PR needed to save Beijing suffers from own bad image

By Christian Toto | The Washington Post
March 13, 2008

China, an emerging superpower with a booming economy to match its military might, appears to need a lesson in good, old-fashioned PR as it struggles with its international image prior to hosting the Olympic Games in August.

The country's latest public relations fiasco involves one of the country's newest movie stars, Tang Wei. The actress starred in last year's critically acclaimed "Lust, Caution" from director Ang Lee. This week, China unofficially blacklisted Miss Wei for her role in the movie as a student activist who displayed unpatriotic behavior during the Japanese occupation, according to numerous press reports.

"I am very disappointed that Tang Wei is being hurt by this decision," Mr. Lee said Tuesday. "We will do everything to support her in this difficult time."

Mr. Lee is not the first big-name Hollywood director whom Beijing has recently alienated.

Last month, Steven Spielberg withdrew as an adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics to protest China's refusal to exert pressure on Sudan to change its role in the five-year-old crisis in Darfur, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

China yesterday vigorously denounced the "groundless accusations" and "ulterior political motives" of international critics who have sought "to link the Darfur issue and other irrelevant issues with the Olympic Games in Beijing."

"They have even used sensational words to instigate [a] boycott of [the] Beijing Olympics," the Chinese Embassy in Washington said yesterday. "Their action is against the universally recognized principle of sports being nonpolitical, against the Olympic spirit, and against the wish of the people throughout the world."

But the catalog of Chinese public relations setbacks is lengthy and expanding. On Monday, London's Times Online reported that Ethiopian marathon runner Haile Gebrselassie was threatening not to go for the gold this summer for fear that Beijing's polluted skies could damage his lungs.

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