No big surprise here…turns out that the assurances by both Beijing and the International Olympic Committee that journalists covering the Beijing Olympics would have full access to the Intenet were lies.

From the International Herald Tribune (July 30)

The Chinese government confirmed Wednesday what journalists arriving at the lavishly outfitted media center here had suspected: Contrary to previous assurances by Olympic and government officials, the Internet would be censored during the upcoming games.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages – politically sensitive ones that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

On Wednesday – two weeks after its most recent proclamation of an uncensored Internet during the Summer Games – the International Olympic Committee quietly agreed to some of the limitations, according to Kevan Gosper, chairman of the IOC press commission, Reuters reported.

Sounds like the communist regime in Beijing is acting like…well, a communist regime.

The Tribune continues:

The Chinese government and the IOC had repeatedly suggested up until two weeks ago that the 20,000 journalists covering the games would have full Internet access. Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic committee president, declared that the foreign media would be able to report and publish its work freely in China and that the Internet would be uncensored.

Wow, Jacques Rogge and the other bumbling bueracrats at the IOC really are just a bunch of toadies for the regime.

The Dalai Lama and U.S. presidential candidate John McCain recently met in Aspen, Colorado (where the Dalai Lama was participating in a symposium).

From the Aspen Times:

“I urge the Chinese government to release Tibetan political prisoners, account for Tibetans who have, quote, ‘disappeared’ since protests in March, and engage in meaningful dialogue on genuine autonomy for Tibet,” McCain said.

Nicely put, Senator.

Wonder if this will catch on in time for the opening ceremonies.

Thanks to Julie at the Independence Institute for the tip.

In the race for the U.S. presidency, it has become common for some of Senator Barack Obama’s supporters to claim that a McCain presidency would simply be a third term for George Bush…the implication being that there is really no difference between Senator McCain and President Bush. Yet with regard to China/Taiwan/U.S. relations, it appears that it is Senator Obama who is more closely aligned with the Bush Administration’s policy of appeasment toward Beijing in order to maintain the “status quo” between China and Taiwan, while Senator McCain is more openly pro-Taiwan (though still opposed to a unilateral declaration of independence from China by Taiwan).

From the Taipei Times last year concerning a speech that Senator Obama made on the floor of the U.S. Senate in May 2007:

While the US should welcome a peaceful rising China, he said, “at the same time, we must remain prepared to respond should China’s rise take a problematic turn.”

In this, Obama took a script from the underlying US policy toward cross-strait relations that has guided Washington’s approach to the US-Taiwan-China triangle since the US recognized the People’s Republic of China at the end of 1978.

In talking about responding to a “problematic turn,” Obama said, “this means maintaining our military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthening our alliances and making clear to both Beijing and Taipei that a unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is unacceptable.”

What Sen. Obama had to say is eerily familiar to what U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had to say last year about Taiwan’s referendum on United Nations membership. From the New York Times in December 2007:

During a State Department news conference, Ms. Rice said: “We think that Taiwan’s referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name ‘Taiwan’ is a provocative policy. It unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan Strait and it promises no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage.”

Ms. Rice’s sharp comments, addressing one of a handful of issues that she raised without prompting by reporters, were meant to send a signal to both China and Taiwan.

While she reiterated the administration policy — that the United States “opposes any threat to use force and any unilateral move by either side to change the status quo” — she placed the United States solidly on the side of China on the issue of Taiwan’s referendum. China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province that should ultimately be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Compare the rhetoric of both Sen. Obama and the Bush State Department with that of Senator McCain from a 2006 interview:

And I would also make it clear to the Chinese that we’re not happy with some things, like the currency exchange. We’re not happy with their repression of democracy. We’re not happy with their failure to progress recently on a path to a free and open society.

And we will continue our steadfast belief that Taiwan will only be reunited to China if it’s done in a peaceful manner and the people of Taiwan desire to do so. Until then, we will protect them.

So for now It appears that regardless of who is is the next U.S. president, the archaic “one China” policy will continue, and the U.S. will continue to advocate maintaining the “status quo” between Taiwan and China. But it is likely that President McCain would be a more avid supporter of democratic Taiwan, and a fiercer critic of the regime in Beijing, than President Obama.

Thanks to the folks at le site de l’association France Tibet (which is, as the name implies, the web page for a pro-Tibet organization in France) for for re-printing my article “Misery: China’s Main Export.

The piece is in english, but a french translation would be very cool…any takers?

How do you use video to summarize the breadth and scope of Beijing’s economic and political complicity in the genocide in Darfur in just ninety seconds, and in a way that makes people willing to watch? From the outstanding Darfur advocacy group, Dream for Darfur, comes this satirical animation video featuring Gengen Genocide, the Olympics mascot Beijing doesn’t want to talk about.

Please watch it, and then pass it along.

From the Associated Press (June 11)

The prosecutor of the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudan’s president with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, a move U.N. diplomats warned could bring a backlash from Sudan’s government.

U.N. officials and diplomats said the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court would seek an indictment charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with orchestrating violence in Darfur that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

Woops, bad timing for al-Bashir and the rest of the thuggish regime in Khartoum. For years, Beijing has been the chief financial and political enabler of the mass-murder in Darfur, but with China’s role in the genocide increasingly being tied to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and with the games only weeks away, Beijing may have to throw its partner in genocide under the bus, at least publicly. The AP piece continues:

China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is an ally of Sudan, expressed concern that bringing charges against al-Bashir could jeopardize peace talks and put peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers in Darfur at greater risk.

“It’s one of the implications we have to consider,” he said.

Wow, talk about a luke-warm reaction.  Of course, the Chinese ambassador failed to mention that the need for peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers is due to Khartoum’s mass-slaughter in Darfur in the first place…a mass-slaughter that Beijing has enabled over the years.  Nor does the ambassador actually defend al-Bashir.  Kind of sounds like the regime in Khartoum  will have to do without overt support from its fellow thugs in Beijing…at least until after the Olympics.

For background and information about China’s outrageous economic and political complicity in the genocide in Darfur, check out Regime Watch’s Darfur archive here.

In a previous post, I noted that a possible benefit of an increase in Chinese tourism to Taiwan due to a new cross-straits commercial air travel arrangement between Taipei and Beijing might be a great many Chinese (presumably Chinese from the middle and upper classes who can afford to travel) might just decide that life in a liberal democracy beats life under a communist regime. But besides individual Chinese, there is much that China as a nation can learn from Taiwan, like the benefit of economic freedom for its citizens. As an example, the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, published jointly by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal ranks China as number 126 (out of 162 countries ranked) for a freedom score of 52.8 (or mostly unfree). For Asia-Pacific nations, China ranks a lowly 23 out of 30 countries.

According to the report:

China is a one-party state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. Despite rhetoric about democratic development, the party maintains strict control of political expression, speech, assembly, and religion. Since opening up to foreign trade in the early 1980s, China’s economy has expanded rapidly. It is now the world’s second-largest economy in absolute terms, although per capita income remains low. Most workers are employed in the agricultural sector. The financial sector is largely opaque and state-controlled, raising concerns about lending practices. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2002, China has liberalized many sectors of its economy, but it still suffers from the lack of a rule of law, poor protection of intellectual property rights, and corruption, among other hurdles.

Taiwan, on the other hand, ranks number 25 in the world, and number 6 out of the 30 Asia-Pacific nations ranked, with a freedom score of 71 percent (or mostly free).

According to the report, besides having “one of the regions most dynamic democracies,”

Taiwan has high scores for investment freedom, trade freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and government size. The average tariff rate, the inflation rate, and the level of corruption are all low. Although Taiwan’s personal income tax is high, the corporate tax rate is moderate, and overall tax revenue is low as a percentage of GDP. Government spending is similarly low. Taiwan’s investment climate is healthy, and 100 percent foreign ownership is permitted in most sectors. Property rights are protected by the judiciary, although there are minor problems with case delays and corruption associated with organized crime.

So instead of pointing missiles at the Taiwanese, Beijing should be taking lessons from them.

The China Post describes the first day of a new cross-strait commercial air travel arrangement between Taiwan and Mainland China:

More than 700 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan while about an equal number of Taiwanese passengers flew to China yesterday in the first wave of regular cross-straits commercial flights in nearly six decades that could transform ties between the old foes.

On the first day of the operation, a total of 753 Chinese people, including 622 tourists, 31 officials and 60 news reporters and photographers, arrived in Taiwan on nine flights from China.

This is pretty significant. Keep in mind that the communist regime in Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, even though is is plainly obvious that Taiwan functions as an independent state, and that Taiwanese go about their daily lives under threat of annihilation by Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at the island. So what good can possibly come from this? Well, hopefully a great many Chinese tourists will decide that life in a liberal democracy beats life under communism. Or as Michael Turton notes his blog, The View From Taiwan:

No doubt China is pondering the consequences of letting loose thousands of middle and upper class Chinese on a nation where Asians refute every day the lie that Asians are not suited for democracy.

In fact, that refutation may have already begun. From Saturday’s Taipei Times:

Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and unificationists took the opportunity to highlight their causes yesterday as the first cross-strait charter flights arrived.

The groups welcomed Chinese tourists with placards proclaiming their views outside Taipei Songshan Airport on Dunhua N Road.

“Human rights for China, independence for Tibet,” Tibetans and their supporters shouted, waving the Tibetan flag as buses carrying Chinese tourists passed by. “We welcome Chinese tourists to breathe the air of freedom in Taiwan!”

Chinese visitors waved at the Tibetan demonstrators and took pictures.

As has been on display to the world recently, under Beijing’s thuggish occupation of Tibet, advocating Tibetan independence (or even going on about human rights) gets you beaten down or killed in the streets by Chinese security forces. In contemporary Taiwan, an Asian nation that only a few decades ago was a one-party dictatorship, Tibetans and advocates for independence can invite Chinese to “breathe the air of freedom.”

That’s great stuff.

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