The failure of Taiwan and China to reach a compromise on the passage of the Olympic torch through Taiwan comes as an anti-climax.
This is because it was a foregone conclusion: The concessions Beijing required -- no displays of offensive national symbols -- were always going to be intolerable, even allowing for the pragmatism that accompanies sporting events.
This decision now takes away attention from Taiwan's identity problems and symbolic lines in the sand. And perhaps this is just as well, because the genuine focus for activists and governments of conscience everywhere is surely not Taiwan's beef with China and whether Taiwan should launch a boycott -- notwithstanding the 1,000 or so missiles pointing in our direction and regular verbal threats -- but the ritual mistreatment of Chinese nationals by their own government.
The issue of a boycott, indeed, will take a back seat as the government focuses on more pressing issues, such as re-election.
It is unlikely that Democratic Progressive Party legislators hostile to Olympic participation and their think tank colleagues will make much of an impact on public thinking for the moment. There simply isn't enough interest in the subject.
So, over to you, Mia Farrow and like-minded activists, to prick the consciences of those around the world who still have one.
This will be a big ask, because the International Olympic Committee (IOC), indifferent governments, hypocrisy-peddling national Olympic committees and sports fans with no conscience are a formidable bunch laid end to end.
But optimists should note that the Chinese government, in all its squalor, is an inadvertent friend. Unable to adapt to international sensibilities, unwilling to sincerely engage with its foes and unfailing in its refusal to show contrition for its mistakes -- past and present -- Beijing will bite at every bait that activists throw at it.
The Chinese are entitled to a feeling of pride at hosting the Games, but they are not entitled to whitewash the cruelty that their governments routinely inflict on the weakest of the citizenry -- and the reality that the Games are a principal propaganda tool for those who would continue to do so.
We look forward to the Games for this reason, and this reason only: Every display of outrage at Chinese brutality, every word of dissent and every humanitarian protest -- by local or foreigner -- will be conflated with hooliganism, separatism, splittism, terrorism and any other "ism" that comes to the mind of Beijing's propaganda squad.
The violent results will be a thick smear on the already sleazy record of the IOC and a sober illustration of the profound ugliness of the new Chinese nationalism.
And the violence will come as a rude shock for those who persist with the fantasy that China is a benevolent culture whose time for pre-eminence has returned. The slogan "genocide games" and likening Beijing 2008 to Berlin 1936 may strike some as a little theatrical, but this may be because the world has not been given a proper theater to understand China's modern nature. Until now.
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