.
Regardless of whether best intentions are present or not, media reports are never 100% unbiased, because the people reporting are human and their producers/editors are human and get paid through advertisements. BUT, the difference is that we get to at least see everything and make up our own minds. The Chinese government censors the media and filters the internet. There are generations of Chinese who still do not know about what happened at Tiananmen (spelling?) Square. I would rather live in a society with freedom and biased media, than in a society with government filtered media and has restrictions on journalistic, religious and reproductive rights.
I think having the Olympics in China is a good thing. It will expose Chinese people there to uncensored lives and ways of life and force the world to take notice of China’s human rights violations. I wonder what would happen if Taiwan declared independence the day of the opening ceremonies.
FREE TIBET!
April 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
imo, these boycotts will have no effect except hurt our possible influence to help Darfur/Tibet. China has never reacted positively to that type of diplomacy. i’m not sure what the US can do to help ease the human rights situation, but taking a standoffish stance on the subject is definitely not going to help anyone.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hear, hear, specially to Franksabunch, above . . . with a reservation; specifically this “free Tibet.” Cripes, that thing is as old as . . . well . . . as old as me!!! [!] Which country will step up to star the “free Tibet” process?! Can’t always be the United States.
Hey, I got it — so that we really substantially GIVE IT to China, let’s BOYCOTT CHINESE MADE G . . . oh, waitaminute. Oh, well, was a thought. ‘Ey, don’t look at me — my watch is Swiss Made, yuk yuks.
I’ll just quote myself from previous comments I made to previous Advertiser news stories ’bout this “de-torch the torch” nonsense:
“It’s gonna be interesting to see if these activists pull this shinola in Beijing itself. If they can pull all that sign waving and grabbing of Olympic symbols in the Chinese city and not get arrested (or worse; are we forgetting Tianenmen Square?), then they’ll get my two bits (somewhere between my toes) of respect from me. This Tibet thing has been going on for SO long, NOW all of a sudden they want attention brought to it; the worst thing about these activists is that they seem to want us to believe, oh, all of a sudden some bleeding heart(s) decides to scale a San Francisco bridge or make a grab for the Olympic torch. To me, I see the opposite — this seems more organized than anything else. Like I said, they REALLY wanna make a statement — try all that in China itself (where, I bet it’s quashed ASAP; China no fool around no matter WHO the heck you are).”
“You know . . . I wonder how many of these protestors can claim “made in China” goods in thieir respective household (as, well, most if not all of us do nowadays) or on their person. BA-DOIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!!!! Yeah, really beginning to sound like a cartoon, all these laments of protests. Then, they get arrested, get put into the system . . . and I wonder how many of them wonder ‘was this REALLY worth protesting over’?”
Ya’ll go read Clancy’s The Bear and The Dragon . . . China can end up becoming a mighty military foe (notice no 09/11s happening on THEIR soil; well, at least none done by their own People’s Army [i.e., Tianenmen Square); maybe we’ve more to complain about China than just Tibet? No?
April 9th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The Tibet boycott situation would effect Hawaii, because we’re trying to attract more Chinese tourists in order to offset the declining Japanese tourists. If a boycott does happen and if the Chinese become aware that a Hawaii senator encouraged the Olympic boycott, it could give the emerging Chinese middle class the impression that Hawaii would be unwelcoming toward Chinese tourists. This in turn would obviously compel the potential Chinese tourist to spend their tourist dollars elsewhere.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
According to a Chinese friend of mine, the Chinese government censors news back home, but there are ways of getting around this, such as through private internet servers, such as sina.com. Moreover, there are more than 60,000 Chinese grad students in the US and thousands more in other countries who have access to the western press. Not surprisingly, these students seem to be strongly supporting their country. While this may not be good news for the Free Tibet people, what is highly encouraging is their strong interest in this political situation after decades of focusing only on making money. And many will return to become the future leaders of China.
As for Hillary, she has committed a colossal blunder. If she becomes president (and let’s pray that that doesn’t happen), she will have damaged relations with a nation that has supreme importance to the American economy because the Chinese will not soon forget nor forgive what she did.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Kim,
hillary’s playing politics with other people’s lives, which she’s been doing ever since she ran the white house in the 90’s. she speaks before realizing what implications her words have on others. there is no way an athlete (american) that has been training most of his/her life for this moment is going to give up the opportunity to walk side by side with other athletes from around the world. opening ceremonies is one of the most memorable times of the olympics for these athletes, especially since only a small percentage will actually win a medal. this is the time when they can fly the flags of their countries proudly. boycotting would make a big statement, but at the cost of the hard-working athletes. obviously, hillary is not an athlete and doesn’t understand the time and commitment that went into their sports endeavors.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Nami,
If the Hawaii/Honolulu/Oahu economy is leaning so hard on the tourist industry that a few hundred (low thousands) Chinese tourists will make or break the bank then its time to have the government plow under Waikiki and return it to it’s original state, Fishpods and marshland. Then plenty of Chinese farmers will show up to claim a piece of the swamp.
Another Point: There really isn’t an emerging middle class in China. If you’ve ever been there and seen the working class and the elite working side-by-side, you’ll know what you wrote makes absolutely no sense and has no bearing on Hawaii. Most of the Chinese who can afford to travel to Hawaii are not a working class citizens, nor do they return often (if at all) for a second look. If they are a working class citizen, and travel here, they most likely have family or relatives already in place in Hawaii, and although they may LOOK like tourists - they are not.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Naminori overstates the danger to Hawaii’s visitor industry by the Chinese middle class. Hawaii has an outstanding reputation in China, for aesthetic, cultural and historical reasons (Hainan is the “Hawaii of China”) and once December’s break-through tourism agreement is finalized (that will allow group tours to come to the US), we will see a significant rise in Chinese tourists..not enough to make or break our economy, but it will help.
But “Learn your trade” is totally wrong when he says that “there really isn’t any emerging middle class in China.” There are currently more than 400 million people who own cellphones (the largest number in the world) and their rising affluence is accounting for a boom in automobile sales and luxury items. And statistics from Chinese tourists overseas have shown that they spend far more than other tourists. Consider this, too:
1. China will supply 100 million outbound tourists by 2020, making it the fourth largest source of international travelers.
2. Chinese visition to the US is forecast to reach 579,00 by 2011, an 81% increase from 2006.
3. Many Chinese visitors are expected to stop in Hawaii on their way to the Mainland U.S.
4. In 2006, Hawaii hosted 54,318 visitors from China who came mostly for business and educational reasons. Many, many more will come for the fun.
Yes, the prospect of significant increases in Chinese tourism is welcome news to our leading industry–an industry that has been battered by the closing of Aloha Airlines. Bring them on!
April 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am
http://avpress.com/n/10/0410_s15.hts
That’s what I think about an Olympic boycott.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Richard,
Take a look at your numbers….. 54000 visitors from China (all 3 billion+ people). What kind of emerging middle class is that? That’s 18-ten thousand of 1% of their population. And … again… unless you’ve been there…
Cell phones don’t make an emerging middle class… they’re giving cell phones to 6 year-old children… are they a middle class? I think not.
Numbers can be deceiving…and in this case ….
April 14th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Boycotting the Olympics in Beijing will do nothing… it’s just another way for the politicians to pretend to do something. Let the athletes compete. They work hard for 4 years and now we’re going to take all that away from them. The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott accomplished nothing.
As for that anti-cnn site…. It’s laughable.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Learn,
The current population of China is 1.3 billion — not “3 billion+” as you stated. Three billion people would make up something like 75 percent of the entire world’s population.
Aloha,
Kim