Home |
Site Index |
FAQs |
Contact |
RSS
|
Podcast
home > by publication type > podcasts > China's Olympian Challenges
Email
| Interviewee: | Minky Worden, Media Director, Human Rights Watch |
|---|---|
| Interviewer: | Jayshree Bajoria |
May 19, 2008
As the 2008 Summer Olympic Games hosted by Beijing draw closer, China faces increasing pressures for reform on issues ranging from human rights to press freedom. Minky Worden, media director at Human Rights Watch and editor of a new book on human rights in China, says Beijing's promise to improve human rights and open up its society played a significant role in Beijing's selection as the host of the 2008 Games. With less than three months before the games begin, she says, "those promises are not being honored." Worden cites the Seoul Games of 1988 as an important precedent, noting they galvanized change in South Korea. In the period ahead of the games, she says, the country began the transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy. South Korea in 1988 and China in 2008 are "obviously two very different countries," Worden says, but adds: "No country is ever the same after the Olympics." One of the great challenges of the Olympics for the Chinese government, says Worden, is balancing domestic pressures for reform in restive areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet with "the international community's expectations that the country will play an increasingly positive role in crises from Burma to North Korea to Sudan."
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
I understand that I may access this podcast solely for my personal use. Any other use of the file and its content, including display, distribution, reproduction, or alteration in any form for any purpose, whether commercial, noncommercial, educational, or promotional, is expressly prohibited without the written permission of the copyright owner, the Council on Foreign Relations. For more information, write webmaster@cfr.org.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
