China's Big Year: 2008 & the Olympics

2008 is going to be a China's big coming out party as journalists and tourists descend upon China for the Summer Olympics.

For me, it seems like Tiananmen Square happened in the recent past and not almost nineteen years ago in 1989. What a difference a couple decades can make. The Chinese democracy movement has essentially disappeared or been effectively neutralized, depending on your viewpoint. The combination of the brutal oppression by a police state ruled by a small, secretive, omnipotent party, the suppression and censorship of the press, and the successful liberalization of the economy with a heady dose of capitalism have succeeded in quelling all dissent. It's an accomplishment the current Administration and its past and present cadre of Roves and Cheneys would aspire to and admire.

I have met some of China's youth, bright twenty-something professionals who have immigrated to the US, and they are different from past generations. They do not have terrible memories of China, being separated from parents, having family members jailed or not seeing them for years when they escape. This generation got on an airplane with a passport as smoothly as could be. And many of them want to go home, home to visit every year, home for retirement. They are buying investment property in China. They go clubbing when they visit Beijing.

There are no worries about the government. There are no fears about repression or censorship. There is no Tiananmen Square Massacre hanging over them.

But the dissidents, the Tibetans, the victims of the state are not entirely forgotten. This past Fall, I listened on local cable television to individuals speaking to the Pasadena City Council, asking them to reconsider and revoke the approval of the participation of the People's Republic of China in the Rose Parade. Each person gave their own story of oppression and imprisonment.

Some journalists are also pointing out the dichotomies of the People's Republic of China hosting the Olympics at a time when 'people's journalism' has become a powerful force on the internet, such as an article anticipating The 2008 Beijing Olympic Disaster.

The Chinese government made the argument in the 1990's that economic development had to come before democracy. Perhaps this is the year that argument will be tested. Economic development has arrived and progressed. How will China handle the free press and the 'people's press' reporting without censorship from inside their country?

The Great Digital Wall of China will be challenged by hordes of satellite connected journalists, and cell phone carrying, You Tube enabled bloggers.