It has to be somewhere at the end of my correspondentship in China NRC in 2001, the selection committee for the allocation of the Summer Olympics visited the Chinese capital. There were still almost seven years to go, as goes with planning for these kinds of mammoth events, and Beijing wasn’t sure of its place yet. So the comb and whip went through the capital, temporarily cutting traffic in half, shutting down factories and spraying the withered grass green (no joke), but also evicting migrant workers, the disabled and the homeless from the city (no joke ).
In my neighborhood, a stone’s throw from Tiananmen Square, for the four days that the committee came to visit, only perfect Chinese citizens (and me) lived under a sky that had never looked down on them so clearly. The party state, my neighbors knew, got a lot done – coercion and fear did the rest.
It should not dampen the enthusiasm of the weighty bosses of the world’s most important sports festival. Nor the traditional approach to political dissidents, or the human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang (yes, even then) or the absence of freedom of expression. After all, sports and politics should remain separate: Beijing got its Games.
And so the People’s Republic of China took its next proud step on the world stage. In my alley the flag went out spontaneously. The street committee kept a close eye on that. And within a week the farm service providers, the unfortunate born fellow citizens and the bums were back in the neighbourhood.
The Games, they continue
When repressive states are awarded the Olympics, the protest from the free world flares up like the languid cry of an old crank siren: at first it barely makes a sound, then slowly started whining, then aroused and howling enormously. It rarely has any effect because the loud blaring often comes too late while, say, the bombs are already whizzing toward Earth. Or to stick to the Games: they will continue, whether the world sends political leaders or not. And where it seems a noble choice of principle not to (in the case of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium), corona does the rest. Whether we tarry about the definition of our principles or not, we don’t even have to go, because we are no longer welcome – thanks to a virus that has escaped from a Chinese laboratory, of all things. No matter how hard we try, God does the rest.
That bellow, you might think, should have sounded in 2015, before China was awarded the Games. But then that seemed very far away. Just like in 2001, when my less fortunate neighbors could whistle for their rights and 2008, the year of the Summer Olympics in China, seemed so unreal.
Apart from the fact that mooing during sport may come naturally, you can rightly ask yourself why there is always only a political moo when it is the sport’s turn. Precisely when there is something to experience, the criticism is heard. Yes, that’s why of course. But where did that political protest sound during the many trade delegations, the countless cultural and scientific exchanges, the countless goodwill trips and friendship toasts? Or when every Dutch municipality was queuing up to forge sisterhood with previously unknown, but oh, so exotic-sounding places like Shangluo and Nantong? (thanks to the travel-loving officials from distant Dutch places such as Emmen and Oosterhout). It remains a dilemma when the choice for human rapprochement at all those other moments can also mean embracing the dictatorship.
Does that matter?
Yes, that matters!
Protest from the free world flares up like the languid cry of an old crank siren
Stroking and kicking at the same time
Because it is precisely that unpredictable, but somehow also easily predictable attitude of the West that China uses so cleverly against us. Let’s face it, you can’t pet and kick at the same time. There seems to be something contradictory about that movement. First standing in line to do groceries for next to nothing, then smashing the shop windows. You don’t make friends with that. Even historically, it’s not true – after all, we’ve usually done it the other way around: first chop into the pan and then rob the place. But that is of course no longer of this time. Although sometimes it seems that we just can’t get used to it. Perhaps that’s what the Chinese mean when they accuse us of neo-colonialism: that historically grown greed, meddling, and revenge—in that order. With a great lack of self-awareness – no matter how well we mean it.
How we relate to powerful dictatorships is very complicated, but we don’t make it easy on ourselves with our confusing and uncritical messages either. While dealing with China is not even that difficult: there is one clear constant in this story, and that is the Chinese state. It has been suppressing for more than seventy years, quite systematically. Little has changed. The incarceration of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Inner Mongols has been going on for a long time. The threat to Taiwan is very old news. The absence of press freedom reflects a rich tradition. And yet it always surprises us. Whereupon we suddenly start ranting in great panic about the principles of busy sportsmen and women who simply need all their attention and energy for things other than politics. While corona had already made traveling for the public impossible anyway. Pretty easy.
Also read: Boycott the Olympics or not? Devise a clear China strategy
China is more confident
What is new is that as its power has grown, and the response from the West has become more fickle and assertive, China has become bolder. You may wonder if it would have left Hong Kong alone more without corona taking over us like that. One might ask whether something like taking Crimea by that other dictatorship, without concrete intervention by the West, has made the Chinese dictatorship less afraid of sanctions. Things like this, and the school the United States has made with authoritarian rule under Trump, have certainly made dictatorships like China more confident. They know how to play the free world better and better with money, access and influence. You could almost say that China is becoming a citizen of the world, but one based on an old western style. We don’t like that, but it’s a fact.
In the Western experience there are two kinds of China: that of oppression and that of, say, Ruben Terlou, in which friendly citizens show feelings. The latter is all too often forgotten in the debate about China: even in a dictatorship people live with ideals and dreams. Especially there, of course, because there is so little space for it. But those two realities always co-exist – in any dictatorship. And most of those citizens owe the repressive leaders they’ve been foisted on, in part due to our lack of clarity. In which we embrace them again and then reject them again – depending on the political wind in our home.
Therefore, it makes sense to become more straightforward, less naive in our expectations of China, and more honest, especially with ourselves. We need to know what we stand for, and be aware of what we are propagating with our fraught history of oppression and opportunism – even if we now have other intentions. And we must continue to keep our eyes open and receptive to all those Chinese who desire a carefree existence as much as we do. Only through such an attitude will we eventually deprive the Chinese dictatorship of some of its guns. If we are prepared to think ahead and set conditions before accepting a good deal, an interesting exchange, or the assignment of a prestige project such as the Games, then a boycott may have an effect. Consistent and (self-)critical action is the only way forward. That helps them in that alley a stone’s throw from the Square.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 29 January 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 29, 2022
