Editorials: August 2007 Archives

Following are highlights of Op-Ed Contributor Ross Terrill
*** as published in The New York Times on August 22, 2007

Please follow the link at the bottom to read the entire Editorial

IN China, language has long been a test of political orthodoxy. In Mao Zedong's era, to confuse evil "bourgeois" with virtuous "proletarian" was to face a prison cell. Write the Chinese character for a leader's name at a wrong angle and you were a class enemy. Now, as Beijing begins the final year of its preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games, a mistake with an English word is taboo.

Some lapses are harmless. "Don't Bother" as a privacy request on a hotel door, for example, or "Chop the Strange Fish" on a restaurant menu. Others could lead to minor trouble. "Please take advantage of the chambermaids," says a resort brochure.

The penalty for "Chinglish" is usually humiliation, not incarceration. Still, citizens are asked to snitch, Mao-era style, on people who shame China with their shaky English. An outfit called the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program issues prefabricated foreign phrases to workers who cannot converse in any foreign tongue. The Olympics have become one more tool in the authoritarian state's box of tricks.
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Yet behind the attack on Chinglish lies an Orwellian impulse to remake the truth. Banished from Beijing for the Olympics will be not only fractured English, but disabled people, Falun Gong practitioners, dark-skinned villagers newly arrived in the city, AIDS activists and other "troublemakers" who smudge the canvas of socialist harmony.
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Likewise, in 2001, arguing before the world to get the Olympic Games, the vice president of Beijing's bid committee said, "By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights." Yet the opposite danger looms: Games preparation has spurred repression.
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Alas, few Americans visiting Beijing next August will realize that the drinking water from the faucets of their five-star hotels is unavailable to 99 percent of the city's residents. In fact, this city's water is not safe to drink; the water for the athletes and tourists will be piped in from neighboring Hebei Province.
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For years, the party hopes, it will be able to flaunt photographs of Tibetan farmers cheering at a Chinese gold medal in table tennis, videos of Muslims in Xinjiang Province fainting with joy as the women's high jump goes to China by half an inch over Japan, and documentaries in which Beijing taxi drivers speak in perfect English to tourists from New York.

***Ross Terrill, an associate in research at Harvard's Fairbank Center, is the author of "The New Chinese Empire: And What it Means for the United States."

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By Rachel Beck | The Charlotte Observer
August 18, 2007

The first Barbie dolls to hit the market in 1959 cost $3 each. Today, the fashion doll won't set you back much more than that. That's the economics of the toy business. Consumers demand low prices. Toymakers want fat profits. So manufacturing ambled off to China, which for a long time has been willing and able to please both.

Now a massive toy recall by Mattel Inc. reveals an ugly side to that cost-cutting drive. The sacrifice of safety just to provide cheap toys is something for which everyone will have to pay.

The slogan "Made in China" has long stood for affordability. Thanks to the dramatically lower labor costs that China offered -- estimated by some to be a fifth of what they are globally -- toymakers could knock down their expenses by shifting production abroad.

That has boosted corporate earnings and helped them gain shelf space in retail chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that insisted on low prices for the products they bought. The merchants could then offer good deals to price-conscious shoppers, without losing any profits.

The result is an industry that hasn't seen its products' prices soar much. The prices of many toys today, when adjusted for inflation, may be less expensive than those decades ago, even though such things as raw material costs -- like paper and plastic -- have skyrocketed, according to independent toy industry consultant Chris Byrne.

"We can't have ever-decreasing prices without something eventually being squeezed," Byrne said.

That squeeze is what has been grabbing headlines lately.

As millions of China-made toys have been recalled, suddenly Americans have become very aware -- and scared -- of the risks of manufacturing there.

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By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
August 08, 2007

Human rights groups on Tuesday accused China of failing to improve its record on civil liberties, and of harassing lawyers, dissidents and journalists, despite official promises to make human rights a centerpiece of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Meanwhile, a group of Chinese scholars, journalists and lawyers wrote an open letter to President Hu Jintao and other national leaders calling for the release of political prisoners, including jailed Chinese reporters and inmates convicted on religious grounds. The group wrote that China's Olympic slogan, "One World, One Dream" should instead be "One World, One Dream, and Universal Human Rights."

The criticism came from groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and journalism advocacy organizations, and foreshadowed how China's human rights record is likely to come under growing scrutiny as the Olympics approach.

The timing is hardly a coincidence. Wednesday is the start of the one-year countdown to the Olympic opening ceremony, and a public relations battle has erupted between Beijing officials, who are planning a major celebration, and advocacy groups that want to use the milestone to attract attention to their causes.

"Unless the Chinese authorities take urgent measures to stop human rights violations over the coming year, they risk tarnishing the image of China and the legacy of the Beijing Olympics," said Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International said several political advocates in Beijing were under threat of close surveillance or house arrest. At the same time, authorities are persecuting Chinese journalists, the group said. And the police are sweeping up vagrants and other Beijing residents under a controversial policy that allows officers to detain people for up to four years without trial, it said.

The report described the detentions as part of a citywide "cleanup" operation to prepare for the Olympics.

Chinese Olympic officials have said that advocacy organizations should not exploit the Games to further their own agendas, but the government also appeared to be growing accustomed to criticism from a range of groups. On Monday, Jiang Xiaoyu, an executive vice president for the Beijing Olympic Committee, said that "we are mentally prepared that such voices will become louder in the future."

Last week, Human Rights Watch released a broad critique of China's record on civil liberties, accusing authorities of clamping down more tightly on dissent and blaming Olympic preparations for exacerbating longstanding problems like evictions and abuses of labor rights.

On Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for the release of 29 domestic reporters imprisoned in China, as well as greater press freedom for foreign and Chinese journalists.

Under a regulation enacted Jan. 1, accredited foreign journalists may travel freely throughout China and conduct interviews without official permission. But a recent survey of Beijing-based foreign correspondents found that harassment and numerous obstacles still existed.

On Monday, the police in Beijing briefly detained several foreign journalists who were covering a protest by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. The group had displayed a banner outside the local Olympic headquarters that depicted Olympic rings made of handcuffs.

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