The international legs of the Olympic Torch relay are over.   What has the world learned about China and the Chinese, in the past few weeks?

Something like this.    An allegory from Monty Python’s, “The Visitors”:

Setting:     House = The Torch’s “host” countries of Britain, France, America, Australia, Japan, South Korea, et al

Dramatis Personae:    “The Visitors” = the embassies and mobs of students from the People’s Republic of China

Update

Since this story was published, I received another tip-off from a reader who alerted me to some personal accounts of three Canberra residents who were present at the Canberra torch relay.  Their unpleasant encounters with the pro-China thugs were published on 26 April 2008 in The Canberra Times.

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The arrogant display of nationalism by visiting Chinese during the Canberra Torch Relay may have invoked some unintended consequences that will yield perverse effects contrary to what China originally intended.   The propaganda exercise orchestrated by the Chinese Embassy in Canberra showed little respect for Australia’s social values and national integrity.  The damage they have inflicted on Australia-China relations is nearly catastrophic.

The extent of the damage can be seen from the following comments to the latest Crikey Report about the Canberra Torch Relay:

Tom McLoughlin

Thursday, 24 April 2008 4:03:17 PM

Is that a fishing net of red herrings, or what? Palestine? How exactly do you do “violence” to an inanimate torch? In the Sydney 2000 Olympics we Sydney siders embraced the Aboriginal protest movement. The City Council gave a central public park space up, with a bit of cajoling and pressure, but they did. Lots of adverse and shaming stories about our warts. We took it all in our stride. Why even bother making excuses for the manipulative dictatorial control of China Inc head office? Of course most of their diaspora on student visas etc (50K I read once) are trusties and sheep. Derr. That’s exactly the problem. The coverage today said these brave souls were shouting “liars” at the Uygurs and Tibetans. Most people in open free press western countries know who the liars are in my humble opinion and it’s not the Tibetans as their environment is totally trashed by the parasitic so called ‘motherland’. Lets not talk about arms to Zimbabwe, Burma, NK, Taiwan, Hong Kong ….

Sean

Thursday, 24 April 2008 4:10:02 PM

I’ve lived in the inner city near Sydney’s Chinatown for many years, and I’ve never before seen mobs of local Australian-Chinese bearing the Chinese flag with rabid fervour – I imagine many Australian-Chinese immigrants/refugees have their own reasons for not being overly enthusiastic about a flag which for many would represent a totalitarian regime from which they have fled – What we saw today in Canberra was a rent-a-crowd of predominantly visiting Chinese students, and I’m sure the Chinese embassy found very convincing ways to “persuade” these kids to commandeer the torch relay with a crass display of faux nationalism and in some cases downright censorship as they were choreographed to obliterate camera shots with their flags. In contrast the Tibetan protestors conducted themselves mainly peacefully and with dignity. The Chinese government has reduced the Olympics to a farce.

Art

Friday, 25 April 2008 7:47:27 AM

I didn’t see any Chinese protestors at the torch relay. As Tom McL points out, those bused in Chinese students were under the “control and coordination” of the Chinese Govt. machine, ie pawns in a propaganda exercise. Interesting that the Chinese Govt. couldn’t get away with these blatant tactics in any other western countries through which the torch has passed, but they assumed they could get away with it in the Australian capital. Makes Australia look like a compliant theatre for Chinese Govt. propagada (sic) indulgence, and that’s pretty embarrassing.

This is Australian patriotism at its very best.  Note that the commenters are not voicing objections against authentically personal and personally organised demonstrations – the kind which are illegal in the PRC.  Rather, Australian indignation is directed towards the blatantly inconsiderate, arrogant and obsessive intrusion of the Chinese Embassy in  the internal affairs of this nation, specifically the right to host the Torch Relay at Australian terms on Australian soil.  This includes Australia’s uncompromisable privilege to allow protestors from different interest groups to hold spontaneous peaceful demonstrations, including those directed against the appalling human rights records of the Chinese Communist regime, and to ensure that those protesters need not fear physical attacks or intimidation, both of which crimes have been inflicted upon Australian citizens by China’s New Red Guard thugs.

From an Australian perspective, the hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games does not give China any immunity from criticism.  If anything, it actually puts China in the limelight for heightened international scrutiny.   This is just a part of the deal.  Among the tests of China’s desired status as internationally acknowledged “normal country” (sorry but China’s “greatness” will have to wait for at least another century)  is its willingness to live up to its Olympic promises and to make a genuine effort to improve its human rights records.  As the commenter Tom McLoughlin has aptly put it: “…if you want our respect, you have to be able to take all our criticism in stride.”   I am afraid the Torch Relay saga once again proves that the Communist Regime in China does not deserve the respect and friendship of Australia or any decent member of the community of nations.

Loathsome bloody cowards.

One woman called Marie said she was mobbed by screaming Chinese students as she tried to watch the relay go past. She had to be rescued and escorted away by police….

…

Alistair Paterson, 52, from Lake George outside Canberra, said he was standing with his seven-year-old daughter on Limestone Avenue with an older couple, their teenage son and two other young women when they were attacked by a group of about 50 people draped in Chinese flags….

…”I got a flying kick in the leg, another bloke was hit in the head with a stick with a Chinese flag attached to it and our banners were torn down,” Mr Paterson said….

…”This gang of thugs rolled right through us and we had kids with us. My daughter was still shaking an hour later and is very quiet even now.

Will Roland Soong or Richard of The Peking Duck – or Xinhua – call this a “PR victory” for pro-Tibetan protesters?   Will they call this terrorised seven year old girl the “Australian Jin Jing”?

Pigs will fly first.   And I don’t expect to see Dan Harris of CLB flying by my window anytime soon.

It’s cartoon time again!

Dramatis Personae:

“The Crusher” =  The People’s Republic of China

Bugs Bunny     =  Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Scene beginning at 5:23 =  The consequence of Rudd’s diplomatic panache, prohibiting any Chinese military or police from participating in security measures for the Canberra torch relay.

(Photograph of Kevin Rudd from the Sydney Morning Herald)

Many Australians, including Olympic legend Dawn Fraser, Australian National University Professor Geremie Barme and one of this blog’s commenters named Aodaliyaren have openly expressed their contempt for the publicity stunts of the Beijing Olympics’ public relations agencies. These stunts are deliberate attempts to obfuscate the Chinese government’s unwillingness to fulfil its Olympic promise to cease its intransigent habits of human rights violations and to peacefully resolve ethnic tension in Tibet and Xinjiang.

The latest publicity stunt involves the exploitation of a disabled torchbearer named Jin Jing. A commenter who posts under the name Aodaliyaren (or Australian) has described the stunt as a “fiasco”. He calls into question the motive of publicizing Jin Jing’s story when he recounts the discrimination he experienced in Beijing as a disabled person. Aodaliyaren’s personal experience corraborates that of Australia’s greatest Olympian, Dawn Fraser, who recently announced her decision to boycott the Beijing Olympics. According to her interview with the Daily Telegraph:

 

Fraser denounced China’s attitude to the disabled, revealing she had seen disabled athletes being spat on in the streets of Beijing.

 

“The Chinese people didn’t recognise the disabled athletes,” the five-time Olympic Gold medallist said.

 

“Athletes got spat on by people on the street while they were there.”

 

Fraser revealed her horror at witnessing the demeaning treatment of disabled athletes under her care during university games in the mid-1990s.

 

 

One of Australian’s widely acknowledged China experts, Geremie Barme from the Australian National University (ANU), has used the word “sickening” to describe the way the Chinese Government and its Olympics public relations agencies have attempted to manipulate public opinion and falsely promote the Beijing Olympics as “peaceful” Games:

 

At the ANU in Canberra, China expert Geremie Barme says Chinese coverage of the torch relay has been “pretty grim”, with the emphasis on “protecting the sacred flame” as a matter of pride and patriotism, while throwing a blanket over any mention of human rights abuses in Tibet.

 

“It’s unpleasant in the extreme for those of us who lived through the Cultural Revolution (and) have lived through all the ructions ever since,” he says.

 

“It’s pretty disheartening. It’s actually … I find it physically sickening.”

 

 

Here is a word of warning for the CCP propaganda machine and its Western collaborators: you might be able to manipulate public opinion within China, but you will not be able to deceive the rest of the world. We are sickened in the stomach by your lies. Our rejection of the torch relay is only a start. The worst, for you, is yet to come. The avalanche has begun, and it will not end until it has finished its natural course. As for those Western public relations agencies who have orchestrated this debacle, I am not sure you yet understand the extent of damage, or its implications. But as a matter of basic humanity, I hope for your sakes that you will be able to escape from danger zone before disaster strikes. I have my doubts that you will be able.

This is a follow-up to our most recent post about the self-parodying Brendan O’Neill.

His most recent article about the Blueshirt Thugs who have invaded Britain and France to escort the Torch of Shame, is beneath contempt and does not warrant any detailed analysis or response.    Suffice it to say (or, you can read his article for yourself, and thereby waste your time), his thesis is that there are no logical or otherwise intelligent reasons for Britain, or France, or (soon) Australia to object to, or to protest against, the gang of Chinese thugs who escorted the Torch in London and Paris, other than reasons based on blinkered racial stereotypes.

Bollocks.   Bullshit.   The “yellow” (that’s O’Neill’s term, not mine) “race” of those thugs is as irrelevant as the VERY WHITE “race” of Hitler’s Brownshirts were when they threatened to hurl all of Western civilisation into a new dark age.

Those Chinese “men in blue”, and the VERY WHITE Nazi Brownshirts, are kindred spirits under the skin.    Race has nothing to do with Civilisation’s reasons to object to those Chinese “men in blue” and/or their kindred spirits-under-the-skin, the very White, Nazi Stormtroopers (SA, “Brownshirts”).   Now go and click on that link to some historical footage of the VERY WHITE, Nazi Stormtroopers, and then all will become very clear, that “race” is irrelevant to the principal  – and principled – reasons for objecting to China’s “men in blue” thugs escorting the Torch of Shame in London and Paris.

From today’s Daily Mirror (UK):

 

The tracksuited Chinese security men guarding the Olympic torch are highly-trained killers from crack military special forces units, the Daily Mirror can reveal….

 

Thirteen Chinese security men surrounded the torch as it was carried through London and wrestled with one protester as he tried to grab it from TV presenter Konnie Huq.

 

Konnie said: “The men in blue perplexed everyone.  Nobody seemed to know who they were.  They were very robotic, full-on, and I noticed them having skirmishes with our own police and the Olympic authorities.

 

Now, without naming any names, we have noticed some of the notoriously more “fair and balanced” elements of the China Blogosphere sniveling in the most exquisitely amoral tones over how mutual Chinese and Western misperceptions and misrepresentations of the Tibet situation are (or so they imply), the principal reasons for the avalanche of outrage over China’s Torch Relay.

No.  It’s not just about Tibet.  And at this point, there are more practical reasons for the civilised world to become even more alarmed by China’s behaviour than its internal human rights violations.  China has seized this Olympic year and the publicity surrounding it – at the centre of which is the Torch of Shame – as a means of setting precedents for imperial expansion and military intimidation, including attempts to intimidate major world powers such as Britain and France.  The presence and, even more alarmingly, the extra-legal exercise of physical force by these “Blueshirt” thugs in London, is exhibit number one of China’s escalating campaign of setting precedents of using military force in other nations, including precedents to justify invasions and either total or partial military occupations.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, you have stated that the Commonwealth of Australia will not allow any Chinese military or police to participate in the Canberra relay.  It’s no longer just about Tibet; now it’s about national sovereignty and national defense.  Mr Rudd, we’re counting on you not to back down.

This is our response to a story of a recent Chinese Olympic Torchbearer in London named Bai Jian, which has been translated by the Australian “China Hand” Geremie Barme (pronounced “Barmy”) and published in the China Digital Times.

Our first observation is that the first 20 (twenty) paragraphs of Bai Jian’s essay are entirely about his personal story of financial difficulties, absolutely irrelevant to any reasons to protest against the Olympic Torch relay. His implied message seems to be that the main purpose of the Olympic Torch and all that it represents is to raise Chinese individuals like himself out of poverty. That’s rubbish.  China’s Olympic Torch – whatever it symbolizes and promotes – certainly does not promote charity or compassion, let alone any rule of law in which real prosperity can be cultivated and endure.

Thus, Bai Jian’s implied appeal to the ethos of charity among the Western cultures which the Torch is visiting, is a distraction, an irrelevancy and a dishonest attempt by China’s Central Propaganda Department (who control everything Bai Jian tells to Western audiences) to appeal to European and American ethos of compassion and charity which are not shared by the Chinese Communist Party, who to this day remain avowed Leninists who abjure and contemn any beliefs in charity or compassion.

Second:  Bai Jian, even if you take his story at face value, is not poor!.  He writes, “At the moment our household income consists of the 2000 yuan that I get in wages as well as a variable1000-2000 yuan”.  In today’s China, that’s a comfortable middle class household income, placing him near the top of China’s social pyramid.  This is not to mention that we do not – and due to China’s closed society and strictly controlled propaganda machine, we cannot – know what other kinds of income or support (including non-monetary) he might have enjoyed over the years.

Third:  So now if we scroll all the way down to paragraph 28 (sorry if I miscounted by one or two), we can hear the voice of China’s Central Propaganda Department and its bloody Orwellian “Newspeak” corruption of language, when he writes: