The China Syndrome

Alright, so apparently Beijing is hosting the summer Olympics this year. I don't think this is news to anyone but it's more interesting than anything that's been going on in the presidential election lately. It seems people with too much money and/or time on their hands (i.e. protesters) have a problem with China's handling of Tibet, Taiwan, Darfur, Human Rights, and the Spanish Inquisition.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been awake at some point in the last 50 years that China doesn't have the most stellar record on dealing with problems the way Americans and Europeans think they should. But with a population the size of Europe and North America combined but only 1/4 the GDP it's a bit ill-conceived to expect them to react the same way (and that's before we even talk about the societal and governmental differences).

Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the Chinese actions or positions, just trying to point out the western hypocrisies on the issue. Is China mishandling some of these situations? Almost certainly. If the Olympics weren't being held only months before a presidential election would we still hear politicians crowing about it? Almost certainly not.

Let's face it, as Americans we don't care about other countries unless they get our attention for some reason. There's a lot of talk about saving the people in Darfur but when it comes right down to it we have a "not my problem" attitude. We can't fix Darfur without significant military force and, ironically, most of the people who protest the genocide are also opposed to military force. This leaves me with a conundrum as to how they expect us to fix things. Are we supposed to stand at the border and yell at them until they do what we want?

So now China is hosting the Olympics and people are suddenly concerned about all of their problems. Naturally they're addressing their concerns in the only most reasonable of ways, by harassing the Olympic Torch relay. In the end no big sweeping changes will come from the protests. They aren't going to affect national or international policies because as soon as the Olympics are over the attention will be gone and people will still be dying.