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Olympics won't alter Chinese

By Tom Knott
March 26, 2008

China floods the U.S. market with cheap goods, and we recoil in horror after discovering China's health standards and regulations do not meet what Americans consider are minimum requirements.

Yet ours is a mock horror, for we continue to buy goods from a repressive nation that believes an individual is just another apparatus of the state. If an individual has a different view of his or her place in the universe, the state can put a bullet in the person's head and bill the slug to the victim's family.

Welcome to the Hypocrisy Games, as set to be staged in Beijing.

You can bet on plenty of self-righteous noise between now and August but no meaningful actions.

The West already is flummoxed, what with China acting with extreme prejudice against the Tibetan protesters, who took to the streets March 10 to commemorate the 49th anniversary of a failed rebellion against Chinese rule.

The only debate since March 10 is the number of dead — 22 by Beijing's count and 99 by the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile.

The spilling of blood is causing consternation in the West, as if anyone thought the Chinese government would go soft in the months leading to the Beijing Games.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, is engaged in what he calls "silent diplomacy" with the Chinese government. He undoubtedly is trying to explain to the Chinese that it is not nice to kill protesters, even if they are saying things the Chinese vehemently oppose.

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