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| Author: | April Rabkin |
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July 2, 2008
Last week, amid continuing calls from activists in Europe and the United States to boycott the Olympics to protest China’s record on human rights, came a rare rebuke from the International Olympic Committee. The committee expressed disappointment with a speech in which Tibet’s Communist Party leader used the occasion of an Olympic torch ceremony to denounce the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
What the committee and the rest of the world don’t realize is how little China cares what they think. Here in Beijing, the Olympic Games are primarily for domestic consumption, justifying the government’s new global power to its own people.
My neighbor’s 12-year-old son has seen half a dozen movies starring the five balloon-headed Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini. He has been reminded of the Olympics every day at school and on the street by billboards depicting the masses as a gray ocean converging like a wave to lift up a red-uniformed basketball player making a layup. He listens to Olympic tunes — one of which sounds like a drill sergeant singing along to carousel music.
In The Closing of the American Border, Edward Alden goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the Bush administration’s struggle to balance security and openness in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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.
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