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THE LIBERTY TIMES EDITORIAL: Taiwan in the 'post-Olympic era'

The terrorist attack on Aug. 4 in Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region left 16 people dead and 16 injured. Just a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, this incident — which may only be the tip of the iceberg — has made it much more difficult for Chinese authorities to ensure total security during the Olympics.

Despite the manpower, resources and spiritual mobilization that is bringing nationalist sentiment to a peak, Beijing is still having a hard time covering up problems such as political control, economic stagnation, ethnic conflict and social unrest around the country.

How China will develop in the “post-Olympic era” is clearly something people in Taiwan need to pay attention to.

Nationalism is normally built on one of two things — common hardships and common glory.

Since the late Qing Dynasty, China was controlled by the Eight-Power Allied Forces, partly annexed by greater powers, invaded by Japan and gripped by civil war.

If this period is considered a breeding ground for the first stage of Chinese nationalism, then the stronger rule that Beijing has exhibited over China since securing the right to organize the Olympic Games could be referred to as the second stage of Chinese nationalism.

China believes the Games represent an opportunity to stand up to the world and wipe out the shame they have been subjected to. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used this mindset to justify sacrificing everything for the sake of the Olympics, and putting the most basic needs and rights of its citizens on the back burner. However, as the Olympics drew nearer, various problems within China have surfaced and the government has been unable to contain them, compromising the Olympic spirit of peace, friendship, respect and forgiveness.

The attack on Aug. 4 was by no means a coincidence. A Uighur exile group has said the attack was the result of increased crackdowns by the Chinese government in the run-up to the Olympics. Before this, a Muslim separatist group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement released a videotape of themselves making bombs, announcing that they would attack during the Games.

US intelligence experts believe these threats were genuine and have said that many areas of China have received terrorist attack threats, exhausting police officers in China in the process.

Similar to the revolt that took place in Tibet in March, China’s rule in Xinjiang and the harsh way it treats its ethnic minorities are indeed issues that could give rise to terrorist attacks.

Chinese police recently killed five Uighur “bandits” and before that they carried out a wide-scale crackdown on what they call “violent Uighur independence groups.”

The CCP’s oppression of its people has caused a great amount of dissatisfaction and the recent attacks and crackdowns highlight fundamental social problems that have come to the forefront as China’s economy has grown, including vast differences between the wealthy and the poor, an continually increasing urban-rural gap and soaring unemployment.

The opening-up policies promoted in China since the 1980s have encouraged economic growth and increased China’s national power. However, this growth has come at the expense of democratic progress. Prior to the Olympics, China arrested many activists in the name of stability.

By doing so, China broke the promises it had made during their Olympic bid to improve human rights, attracting the concern of international agencies such as Amnesty International. US President George W. Bush also openly expressed concern over China’s human rights record before he visited China, with Beijing complaining that this was foreign interference in domestic political affairs. These incidents all prove how wrong the Western world was in thinking that hosting the Olympics would force Beijing to improve its human rights record.

China’s censorship of the Internet caused a huge uproar when approximately 20,000 journalists arrived in Beijing for the Games. Despite Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) giving the go ahead to loosen Internet restrictions during the Olympics, the whole world saw the arrogant and random way the Chinese government handles things.

Will the economic bubble supported by the Chinese dictatorship burst after the Olympics?

Many observers are conservative and have chosen not to make too many comments. However, issues such as the disaster caused by the heavy snowfall during this year’s Lunar New Year’s celebrations, the Sichuan earthquake, a struggling stock market, inflation, appreciation of the yuan and changes in the cost of labor have already caused its economic growth rate to drop, and experts are not ruling out the possibility of a “hard landing” for the Chinese economy. China has started implementing controls and subsidies to help things in the short term, but we must ask ourselves just what will happen after the Olympics. Things will no doubt be very challenging for China.

China has been using the Olympics to distort a lot of things and the nationalism it has mobilized for the Olympics is complex and changeable. Given these volatile circumstances and the fact that Taiwan is already overly reliant on the Chinese economy, we need to pay particularly close attention to economic policies that call for closer integration with China.

Our leaders need to take a step back and analyze the overall situation.

We need to come up with strategies that we can use to respond to an economic collapse in China to reduce the chain effect such a collapse would have on Taiwan.

We cannot allow ourselves to be hypnotized and brainwashed into believing that all is good and get carried away by the opening ceremony in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium, as the aftereffects could be very damaging.

(Editor’s note: This editorial appeared in the Liberty Times last Tuesday, before the knife attack in Beijing on relatives of a US Olympic team member.)

TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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