The portents are bad: The day that the qualifying tournament for the Olympic baseball competition finished in Taiwan was the day that Beijing commenced its violent crackdown on Buddhist monks and other protesters in Tibet and Gansu Province after a week of protests.
Local sports fans may be delighted at the good fortune of the national baseball team, especially in light of its poor performance in previous contests. But for Taiwanese looking at the bigger picture, the thrill should be seriously dampened by the reports of a massive police mobilization, gunfire and burning of buildings in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.
Pre-Olympics pressure against the Chinese government over its many ugly faces has focused on its funding and arming of Sudan's murderous government. This pressure is well earned, but in terms of sheer scale, the number of people that Beijing oppresses within its own borders has not received the attention that it deserves.
Until now.
It is difficult to see how Beijing can deal with the disturbances without angering or embarrassing its sympathizers in the West. Its inclination is to use total force to extinguish Tibetan expressions of dissent, but to do so threatens to conflagrate an already delicate domestic mood.
The opposite strategy -- a negotiated solution with Tibetan leaders in exile and religious figures in Tibet -- remains out of the question: Such a concession would be revolutionary and precipitate changes in other parts of the country that would be seen as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party.
The likely approach will fall somewhere in between. A media blackout and selected arrests in monasteries and elsewhere -- but also a concerted effort to minimize the use of violence in more conspicuous locations. The Chinese can afford to exercise restraint, because once the Olympics are over they can resume special treatment for dissidents at any level of violence they choose.
With the British government already expressing concern over the unrest in southwest China, it remains a matter of time before more conscientious governments in the West -- especially those in northern Europe -- begin to juggle the implications of recommending an Olympic boycott to the national Olympic committees.
As for the Tibetans, it is becoming increasingly apparent -- in no small part because of the Dalai Lama's more direct criticisms of Beijing in recent days -- that the Olympics might be their last chance to appeal to the world for something approaching dignified treatment by a government that wants to overwhelm, marginalize and denude them.
The situation is thus likely to worsen until Beijing faces the impossible dilemma of sacrificing either Olympic glory or its self-declared right to molest its national minorities.
There are five months until the Olympics. With this early outbreak of public anger against despotism, the time ahead is bound to increasingly rattle Olympic sponsors, frighten the Chinese government and unnerve even the most mercenary of International Olympic Committee bureaucrats.
For everyone else with a trace of conscience and a grasp of diplomacy, the truth is out: The Beijing Olympics debacle has begun.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US