They went about intimidating, screaming and jostling anyone seen as a Tibetan supporter. A headline in the Australian newspaper described it as: “Chinese students bully torch crowds.”
A Sydney Morning Herald reporter said: “It was intimidating to look into the screaming faces of Chinese supporters who held flags out of passing car windows and screamed ‘One China’ to Tibetans.”
One Australian woman was quoted as saying that, “It’s pretty insulting that Australians in their own country need riot police to protect them from foreign nationals.”
And the irony of China supporters exercising their right of free speech and peaceful protest (even when it was not so peaceful) in Australia was not lost on observers and commentators, aware of the fate of the protesters in Tibet or, for that matter, the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
A cartoon in the Australian was biting in its double-edged irony. It shows a Free Tibet supporter forcefully telling a China supporter: “You’d be shot in China for demonstrating there.” The China supporter equally forcefully responds: “I’d be shot in China for not demonstrating here.”
Even more objectionable was the cavalier way in which the Chinese authorities sought to override Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s public declaration that China’s track-suited paramilitaries would not have any security role during the Canberra torch relay.
Rudd’s pledge to uphold Australian law in providing security for the torch was contested by China till the end.
The point of recapitulating the Olympic torch relay through Canberra is to highlight Beijing’s highhandedness and arrogance even when the international event involved, the Olympics, is simply a celebration of international sport.
Imagine China’s volatile reaction if it were an event involving some territorial issue, with Beijing regarding it as an infringement or violation of its sovereignty. And imagine further the sort of national mobilization Beijing might bring about with unpredictable consequences.
Sure, there is a method to China’s madness regarding the national hysteria over the torch, with the Western world seen as indulging the Dalai Lama’s “nefarious” activities. It has given the regime a certain level of legitimacy as the upholder of China’s national interests.But it is a dangerous game the CCP is playing. To maintain and sustain such legitimacy, it will be required to produce concrete results to satisfy enhanced national expectations all around.
And that is a Herculean job which even the CCP might not be able to deliver. In the meantime, the world waits with baited breath to see where China’s ultra nationalism will take it.
Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.
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