Recreate '68 spreads Torch talk: the IOC says please please no politics, despite the fact that those are nation state uniforms: Cadre preps rioters

Just in case there was ant doubt that the Olypics will be non stop street theater, the IOC begs no politics. At the Olympics? With Gold Medals by country? Yikes!


Olympic Committee Tells Athletes
To Avoid Political Statements
By MEI FONG
May 7, 2008; Page A15
BEIJING -- To Olympic athletes contemplating wearing messages of support for Tibet, Darfur or even the notion of a better world, the International Olympic Committee is saying, "Don't."

Last week, the IOC sent a letter to all national Olympic organizing committees saying athletes should stay away from clothes, gestures or moves that demonstrate "political, religious or racial propaganda" at venues for the Beijing Games. This includes "all actions, reactions, attitudes" by people, including "external appearance, clothing, gestures and written or oral statements."

The letter appears to represent the IOC's most explicit statements to date clarifying an existing prohibition on the use of the Olympic Games as a political venue, and it is a bid to prevent protests from swamping what already has become one of the most contentious Games in recent history.

Recent demonstrations over China's human-rights record in Paris, London and San Francisco during the Olympic torch relay have in turn fanned a wave of patriotism and anti-Western sentiment in China.

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the letter, earlier reported by the Associated Press, makes it clear the IOC won't allow requests by, for instance, French athletes to wear a badge marked "For a better world," an attempt by the French contingent to express its disquiet in a way that wouldn't offend its Chinese hosts.

"We're not saying athletes can't express their views, but not at Games venues. The Olympics are about celebrating sporting achievements," she said. Athletes would be free to express their opinions outside Olympic venues, including in blogs, but must abide by local laws, she said.

Under Chinese law, protesters must apply for permits, a practice that frequently isn't followed. Chinese officials have said that visitors to the Olympics must observe Chinese law.


U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos raised gloved fists in racial protest as the Star Spangled Banner was played at the 1968 Olympics.
Activist groups that have called on athletes to express their views through clothing include Team Darfur, a Washington-based coalition of athletes, and a Danish group called the Color Orange, which is encouraging Olympic participants to wear orange to protest human-rights violations in China. "How can they ban a color? They look like fools," said Color Orange's founder, Jens Galschiot. He was denied entry into Hong Kong last week, when the Olympic torch relay was being held there.

The Olympic prohibitions also might be challenged by patriotic Chinese wearing gear with a message professing love for China. Sales of such items have soared in recent weeks, as Chinese reacted with fury to outside criticism and perceived bias by Western media companies -- some of whom are underwriting the Games' running costs.

Past Olympians punished for making political gestures include American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who protested racial inequality by raising black-gloved fists during the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Both were suspended from the U.S. team.

Another was Korean marathoner Sohn Kee-Chung, who in 1936 became the first Korean to win an Olympic medal. An ardent patriot, Mr. Sohn publicly lamented competing under Japan's flag -- Korea was at the time a de facto Japanese colony -- and openly wept when it was hoisted during his medal presentation at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. Japanese authorities then banned him from competing in other running events, according to historian David Clay Large in the book "Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936."

Separately, China acknowledged for the first time that it is tightening its visa policy ahead of the Olympic Games. Foreign-ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular media briefing Tuesday that "we are more strict and more serious" in approving visas.

For weeks, travel agents and foreign businesspeople have complained of extra difficulties in obtaining business or tourism visas to China. Mr. Qin said the tighter measures were to be maintained indefinitely, to create "a safe environment" and ensure "all the foreign friends who come to China can feel safer and happier."

--Andrew Batson contributed to this article.

Write to Mei Fong at mei.fong@wsj.com

Out of ideas and humiliated, the Cadre tries soft power with an ancient adversary in order to avoid the Torch triumph: 100 days till Beijing farce

The Torch drives the Cadre's Tibet bully Hu to the arms of the Shogun Jr. Strange success. Two years ago the Cadre directed its angry youth to riot against Japan because of the war memorial fiasco. The cadre has no memory. It lives on the defensive. Score more successes for the Dalai Clique, apparently now running the Shogun Jr.

Hu's Visit to Japan May Help Ease Strains
China Tries to Polish
Image for Olympics;
Economic Ties Boom
By SEBASTIAN MOFFETT in Tokyo and JASON LEOW in Beijing
May 6, 2008 2:54 p.m.
Hu Jintao on Tuesday became the first Chinese president to visit Japan in 10 years, in a trip aimed at softening China's international image ahead of this summer's Olympic games.

The trip to Japan was arranged as part of a long campaign by Asia's biggest economic powers to fix their frayed relationship. The past decade has seen booming economic ties -- but also accusations by China that the Japanese weren't sufficiently sorry for their invasion of China in the 1930s, and a feeling by many Japanese that they were being unfairly picked on over this.


AP Photo/Japan Poo)
Chinese President Hu Jintao, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, left, head to a dinner Tuesday in Tokyo.
However, the two countries have tried over the past few years to forge better relations. China's military power is growing, making any potential flare-up more dangerous. And Japan's economy is getting a growth kick from exports of components, materials and machine tools to equip Chinese factories.

The trip has taken on a wider significance, however, as China is increasingly under fire for its handling of protests in Tibet, where clashes between Tibetan monks and Chinese security forces triggered violence. Tibetan exile groups say more than 200 people, mostly Tibetan, have been killed in the unrest, though the Chinese government has put the death toll at 22.

The Chinese government's treatment of Tibetan protesters prompted criticism from foreign governments and the Western media. That prompted some Chinese to boycott several Western conglomerates. As the Olympic flame was taken around the world on its way to Beijing, Chinese students demonstrated along parts of the route, turning out in droves with a sea of red Chinese flags.

But analysts say the Chinese leadership is now urgently looking to fix the country's image before the Olympics, which take place in August. Last week, Zhu Weiqun and Sitar, both vice ministers of the ruling Communist Party's policy-making body on religious and ethnic relations, met envoys of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in a bid to soften Beijing's image.

In addition, says Chen Gang, a research fellow at the East Asian Institute in Singapore, China's leaders might be trying to send a message to its own people -- that "we are now in a globalized era and we cannot have overly strong nationalism."

In a sign of the diplomatic task for Mr. Hu, hundreds of demonstrators turned out as he arrived in Tokyo to protest China's crackdown in Tibet.

Even so, better relations with an old enemy could help improve China's image, and Mr. Hu arrived in Japan full of goodwill. When Jiang Zemin visited Japan in 1998, he spoke sharply about the millions of Chinese killed by Japan's invasion last century. Relations worsened after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi publicly visited the controversial Yasukuni war shrine, which commemorates convicted war criminals as well as conscripted soldiers.

But Mr. Koizumi's successors have avoided Yasukuni, and current Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is known to be friendly toward China. Mr. Hu told Japanese reporters before his departure that the trip would be a "warm spring" for the countries.

Still, the two leaders are unlikely to get far with concrete issues, government officials indicated. They are at odds over gas exploration rights in disputed waters in the East China Sea. They have been arguing over the origin of pesticide found in February in some frozen dumplings exported from China to Japan, which hurt Chinese food exports to Japan.

Instead, Mr. Hu might be able to help replace a giant panda that died recently of heart failure at Tokyo's largest zoo. "It would be nice if we have a panda there again," Mr. Fukuda told reporters.

Write to Sebastian Moffett at sebastian.moffett@wsj.com and Jason Leow at jason.leow@wsj.com

Hu of the Cadre tries an end run in Japan: no on laughing, and no one fooled. Japan is free and dangerous. China is unfree and feckless

Hu comes to bury rancorous history
By David Pilling and Richard McGregor
Published: May 5 2008 17:32 | Last updated: May 5 2008 17:32
It has been 10 years since Jiang Zemin became the first Chinese head of state to visit Japan in China’s several-thousand-year history. The trip went badly.

Mr Jiang lectured the Japanese about their wartime atrocities and what he said was their lack of contrition, setting off a grim decade in Sino-Japan relations.


The low point came during the tenure of Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006, whose annual custom of visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead, so annoyed Beijing that top-level contacts were suspended almost entirely.

Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian studies at Tokyo’s Temple University, says the chill could not have come at a worse time as it coincided with a shift in Asia’s balance of power from a mature Japan to a rising China. Even though economic relations were deepening over the same period, Mr Kingston says that, at a political level, contacts were dangerously neglected.

Since then, both sides have rowed back from the brink and a five-day trip to Japan by Hu Jintao, China’s president, which begins on Tuesday, marks the culmination of 18 months of frantic fence-building.

In a sign of China’s new, conciliatory approach, Mr Hu gave an interview to 16 Japanese journalists at the weekend, the first time the low-profile leader, who tightly controls his public image, has granted foreign reporters such access.

During that meeting Mr Hu took a pragmatist’s view. “It is inevitable to have some problems and it is normal to have different views during the development of bilateral relations,” he was quoted as saying by Xinhua, China’s state news agency. “What’s more important is that the two sides should handle issues with a candid and sincere attitude.”

Trade quietly endures through the chill
Trade between the two Asian nations has grown steadily, in spite of tense political relations.
● Japan remains the biggest economic power in Asia, with a $4,300bn economy in 2006, against China’s $2,700bn, according to World Bank data.
● China replaced the US as Japan’s top trade partner in 2007, with two-way trade totalling $236.6bn, says the Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro). Chinese customs authority data say Japan was China’s third biggest trade partner, behind the European Union and the US, last year. Japan’s foreign direct investment to China stood at $6.2bn last year, says Jetro. Traffic in the other direction is a comparatively new area of growth.
● China and Japan have a $6bn currency swap agreement, created to thwart speculative attacks on their currencies and prevent a repeat of the Asian financial crisis.
Sources: Reuters, Japan External Trade Organisation
The new mood began in the autumn of 2006, when Mr Hu seized on Mr Koizumi’s departure to mend bridges with Japan. He welcomed Shinzo Abe, Mr Koizumi’s successor, to Beijing with stirring talk of a new strategic partnership and a determination that gnawing points of history should not be allowed to wreck ties between Asia’s two economic powerhouses.

Mr Abe’s breakthrough visit was followed by a carefully stage-managed trip to Japan by Wen Jiabao in April 2007 in which a smiling Chinese premier stopped at nothing – he even played baseball – to woo the Japanese public. If anything, relations at a diplomatic – if not necessarily at a public – level have improved again since Yasuo Fukuda, a foreign policy dove, became prime minister last September. Mr Fukuda has pleased Beijing by pledging not to visit Yasukuni.

Jin Linbo, of the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, says: “China wants to elevate the dialogue to a higher level – the political relationship is moving into a new phase.”

Gerry Curtis, professor of political science at Columbia University, says there will be no repeat of the Jiang fiasco with Mr Hu. “It will be a good news event,” he says. “Neither side will benefit from having a sour note sounded and the accent will be on the positive.”

Not that everything is perfect. After an apparent breakthrough during Mr Fukuda’s trip to Beijing in December, the two sides look no closer to settling a dispute over gas resources in the East China Sea.

The mood, at a popular level, was also soured when, in January, several Japanese fell ill after eating frozen gyoza dumplings made in China. The discovery of illegal pesticide in the packaging led to an initially promising joint investigation, but reached an impasse with each side blaming the other.

The already surly popular mood among Japan’s public – which mirrors the even more heated anti-Japanese sentiment in China – has not been helped by controversy over Tibet, although Tokyo has largely refrained from direct criticism of Beijing.

But “fortunately, these issues have not become obstacles to ties generally”, says Liu Jiangyong of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.Even in the absence of breakthroughs on substantial issues, the two sides will ensure the positive language continues and step up confidence-building exchanges of youth, as well as government and military officials.

Japan is hoping to win concessions from China on a post-Kyoto protocol, for which it insists China will need to make some cuts in carbon emissions. A Japanese foreign ministry official hinted that Mr Hu might make some gesture in that direction while in Tokyo.

Even if nothing much concrete is forthcoming, they can always fall back on panda diplomacy. Ling Ling, the only giant panda that belonged to Japan, last week died in Ueno Zoo. If Beijing is as serious as most believe about keeping relations sweet, it might not be long before another panda is on its way to Japan.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Dalai Clique drinks tea and generously listens to the Cadre whine.

The Dalai Lama understands that forgiveness is good for the giver and that anger hurts the angry. It is easy. The Cadre is deaf. Last eve I learmed from a Nanjing born author that the Cadre all have grandmothers who remember the old ways and wait patiently for the bully boys to step away.


China seeks positive outcome from Tibet talks
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: May 4 2008 14:12 | Last updated: May 4 2008 14:12
Hu Jintao, China’s president, said he hoped the opening round of new talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, held amid tight security at a state guesthouse in southern China on Sunday, would “yield a positive outcome.”

The talks were held in Shenzhen, the economic centre bordering Hong Kong, a location far from Beijing, the capital, in an apparent effort to minimise their domestic profile and possibly also downplay their importance.

Chinese officials have met representatives of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader six times since 2002, but the talks foundered last year, and then were put on hold after the suppression of sometimes violent protests in the remote Himalayan region in March.

Beijing announced last week it was willing to restart the talks, an apparent tactical shift to take the spotlight off Tibet as controversy over Chinese policies there threatened to cloud both this summer’s Olympics games and China’s interaction with the west generally.

However, Beijing has given no indication of any change, large or small, in its Tibet policy.

The official Chinese media attacked the Dalai Lama and his supporters sharply in the lead-up to Sunday’s talks, a sign of possible internal opposition to even the restart of talks agreed to by the leadership.

State media outlets called the elderly Buddhist monk a “loyal tool of international anti-Chinese forces” and accused him of “colluding with international anti-Chinese forces to spread rumours and slander to disrupt and sabotage the Olympic torch relay.”

Mr Hu, in comments to Japanese journalists before his trip to Japan this week, said Beijing’s policy was “clear and consistent, and the door of dialogue remains open,” according to a report of the interview on Xinhua, the state news agency.

But he added that “the Dalai Lama side should take concrete actions to stop violent crimes and activities involving disruption of the Beijing Olympics and splitting the motherland, to create conditions for further consultation.”

Beijing has said that it only agreed to the talks after “repeated requests” for it to do so from the “Dalai side.”

Beijing was represented in the Shenzhen talks by relatively junior officials, Zhu Weiqun and Sitar, who are vice-ministers in the ruling Communist Party’s United Front department, and who would have no indepedent negotiating authority.

The United Front department is a party body responsible for managing and co-opting various non-party bodies and their leaders, such as religious figures and ethnic minorities.

The Dalai Lama sent two envoys, Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, who are the spiritual leader’s representatives in Washington and Switzerland, respectively.

Chhime Chhoekyapa, a senior aide to the Dalai Lama, was quoted by Reuters at the weekend as saying the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile “can’t have great expectations” from the talks.

The talks coincided with the beginning of the torch relay on the Chinese mainland, in the resort area of Sanya, in Hainan.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Dalai Lama Envoys,
China Officials Meet
No Big Breakthrough
Appears to Emerge;
More Talks in Future
By SHAI OSTER in Beijing and PETER WONACOTT in Dharmsala, India
May 5, 2008; Page A10
The Dalai Lama's envoys met Chinese officials in their first talks since violent antigovernment protests erupted in Tibet in March and brought international pressure on Beijing ahead of the Olympics.

There appeared to be no major breakthroughs from the meeting, held in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese commercial center near Hong Kong. The two sides agreed that "another round of contact would be held at an appropriate time," according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

The two envoys expressed their views on relevant matters and said they would report what had been discussed at the meeting to the Dalai Lama, according to Xinhua.

Beijing, facing international pressure to restart talks with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles, had offered to meet the exiled religious leader's representatives. The move raised hopes among Tibetans that Chinese leaders may seek to defuse tensions while the country is under the Olympic spotlight.

A statement from the Dalai Lama's office before the meeting said the envoys "will convey His Holiness the Dalai Lama's deep concerns about the Chinese authorities' handling of the situation and also provide suggestions to bring peace to the region."

The meeting was the first for the two sides since antigovernment protests erupted March 14 in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, and in parts of western China with large Tibetan minorities. The violence has marked one of the biggest challenges to China's rule in decades. That unrest has also fanned protests in several other countries, turning the international Olympic torch relay into a symbol of discord between critics of the Chinese government and its supporters.

But the two sides still appear to be far apart.

China's central-government representatives said it was their hope that "to create conditions for the next round of contact and consultation," the Dalai Lama's side would take "credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China, stop plotting and inciting violence and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games," according to Xinhua.

The officials said the Lhasa riot "had jeopardized the fundamental interests of all the Chinese people including Tibetans." China says that a total of 18 Chinese civilians and one police officer died in the riot, in addition to hundreds of injured civilians and policemen, according to Xinhua.

The Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile say they have advocated only greater autonomy for the people of Tibet, not independence, and say the pursuit of that goal must be peaceful. Tibetan exile groups say some 200 Tibetans have been killed by Chinese authorities since the riots, which began as peaceful protests to mark a failed uprising against the Chinese in 1959. After that failed attempt, the Dalai Lama fled to India.

According to Xinhua, the meeting was arranged after repeated requests from the Dalai Lama's side to resume talks. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu had expressed the hope that the Dalai Lama and his followers could "cherish" this opportunity for contact and consultation.

As the two parties gathered, President Hu Jintao said he hoped for a "positive outcome" and that the "door of dialogue remains open," according to Xinhua.

A spokesman for Tibet's government in exile couldn't be reached Sunday. But a statement posted on the Tibetan government Web site Saturday said the envoys would push to continue the dialogue with the Chinese in order to broaden the scope of talks beyond the current crisis to the future of Tibet.

"Since the Chinese leadership has indicated, publicly as well as in briefings given to foreign governments, its position on the continuation of the dialogue, the envoys will raise the issue of moving forward on the process for a mutually satisfactory solution to the Tibetan issue," the statement said.

Separately, the mainland-China leg of the Olympic-torch relay was welcomed with no protests on the southern island of Hainan Sunday.

Write to Shai Oster at shai.oster@wsj.com and Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com

Mrs. Clinton launches on Beijing, joins Dalai Clique: Pow, Zap, Bong!

And now for the completely fresh approach, a Bonaparate maneuver, hit 'em where they ain't, Mrs. C goes to China and joins the Dalai Clique.

Clinton turns to China bashing

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Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent | May 05, 2008

HILLARY Clinton, seeking to make China as important an election issue as Iraq, has launched her most vicious attack on Beijing as she tries to comfort the US working class ahead of this week's Democratic primary elections.

With Indiana and North Carolina headed to the polls on Wednesday, Senator Clinton sought to strengthen her position with primarily white lower-income earners by blaming China, which holds almost 20 per cent of US debt, for the loss of manufacturing jobs and the decline of the US currency.

"We do have to get tough on China," she said yesterday while campaigning in North Carolina, which has seen a loss of more than 200,000 factory jobs since 2001. "It is long past time for us to blow the whistle."

"This country manipulates its currency to our disadvantage, they engage in broad-based intellectual property theft, industrial espionage, they do not follow the rules they agreed to follow when they joined the WTO. What do we get in return from them? Well, we get tainted pet food, we get lead-laced toys, we get polluted pharmaceuticals."

With polls showing the economy has now surpassed the war in Iraq as the primary concern of voters, the Clinton campaign has ratcheted up its China bashing in recent weeks, despite Bill Clinton's leading role in championing China's entry into the global economy when he was president.

Senator Clinton has made China the international bogeyman, calling on President George W.Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in August as a protest against China's policies in Tibet and Sudan.

"I'm the only candidate who isn't just talking about cracking down on China but I have a specific plan on how to do it," she told unionists last month. "China should be our trade partner, not our trade master."

She has called for trade sanctions and other punitive measures. But her hard line on China has not sat well with everyone in her campaign.

Richard Baum, a political science professor at the Centre for Chinese Studies at UCLA, resigned as her adviser because of what he called "gratuitous China bashing" and "grossly misguided accusations".

"As a lifelong Democrat, it saddens me that Senator Clinton has chosen to take the low road in her effort to gain our party's presidential nomination," Professor Baum said in an email to the website Politico.

However, the message resonates with a section of the community that sees Senator Clinton, an Ivy League-educated lawyer and multi-millionaire, as a champion of the oppressed.

She will be hoping that her bond with the white working class can keep her presidential bid alive.

Even her own advisers, including James Carville, conceded that Indiana was a must-win state and after being in a dead-heat with frontrunner Barack Obama, polls now give her a slight edge.

After Senator Obama's worst week of his campaign - polls show he was wounded by the re-emergence of his racially divisive former pastor, Jeremiah Wright - his double-digit lead in North Carolina slipped below 10percentage points and he faces the prospect of surrendering Indiana.

Indiana is pivotal because the Democratic Party super delegates - officials and apparatchiks - want to see Senator Obama win over traditional Democratic bases, such as factory workers.

Indiana has not voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since Lyndon Johnson, but its proximity to Senator Obama's home state of Illinois and its wealth of independents makes it important for his candidacy.

Victory for Senator Clinton in Indiana will reinforce her argument that only she can deliver the poor whites in a battle against Republican John McCain.

As Senator Obama will almost certainly have the lead in both popular vote and delegates after the primaries, Senator Clinton must convince the supers to give her their votes. The idea was a long shot a month ago but it is gaining traction.

Senator Obama received some good news yesterday when he won the Guam caucuses - albeit by only seven votes, 2264 to 2257 - over Senator Clinton. They will each get seven delegates from the Pacific island territory whose residents can't even vote in the general election.

While Senator Clinton was tearing into China, Senator Obama implored voters to look beyond the superficial elements of this race and focus on the big-picture issues.

"The only way (I) can win this race (is) if you decide that you've had enough of the way things are; if you decide that this election is bigger than flag pins and sniper fire and the comments of a former pastor, bigger than the differences between what we look like or where we come from or what party we belong to," he told a rally in Indianapolis.

Senator Clinton had been looking for a good omen in yesterday's running of the Kentucky Derby. She sent her daughter, Chelsea, to Churchill Downs with orders to bet on Eight Belles, seeking to become only the fourth filly to win the US's biggest horse race.

But if there were omens, they were bad, as Eight Belles, after finishing a gallant second to Big Brown, broke her two front fetlocks soon after crossing thefinish line and had to be euthanased.

Jack Chan answers Mia Farrow. The Cadre goes to the movies, and carries along a Macau millionaire gambling den mutt

Jackie Chan stars as the Cadre's answer to Mia Farrow, his greatest role to date. Jackie Toady. The Dalai clique loves Jackie Chan movies. Updating Charley Chan movies.

Torch Reaches Safer Terrain
In Mainland China
Associated Press
May 3, 2008 4:11 p.m.
SANYA, China -- After a much-protested journey, the Olympic torch reached this southern Chinese seaside resort Saturday night, beginning what organizers and Chinese citizens promised would be a trouble-free national tour.

The protests and last-minute route changes that haunted the torch along its international relay route were expected to be over. Instead, locals talked excitedly about welcoming the Olympic flame.

BEIJING 2008

"Even if no police were here, we would protect the torch with our bodies!" said an 18-year-old vendor who gave his family name as Zhao. He was selling Chinese flags near the stage where the torch was to be lit Sunday morning.

Actor Jackie Chan and basketball star Yi Jianlian were to be among the 208 people carrying the torch Sunday along palm tree-lined roads looking out over the South China Sea. Organizers and police said security measures were being taken but refused to give details. Media access to the torch's arrival was limited to three Chinese outlets, organizers said.

Criticism of China's human rights record has turned the torch relay into one of the most contentious in recent history. Protests dogged stops in Greece, Paris, London and San Francisco. The torch's three-month run across mainland China was likely to be less troubled than elsewhere, although disruptions could occur during the relay in Tibet or the western region of Xinjiang.

Its Saturday leg in Macau went smoothly, but the relay Friday in Hong Kong was disrupted by Chinese shouting down supporters of Tibetan independence. The territory, a former British colony, enjoys broader freedom of expression than the rest of China.

The runners in Macau carried the torch past the glitzy Las Vegas-style casinos that have revived the once seedy, listless port city's economic fortunes. Columns of paramilitary police in sportswear jogged beside the torch bearers. The crowd seemed intent on celebrating China, sometimes more so than the Olympics, chanting, "Go China!"

The Chinese government now will have a chance to quiet some of the controversy that has surrounded the Olympics in recent weeks. A broad uprising among Tibetans against Chinese rule and a resulting clampdown led to protests during several legs of the torch relay overseas and highlighted China's tight control on dissent, religion and the media -- issues the government hopes Olympics will deflect.


Associated Press
Macau tycoon Stanley Ho runs with the Olympic torch during the relay in Macau, Saturday, May 3, 2008.
The torch protests left many Chinese furious. "Those things won't happen here because we have class," said a man who gave his name as Li, as he erected crowd barriers around the torch lighting site in Sanya.

But not many Sanya residents were excited about the upcoming torch relay, despite the Olympics banners and constant propaganda on television. One vendor in the city's best known street for pirated goods shrugged and offered a souvenir lighter for just over a dollar. "Like a small Olympic torch," Sun Ruihai said, flicking it to life.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press

Angry youth. Rebels with a cause. Torch slips by.

China’s angry youth vent their feelings
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
Published: May 2 2008 17:15 | Last updated: May 2 2008 17:15
Images of angry Chinese students beating up Korean protesters in Seoul and attacking Carrefour supermarkets at home may well have been the last thing Bo Yang, the controversial author of The Ugly Chinaman, saw before he died on Tuesday in Taiwan at the age of 88.

Mr Bo, renowned for his criticism of what he dubbed Chinese cultural tendencies towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and intolerance, spent nine years in prison in Taiwan . But he saved his most scathing criticism for the Chinese Communist party, which he accused of drawing out the worst characteristics of the Chinese people.


For some in China, those characteristics have been evident in the behaviour of the young nationalists known as fenqing, or “angry youth”, behind an aggressive response at home and abroad to the pro-Tibet protests that greeted the Olympic torch relay in places such as Europe and ­Australia.

“These people have been trained in an authoritarian system. They are at the same time victims of an authoritarian system, but they also behave in an authoritarian way towards others and are incredibly self-righteous,” says a Chinese politics professor, who asked not to be named. “We should be more tolerant and respect the right of people to disagree with us but these people do not understand such values.”

The term fenqing has been used in each of the past three generations to describe very different kinds of rebel.

Chinese and proud: the graduate behind anti-cnn.com
Rao Jin, a graduate of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, is proud to call himself a fenqing, or “angry youth”, when it comes to defending his country against foreign media reports.
The 23-year-old budding website entrepreneur, who speaks limited English and can access western news reports only through China’s heavily censored internet, has drawn global media attention over his site, anti-cnn.com.
The no-frills site uses the slogan “Don’t be too CNN”, hitting back at the US-based news network after a commentator referred to the Chinese government as “goons and thugs”.
It mixes polemical video arguments in Chinese and English that support Beijing’s version of recent and historical events in Tibet. Mr Rao comes across as a thoughtful young man, until asked about the violent outbursts by Chinese students against protesters in South Korea during the Olympic torch relay.
“Some Chinese students were provoked into attacking those people in Seoul and some of them were beaten, too. Why didn’t you report that?” he retorts.
In the Cultural Revolution, the word referred to the millions of urban-dwelling students who were sent to the countryside to toil with peasants and became embittered towards a society that had stolen their futures. In the 1980s the term was used to describe the students and intellectuals who shaped the movement for greater social and political freedoms that ended when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on June 4 1989. The Ugly Chinaman became hugely popular among that generation of fenqing when it was published in 1985.

In recent weeks the world has seen a glimpse of the modern fenqing – patriotic, xenophobic, nationalistic and, in some cases, violent in their defence of the motherland. This latest incarnation has partly emerged as the result of government policies implemented in reaction to the events of 1989, after which “patriotic” indoctrination became an even more important element of the education system.

There are no indications that the contemporary fenqing are members of the sort of organised nationalist movement seen in places such as Russia, where Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth group, has had a growing profile in recent years.

Rather, “since the mid-1990s urban educated youth in China have become much more nationalistic rather than angry at the government”, says David Zweig, director of the centre on China’s transnational relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “There is a strong sense that the west, led by the United States, is trying to keep China down and stop it from taking its rightful place in the world.”

With limited access to alternative views, the vast majority of Chinese are not aware of the deep resentment many Tibetans feel towards Beijing’s heavy-handed style of governance. They accept without question the official version that recent protests began when a handful of criminals went on a rampage at the incitement of the Dalai Lama.

One widely held belief, even within elite political circles, is that the US Central Intelligence Agency supported and incited the Dalai Lama to launch the recent Tibetan protests, which began on March 10 with peaceful demonstrations and descended into violent riots on March 14.

“People in the west don’t understand the Tibet issue and they are being tricked into attacking China,” says one avowed fenqing who asked not to be named.

But for many outside China the fenqing appear to be looking at the west through the prism of their own society and assuming that governments elsewhere exercise as much control over public discourse as the Communist party does in China.

“China and the Communist party seem to have become fused in the minds of most of the young Chinese I’ve met,” says a Danish student at Peking University, the birthplace of the Tiananmen generation’s fenqing but today a place where the politics of patriotism drown out dissenting voices.

“If you criticise the government it’s like you’re criticising the entire nation of 1.3bn people.”

After a wave of anti-western protests centred around Carrefour supermarkets, the government has mobilised its state security apparatus to tamp down passions.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008