Shanghai Scrap

Figures that the only in-focus photo that I took from the back of my new friend Tien’s motorbike was this one.

In retrospect, we really should have stopped to find out what was going on here.

Jennifer Ambrose of Ambrose-a-rama was kind enough to point out that Cardinal Zen did, in fact, comment on his May 31 meeting with President Bush to the South China Morning Post (subscriber only):

“I am not confirming it, but if he wanted to see me, why shouldn’t I? Has Bush got leprosy?” Cardinal Zen said. “I am feeling that this is not something I should talk about.”

Unless Zen is being coy (and why would he be?), this is a pretty good indication that the Bush White House – and not Zen – leaked the news of the meeting. I don’t want to make a political judgment here, but I will point out that the leak itself seems to have been pretty self-serving, considering that it was almost simultaneously reported by the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page (subscriber only) and arch-conservative commentator Robert Novak. Both editorials painted the meeting as proof of Bush’s credentials on religious freedom issues (the absolute reddest of meat for Bush’s base), and both pieces have echoed around the Catholic blogs (for example, Rick Garnett‘s really excellent site). One wonders, though, if – before leaking the news – anyone at the White House bothered to touch base with Zen or anyone else in the Catholic hierarchy on whether such a leak would be a good idea for the ongoing diplomacy between Rome and Beijing.

Zen’s reticence with SCMP suggests that the White House didn’t give that much thought.

Finally, a brief note on Novak’s bizarre and parochial concluding sentence:

George W. Bush is at a low point among his fellow citizens, but he is still a major figure for Catholics in China who look to him as a clarion of freedom.

After nearly four years of reporting on China’s Catholics, I must admit that I have never – not once – met a Chinese Catholic who had an opinion on Bush’s stand for religious freedom. In fact, I’d venture to guess that most Chinese Catholics don’t even know that Bush has a reputation as a clarion of religious freedom. But that’s no matter to Novak, whose real purpose in writing about the Zen-Bush meeting likely had very little to do with religious freedom, anyway.

I took this photo at 10:00 AM, and already the heat must have exceeded 35 degrees, Celsius. It’s the rainy season here, and the humidity was stifling. Water, as the photo suggests, is an uncomfortable fact of life.

Anyway, at the request of certain faithful correspondents, I promise to be more pro-active about posting scrap-related content.

Wednesday’s Asian and Europen editions of The Wall Street Journal included a 300 word editorial [subscriber only] commenting upon a recent White House visit paid by Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong. The editorial correctly notes that this visit was not noted in China’s state media, and speculated that this was partly because the state media hoped that nobody would notice. That’s probably true.

On the other hand, Cardinal Zen has never been publicity-shy, and the fact that he made little effort to trumpet this visit suggests that he had his own reasons for keeping it quiet (indeed, the late May visit wasn’t covered in the Hong Kong or US media – including the Wall Street Journal – so far as I can tell). Likewise, the White House made no extraordinary announcement to trumpet it, either.

My guess is that both Zen and the White House realize that the Vatican and Beijing are at a sensitive point in their ongoing diplomacy (of which the forthcoming Papal letter plays an important part) and had no interest in upsetting the Chinese side. The fact that the news of the visit leaks via a Wall Street Journal editorial – several weeks after the fact – is strong evidence, indeed.

For years, the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page has been admirably steadfast and unwavering in its commitment to religious freedom worldwide. However, like so many critics of repressive religious policies in China and elsewhere, the Journal and its brethren either refuse to recognize the complexity of the situation in China, or just simply refuse to update their understanding. Thus, in the Journal editorial we get the tired, old, factually incorrect assertions about “China’s ‘official’ Catholic Church, the Catholic Patriotic Association.”

Factually incorrect because the Catholic Patriotic Association isn’t a Church at all; it’s a government administrative body, established in 1957, with regulatory control of Chinese Catholics and their places of worship. But China’s Catholics, its priests, its sisters, and even its bishops, are no more required to join the CPA than they are required to join Rotary. This is a verifiable point, but the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial writers don’t seem very interested in looking beyond their prejudices. A further case in point is the Journal‘s incorrect assertion that Cardinal Zen is “the Vatican’s chief negotiator with China.”

Quite simply, he’s not. This is an easily verified fact, and if the Journal had bothered to actually look into the situation they would have learned that Vatican diplomacy with China has mostly bypassed Zen. As reported in Korazym, when the Vatican decided to dispatch diplomats to Beijing, they dispatched Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli (whom I discussed in a post earlier in the week).

Is it really too much to ask that those who pontificate on important points of faith bother to know the facts about that faith? I have no idea whether the Journal‘s editors are ignorant of China’s Catholic situation. Maybe so, maybe not. But whatever the reasons for their flawed and factually incorrect editorial, the truth is that it helps nobody in China. If the Journal were truly interested in supporting China’s Christians, it would make an effort to recognize the complexity of the situation in which they live.

Finally, a personal point. Over the last week some critics of my reporting on Shanghai’s Catholics have suggested that I am blind to the plight of China’s Underground Christians. Let me assure you: I am not. At the same time, I feel that the Western media has suffered from a dearth of reporting on the lives of “open” Church Catholics in China, and that dearth has contributed to a biased and distorted view of religious life in China. It is my very modest hope that my reporting on the open Church Catholics in Shanghai will play a positive role in a more robust understanding of China’s religious situation. The Cultural Revolution ended in 1976; since then, something new has emerged. It serves nobody – neither China’s Christians nor interested parties in the West – to believe otherwise.

That’s the latest on the Pope’s promised letter to China’s Catholics – at least, according to Korazym, a heretofore unknown (to me) Italian website that obtained its information from the Italian APcom Agency. My college Italian is rusty, and I’ll admit that I can’t find the original report on the APcom site, but given the Korazym site’s religious nature , I’ll give them the benefit on this one.

Anyway.

Citing an “authoritative source close to the drafting of the text,” APcom reports that – in addition to be being 28 pages in the original Italian – the text is currently in press, and will be released by the end of June. Shortly after the letter was announced, authoritative rumors began to circulate that it would be released at Easter, then during the “Easter Season,” and then, finally at Pentecost. Thus, it was interesting to read that the Pope signed the letter on Pentecost.

In terms of the content, APcom’s source indicates that the text includes an overview of Vatican-China relations over the last fifty years, and some consideration of Cardinal Tomko’s infamous “Eight Points.” Both of these are quite necessary. In my experience, few inside or outside of China have a knowledge or understanding of the complicated set of historical and political circumstances that contributed to the current divisions in the Chinese Catholic Church. The latter issue – Tomko’s Eight Points – have been a touchy issue in and outside of China for many years. Issued in 1988, by the then Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Jozef Tomko, the Eight Points document strictly proscribed Catholic contact with members of the registered (or “open”) Catholic Church in China. The most infamous proscription, point 5, reads:

Another rather delicate point is the question of the liturgical celebrations. In fact all ‘communicatio in sacris’ is to be avoided. The ‘patriotic’ bishops and priests are not be invited or even allowed to celebrate religious functions in public, either in the church or in the oratories of the various religious instititutes.

In matter of fact and practice, that point has been seriously “violated” by countless laity, deacons, nuns, monks, priests, bishops, and cardinals in China, Hong Kong, North America, and Europe over the past two decades. Indeed, outside of the more hard-line anti-communist hierarchy (of which Tomko was the most notable member), it has never been taken seriously. And yet, at the same time, the Eight Points have served to confuse an already confusing situation and, in some cases, been used as a blunt propaganda tool against open church leaders.

In my recently published profile of Shanghai’s Bishop Jin Luxian in the Atlantic (subscriber only), I allude to the fact that the Underground Church’s anti-communist supporters in the Vatican often worked at complete tangents with what Pope John Paul II wanted in connection with China’s Church. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, I could not and cannot reveal the sources for that claim, but suffice it to say that the Eight Points would likely be a part of any discussion that explores that claim.

Of the those Vatican officials who were working for the Pope’s policies, none was – or continues to be – more important than a little known Archbishop by the name of Claudio Maria Celli. Rev. Larry Murphy, a past President of Seton Hall who played an important role as an intermediary between Rome and the Chinese Church during the 1980s and 1990s, described Celli to me in September 2006:

John Paul took Celli and put him into an obscure position – I forget what the title was. He’s the guy responsible for the patrimony of the Holy See. Title Obscura. He says you can park it here and continue to work for me. Not only in China, but Vietnam and North Korea.

[You can hear Larry Murphy describe one of his interactions with Celli here, on the Atlantic website, for free]

Celli has been a quiet, subtle, and critical diplomat on the China issue for two decades. A proponent of reconciliation, he has not been afraid to reach out to Open Church figures such as Shanghai’s Bishop Jin, with whom he first met in 1993, at the behest of the Pope, in Lyon, France (they have had at least two additional face-to-face meetings, including one at Seton Hall in the mid-90s).

So I was not surprised to read that the Pope’s letter to China’s Catholics will likely be introduced to the world at a Vatican press conference presided over “probably by Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli.” The fact that Celli would be mentioned in this connection is strong evidence to support rumors that the letter does, in fact, call for reconciliation and dialog between China’s divided Catholics, and between Rome and Beijing.

Recent revelations of slave labor in remote Chinese brick making facilities are surprising only for the fact that the overall story has taken so long to emerge. According to the state-owned media, more than 500 people have been freed from what are now being described as “illegal brick kilns” over the last several days.

500 people! 500 missing people!

This, more than the fact that slave labor was being utilized, is the part of the story that surprises me most. To be sure, a country of 1.3 billion people spread over a vast geographic area is going to have a difficult time implementing a rudimentary missing persons system. But it is difficult to imagine many other countries in the world where large numbers of people (and I think it is fairly obvious that there are many more than 500 people enslaved in brick and other factories) can go missing, only to be hidden away in remote manufacturing facilities.

Of course, if such a situation were to exist, it would certainly benefit from being protected by or affiliated with a government. And sure enough, even state-owned media is reporting that both factors were in play in the Shanxi brick factories.

Over the last five years, I’ve been in well over 100 Chinese factories, some private, some state owned, and some owned by local government units. With very little hesitation I can state that the very worst labor conditions are always – always – found in those operated by local government units. The reason for this is fairly straightforward: enforcement of China’s health, labor, and environmental laws are largely the responsibility of local governments, and those governments are typically uninterested in harming profit-making enterprises in which they have interests (I’ll leave it for another time to discuss the natured of those interests).

According to the state-owned media, the Chinese “feds” are definitely being called-in to fix this situation. In their wake, I have no doubt that the remote brick-making sector of Shanxi Province is about to be shut down, or at least severely curtailed. But I also have no doubt that the industry will be back in business with 18 months, just as soon as the feds get out of Shanxi Province.

This is the important point.

Americans tend to view China as a functioning, strong federal system much along the lines of their own. This couldn’t be more incorrect. The ability of China’s federal government to extend its administrative powers to the provinces and local government is minimal and mostly limited to extraordinary enforcement actions (some involving the military). In a recent post I described one of those recent actions – as described by a high government environment official – and its unraveling. Hopefully, things will turn out differently in Shanxi, but I’m not hopeful.

Anyway, I am still in Vietnam, and unlikely to be posting over the next couple of days.

A seller of postcard packets and tour books encountered in front of Saigon’s cathedral.

She had three books for sale: the Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam, a history of the Cuchi tunnels dug and used by the Vietcong outside of Saigon … and the title she holds in the picture [update: I've been informed that the photo is unclear. The title is Graham Greene's "The Quiet American"], and which she was waving at me as I crossed the street.

On Friday, what was supposed to be a leisurely walk through Hanoi’s old town, became an inadvertent tour of old Hanoi’s vast catalog of small Buddhist temples. Accompanied by a new friend from Luxembourg, we wandered the twisting maze of streets and alleys, each of which seemed to have a shrine hidden behind a gate.

This came as no small surprise to me. Over the last couple of years, I have taken a keen interest in Chinese religion and the Chinese government’s policies and regulations to control it. Though religious freedom is certainly growing in China, the process for officially registering places of worship (for any of the five government-reconized religions) tends to ensure that temples, churches and mosques are both large and relatively few (with notable exceptions). My understanding of the religious freedom situation in Vietnam - mostly derived from some quick google searches and a US State Department report suggested to me that it was not much different. That is, like China, Vietnam maintains government agencies with administrative control of organized religious activity, including the licensing of places of worship.

But if downtown/old Hanoi is any indication, the Vietnamese authorities have taken a less restrictive approach to the licensing of Buddhist temples, at least, than what is found in China. As we wandered in and out of small temple after small temple (often more than one on a single strret), mostly ignored by the (mostly) elderly women who seem to live and work in them, I found myself reminded of the relatively welcoming attitudes expressed in Mumbaia’s Hindu and Buddhist temples. Maybe, even, more welcoming than the Indians.

A couple of additional points. My friend, who had never before visited a temple in Asia, was immediately struck by the continuity between life in the temples and the streets outside. Clothes washing, eating, and even business occurred within the temples, and typically within meters of worshippers kneeling before an elaborate shrine. In one case, we found the shrine pressed up against the sidewalk itself. For different reasons, this situation is impossible to imagine in China, and (again, for much, much different reasons), in Europe and North America. Of course, I am not the first to note that developing countries often tend to have a more intimate, day-to-day relationship with religious activity, but I did find interesting to encounter the phenomenon in a country with a history of regulating, and repressing, religious activity.

Finally, we managed to find ourselves inside of what appeared to be a Buddhist preschool in an old French colonial building that must have been a theater at one time. The structure was open to the street, and the only occupant at the time was an ambivalent construction worker. Children’s toys and photos were scattered around a very modest shrine. In China, where open, organized religious education is still rare and very tightly controlled, such a situation would be impossible.

Though I’ve only been in Vietnam – and Hanoi – for a few days, I am struck by the English language ability of its residents – especially as compared to that found in China’s biggest cities. Whereas in Shanghai or Beijing, an English-speaking taxi driver – even one who can barely discuss the fare – is a rarity worth celebrating in the expatriate community, in Hanoi it seems to be commonplace (again, I’ve only been here a few days!). Similarly, among shopkeepers. Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting fluency. Instead, I notice a few English words, here and there, and much more than in Shanghai.

But how and why?

Vietnam opened its economy and borders to foreigners only in the last twenty years. I know nothing of the education system here, but I can’t imagine that English-language instruction is any better – or more comprehensive – than China’s (where English is compulsory through high school). Neither can one point to an English colonial influence on the locals (I haven’t encountered much in the way of French in Hanoi).

Perhaps one possible reason for the phenomenon is the romanization of the Vietnamese language. In fact, the only place I’ve spotted Vietnamese characters is on temples and graves. In contrast, in China, romanization (the pinyin system, currently) tends to happen parallel to the use of characters and, in the countryside, not at all. I’m sure somebody, somewhere, has looked into whether romanization has a postive influence upon the adoption of Romance languages in Asia – and if anybody could point me to the relevant papers or studies, I’d be deeply appreciative.

I arrived in Hanoi late last night during a rain storm that blurred my fleeting first impressions of the city. Today, I’ve been in meetings tied to my hotel but for a brief foray into the surrounding neighborhood during lunch with an American friend. Along the way, we happened upon a small shop selling turned-wood bowls, and while my friend negotiated with the young, flustered female shop owner, I happened to notice her notepad sitting between two display cases.

The photo is a little unclear, but if you look close you can read the following English sentences (paired with Vietnamese translations):

“You can buy another one”

“We have many different kind”

“Please tell me why”

I admit to being utterly charmed by this, especially the third question, which – if my ears inform correctly – the shop owner could hardly speak.

Anyway, I’ll be posting irregularly over the next few days, but by the end of the weekend I hope to have a substantial post on my superficial first impressions of Vietnam. In the meantime, a view of the Opera House from my hotel room.

Honestly, over the last year I’ve noticed a significant decline in the quality of desserts and other pastries served at Shanghai-area Starbucks stores. But that ongoing experience in disappointment was little preparation for my shock when I found this particular item in the dessert case at a Starbucks in Xujiahui this morning.

No, it’s not a picture of the July 4th hotdog bun still in the back of my refrigerator. And no, this isn’t proof that Starbucks has stopped cleaning up at the end of the evening shift.

Instead, it’s the 12 RMB (US$1.57) Green Tea Eclair, and I am here to tell you that it might be the most vile dessert ever made. As bad as it looks. Maybe even worse. Bitter as coal dust. Just. Plain. Awful.

In early April Jacob Weisberg of Slate had a marvelous piece on the recent green tea fad in the United States. He points out that – though medical science does suggest that green tea may have health benefits – mixing the tea into high-calorie deserts, soft drinks and Frappuccinos probably negates whatever benefit might have been derived from the tea itself. I suppose that goes for eclairs sprinkled with green tea fairy dust, too. For those who care to find out for themselves, there’s a sample in my kitchen trash bin, one bite missing.

Last week I received an anonymous comment – submitted via this blog – suggesting that I take a look at a program called “Bibles Unbound” run by a ministry named “The Voice of the Martyrs.” According to its website, The Voice of the Martyrs is an inter-denominational organization that aids persecuted Christians worldwide. Bibles Unbound is a self-described “operation” of the Voices of the Martyrs, which describes it as follows:

Over the last three decades, China has positioned itself as a world economic leader. Investment analysts recommend the country as an excellent place for foreign investors. They are absolutely right! We do have a wonderful opportunity to invest in China—with God’s Word. Through our contacts, the Lord has provided the names of thousands of people who could profit eternally from receiving a copy of the New Testament in their own language. Participate in this “investment project” through sending New Testaments and your prayers, “so that the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together.” (John 4:36)

Another part of the Bibles Unbound targets the China-North Korean border region. In this case:

Our friends in the underground Chinese church have carefully and painstakingly assembled mailing lists of Chinese-Koreans in the area who are thought to be at least somewhat open to evangelism.

[It would be interesting to hear how those involuntarily receiving Bibles with US postmarks - via China Post! - in one of the most politically sensitive regions of China, feel about Bibles Unbound.]

According to the “How it Works” section of the Bibles Unbound website, copies of the New Testament are available from the program for US$6, with a minimum purchase of 5 (for US$30). Once the order is placed, Bibles Unbound will send out the texts, along with postage, packaging and mailing labels, to the person who ordered them. That person is then expected to package the books and then send them to a re-mailing center in the US, which “will handle transport of the New Testaments to their final destination.” According to the website, 22,975 New Testaments have been sent to China in this manner. At US$6 per copy, that works out to US$137,850.

With that in mind, a few relevant facts about Bible publication and availability in China.

In November, 2006, I interviewed Kua Wee Seng of United Bible Societies [UBS] in Singapore. UBS is a non-denominational organization based in London that supports Bible translation and publication worldwide. Kua Wee Seng has worked with the organization since 1993, and he is now in charge of its Chinese translation and publication operations. According to him, UBS has printed more than 43 million Chinese-language Bibles in China since 1987. Of those, 3 million were actually exported outside of China (is Bibles Unbound buying those New Testaments?). Most of UBS’s printing activities are at the Amity Press, in Nanjing. During the early years of UBS’s Amity partnership, they printed 1 million Chinese language Bibles, annually; today they print 3.4 million, annually. “According to a number of knowledgeable sources,” Kua told me. “The Bible is the best-selling book in China.” The primary market, UBS has learned, is young people, and the most popular edition is a pocket one.

It is worth noting, too, that Amity is not the only Bible publisher in China. The Guanxi Press, owned by the Shanghai Catholic diocese, has printed well over 1 million copies of Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian’s translation of the New Testament over the last two decades (below, a photo of that translation) with support of UBS.

So – what exactly is Bibles Unbound trying to accomplish? I suppose it is possible that its “contacts” in China are merely providing it with lists of people too poor to afford their own Bibles. Fair enough, though one would hope that it is only sending Bibles to those people who actually want them. But if the goal is to provide Bibles to the poor, why not maximize the $30 contribution and send those Bibles from China directly (in cooperation with UBS and Amity, say) – and not from a US shipping center to someone’s living room in, for example, Kansas City, and then to a remailing center? Chinese translations of the New Testament are readily available – in China – for less than US$3, in my experience, and probably even cheaper.

Alternatively, Bibles Unbound might be concerned that providing Bibles to underground Christians in China – in person – would place both the donor and receiver at risk. But then, does the organization really believe that nobody at China Post will notice when a poor Christian villager in the backwaters of Shanxi Province suddenly receives a package from the United States (presumably, with a customs slip claiming a US$6 “book” inside)? I suppose, in that case at least, the only person placed at risk is the villager. Meanwhile, back home in the developed world, the donor can login to the Bibles Unbound operation map, where crosses (no irony, no kidding) show Bible delivery locations.

In my recent interview with Abigail Cutler of the Atlantic Monthly, I briefly touch on the mis-perceptions that many Americans and Europeans have about the open and underground Catholic Church in China. Though I have very limited experience and knowledge of the Chinese Protestant Church (all Protestant denominations were combined into a single Protestant church entity in the 1950s), it is no stretch to say that the same mis-perceptions apply to it, as well. Anyway, as I mentioned to Cutler, those mis-perceptions are partly the result of advocacy by foreign groups that – for whatever reason – have insisted upon perpetuating an image of Chinese Christianity that is fixed in the 1970s.

I don’t want to doubt the good intentions of Bibles Unbound. And I certainly don’t want to suggest that I am oblivious to the difficulties faced by unregistered Christians in China. But I would like to suggest that missionary organizations like Bibles Unbound should attempt to confront the real issues of religious freedom in China (such as access to quality religious education, preservation of religious properties, and the need to work with local government officials often hostile to religion) – and not false ones, like access to Bibles. At the very least, emphasizing such bogus issues serves to further twist the already distorted view of Chinese Christian life held by most Americans (presumably the target audience for the fundraising appeal of Bibles Unbound). If Chinese Christians need anything, it’s a sincere and truthful understanding of their current situation from overseas Christians who purport to be their friends.

[***June 14 update from Hanoi*** I didn't view the preposterous Bibles Unbound Movie until I received an email notifying me of its existence. It's worth watching - especially the section around 1:30 - as a perfect example of how overseas organizations distort the actual situation with Christians in China for ends that I'll let them explain. As you watch it, please keep in mind that there are no restrictions on the printing or distribution of Bibles in China, and that 43 million Bibles have been printed there over the last two decades. If Bibles Unbound was really concerned with spreading the Gospel, wouldn't it just commit the hundreds of thousands of dollars it raises to distributing the Bibles within China, from Chinese Bibles publishers like Amity in Beijing - instead of sending them from America? And just what will China Post employees think about those odd white envelopes with American postmarks addressed to people who never receive overseas mail?]

Over the next few weeks I plan to post some additional material that I gathered in the course of reporting my profile of Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian of Shanghai in the current issue of the Atlantic. In either case, the coming weeks should be very interesting, indeed, for Chinese Catholicism, and for Beijing’s relationship with Rome. As events unfold, I hope to provide some context, particularly in light of China’s post-1949 Catholic history and Jin’s role in it. A couple of possibly linked issues that will receive fuller treatments soon:

Reportedly, the Pope’s promised letter to China’s Catholics (promised in January) is complete, and undergoing translation. Like many who expected the letter at Easter, and then Pentecost, I am not holding my breath. Equally interesting is the Pope’s appointment of Archbishop Fernando Filoni to be the Substitute for the General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, the third most important position at the Vatican. Filoni was active in China during the 1990s, reportedly playing a significant role in reconciling many of the “open” church bishops with Rome. I suspect that dispatching him to the Philippines, long an important jumping-off point for Catholic work in China, has more to do with China than the Philippines. Stay tuned.

In early January 2002, I spent a single night in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Olympics were a few weeks away, and the city streets were hung with Olympic banners. I was expecting more – a senses of anticipation, I suppose. But the banners were just about the extent of it. At least from my perch, there was no sense that a an event of international importance was about to take place in the city.

Yet that is not the feeling that I had this weekend in Beijing, where – over the last six months – the town’s look and feel has been transformed in ways obvious and otherwise (the transformation started years ago, long before my first visit to the city in 2002). Obvious, in building construction, the new roads, the cleaned-up cityscapes; otherwise, in a slightly displaced, insecure feeling similar to the way I feel when I’m told to wear a suit to dinner.

I thought about this latter feeling on my flight back to Shanghai, as I read Qin Xiaoying’s editorial, “How China won its bid for the 2008 Olympics” in the June 8 edition of China Daily, the state-owned and run English-language newspaper. According to his byline, Qin is a researcher with something called the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies. A brief search of the web suggests that Qin is a prolific writer of editorials, many of which are concerned with China’s latent and emerging national greatness. Thus, in his June 8 editorial, Qin explains the real reason that Beijing was awarded the games in 2001:

…winning the bid to host the Olympic Games demonstrates the country’s rising standing among its world peers and its ever stronger national strength.

In their intensified rivalry to host the Games, countries are actually competing with one another in the fields of economic power, development potential, cultural tradition, education and science as well as international image.

This is an interesting and troublesome suggestion on a number of levels. First, it is worth noting that Beijing was awarded the Olympics over Istanbul, Osaka, Paris and Toronto – and with a few obvious exceptions (Toronto’s cultural tradition s don’t run deep, Paris has almost no development potential), each of those cities stands up well against Beijing. But that’s getting catty, and anyway, nobody – not even the Chinese government – believes that “international image” is why the Olympics were awarded to Beijing. On that basis, Paris wins, hands down.

In fact, on May 27, 2001, a few weeks before the Olympic Committee’s decision on the 2008 site, State-run People’s Daily ran a straight-forward story -based upon a Reuters poll of 32 sports editors in 28 countries – that outlined the more pragmatic reasons that China would likely win:

“It’s about time the country with the biggest population hosted the Olympics,” said Roger Crutchley of the Bangkok Post.

Or

“The IOC will be very keen to totally embrace China in its Olympic tentacles,” said Joseph Romanos at the New Zealand Listener. “There is a lot of money to be made in China by the western world.”

The same story pointed out that the Olympic Committee had recently visited the five bidding cities, and evaluated their bids on technical factors, including facilities, transport, and environmental factors. National greatness, cultural tradition, etc., were not mentioned. Instead, in regard to the Beijing bid, the report said that:

“It is the commission’s belief that a Beijing Games would leave a unique legacy to China and to sport.”

This all seems quite plausible to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the notoriously rapacious Olympic Committee was also taken by the the extraordinary sums of money that the Chinese promised to spend on the event. Indeed, the Economist reports that, when all is said and done, China will have spent US$45 billion on the games – or 43% of the total sum of money spent on all Olympics since the Montreal games in 1976.

But back to Qin’s editorial. Half-way through, he begins to list the political and economic achievements of China in the late 1990s, culminating with a stable renminbi policy that helped stem the global damage of the 1997 Southeast Asian Financial crisis:

China’s role in maintaining regional economic stability was recognized by its neighbors and the world community. Against this background, Beijing outbid rival cities in 2001.

Nobody should be surprised that Beijing is using the 2008 games for its own propaganda purposes, and if it wants to make up just-so stories about how or why the Olympics were awarded to Beijing, nobody can stop it.

But what concerns me is the emerging fact that China’s leadership – and many of its citizens – seem hell-bent on believing this stuff. That is, they believe that the world sees the Beijing Olympics just as the Chinese want the world to see it: as a coronation.

And so, my mind wanders back to Salt Lake City in 2002, and the ambivalence I sensed in advance of that event, and later, during it. Americans – presumably, one of the more important intended audiences for China’s moment on the international stage – generally don’t care for international sporting competition, and their interest in the Olympics has been declining for years. Personally I find it hard to imagine that most Americans will accord Beijing any more respect than they currently accord, say, Atlanta, home of the preposterous 1996 games. Or Salt Lake City, for that matter.

At the root of all of this Olympic boosterism is, of course, a sense of national insecurity that Western diplomats will need to learn to appreciate – Olympics or not. Toward the end of his editorial, Qin writes:

Overseas media say that two events in the late 20th century and early 21st century will go down in history as events of historic significance for China. One was the smashing of the Gang of Four and launching of the reform and opening-up. The other is Beijing’s hosting the Games.

As a member of the overseas media, I can assure you that the latter event – the sporting one – is overshadowed by a different Beijing event that took place in 1989. But that’s a discussion for another time. What’s clear to me is that Qin’s essay – and the Chinese government’s interest in promoting the Olympics as an international coming-out party – is a clear outline of how China expects to be treated in coming years. The West – and the US, in particular, including those who watch the Olympics on tape delay – will have to deal with it.