Globe and Mail correspondent Geoffrey York.
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"When they gaze down at the 7,000 choreographed performers in the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China's Communist rulers will allow themselves a quiet moment of satisfaction," China correspondent Geoffrey York wrote in his Saturday article China's tour de force.
"The bureaucratic men of the Politburo, who will oversee the dazzling martial-arts displays and opera singers from their air-conditioned seats at the Bird's Nest stadium, will know that their gamble paid off. The triumphs of the past two weeks have boosted their domestic power - and global influence - to greater heights than almost anyone had expected."
Do you agree? And, even if the Olympics was a triumph for China and its Communist rulers, was the price of heavy-handed police controls, massive state resources and the muzzling of protesters worth it?
We are pleased that Mr. York, the Globe's Beijing bureau chief, was online to answer your questions and respond to your comments.
Your questions and Mr. York's answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Mr. York is a graduate of Carleton University who has been a Globe and Mail reporter since 1981. He has been a foreign correspondent for the newspaper since 1994.
He was the Moscow bureau chief from 1994 to 2002. He has been the Beijing bureau chief since 2002. He is a veteran war correspondent who has covered war zones since 1991 in places such as Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and the Palestinian Territories.
He is the author of three books, including two books on aboriginal issues in Canada. He has received several journalistic awards, including nominations for National Newspaper Awards.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Estanislao Oziewicz, Foreign Editor, globeandmail.com: Geoffrey, thanks for doing this today especially since you've just come off what must have been an exhilarating yet exhausting assignment. As always, you work is a lightning rod for comments and questions. Let's go to the first.
Geju Lu, from Toronto: Mr. York, seeing the overwhelming cynicism towards China in the Western media reminds me of Culture Revolution, when China's propaganda told us all imperialists and capitalists were doomed. Since then, Chinese realized that capitalism and democracy did wonders to the world, and the government encouraged us to learn from them to improve our system. But we also realized that China has unique characteristics and require us to adapt, not copy.
Most intellectuals (not the dissidents you prefer to interview) — many of whom have lived overseas — believe that the Western democracy system that emphasizes individual rights contradicts to the deep rooted Chinese culture emphasizing collective interest over individuals. We should fulfill social responsibilities before considering own personal rights. We often quote India as an example. But while India has a free press and free elections, the government seems powerless to fix roads, which leads to great poverty in many parts of the country. To us, this is a violation of human rights, but the West rarely notices this.
So, China is setting a new rule of social system that so far works well, and the Olympics is an event for the world to accept that reality. My question is: Do you think the West will accept China with this fundamentally different social system? Would a Western confrontation with China lead to Cold War I?
Mr. York: Thanks for the interesting set of questions. First, I think it is wrong to say that the Western media are cynical about China. We are certainly fascinated by all the changes in China, and we try to write about the positive and negative aspects of what's happening in China. If we were cynical, we would not care at all about the Chinese people. In truth, I think most of us want to see the Chinese people becoming as prosperous and as free as anyone else in the world.
Second, you seem to be saying that dissidents are uneducated people who don't know anything about the world. There is really no basis for such a sweeping insult to the people who have the courage to speak out for freedom. Most of the dissidents are well-educated intellectual people who know as much about the world as anyone else.
Third, I agree with your point that China will adapt the system that works best for itself. But do you honestly believe that the Chinese people don't care about their personal rights? I have lived in China for more than six years, and every Chinese person that I have met is happy that he has more personal rights than he did in the Maoist era. Chinese people have consumer rights, property rights, the right to travel freely in China and around the world, and many other rights. These rights are greatly treasured by the Chinese people, and I think you're wrong to suggest that the people would give up these rights in exchange for "social responsibilities." Would you give up the right to travel, or the right to property, in exchange for some "collective" rights? I don't think so.
Fourth, the West does notice the poverty and poor infrastructure in India, and this has been widely reported. Nobody is ignoring the problems in India just because it is a democracy.
Fifth, the social system in China seems to be working well in terms of economic growth, but it is not providing social stability. In a typical year, according to official government reports, there are around 70,000 to 80,000 protests in China — usually local protests by people who have lost their land or their rights. Without any form of democracy, the people have no way to achieve justice except to protest in the streets. The issue is actually very simple: do the Chinese people have the right to choose their leaders? Nobody is saying that China must accept Western-style election systems. But I think the Chinese people themselves would like to have some way to choose their local and national leaders. Without any form of democracy, their only avenue is to protest in the streets, and this is causing instability and dangerous tensions within China.
And no, I don't believe there will be a Cold War between China and the West.
Mark Chynoweth, from Toronto: I'm curious to see in the morning after whether the Chinese will awake, look over and regret who they have climbed into bed with and what will become of issues put on the back burner such as collapsing schools in Wen Chuan, Sichuan, migrant workers' schools, and the like? As well, do you think the infrastructure advancements will be kept up?
Mr. York: You have identified some key issues in China, and it will be interesting to see what happens next. But when we talked to ordinary Chinese people who were watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics last night, it was clear that they were very determined to keep working on economic and environmental problems in the future. Compared to other countries where I have worked in the past (including Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union), China is very aware of the crucial importance of long-term investment in infrastructure such as highways, bridges, public transit systems and so on. I think there is grounds for optimism that China will keep tackling these issues in the future.
Martin Perkins, from Montreal: What 'gamble'? In a totalitarian state, you can: Throw whatever money it takes at something with no need to justify it to any silly voters; You can tear down anyone's home to build the facilities; You can throw however many people you want at the organization and ceremonies; You can close down industries and force half the population off the roads for weeks with no danger of anyone objecting; You can saturate the whole place with total security; You can pick anyone who is promising in sports, take him from his family and intensively train him with no regard to any long-term health consequences; You can issue whatever 'official documents' you need to make their age what you want it to be. Where, exactly, is the 'gamble'?
Mr. York: China is actually not a totalitarian state any more. It is an authoritarian state, but it is not a totalitarian state of the kind that we see in North Korea today. In a totalitarian state, the regime tries to control every aspect of life, even the very thoughts of each person. This has not been true in China for several decades now.
I agree with your main point that China used all of the massive resources of the Chinese state to ensure the success of the Beijing Olympics. Of course China had a huge advantage over any democratic country: it could tear down homes, close factories, take cars off the roads, blanket the streets with heavy security, and put children into intensive sports training at the age of 5 or 6.
But there was still a gamble involved in the Olympics. Don't forget that the Olympics seemed on the verge of disaster in April when China was consumed by angry nationalism in the aftermath of the protests against the Olympic torch relay. If the feuding between China and the torch protesters had continued at this level of ferocity, if the nationalism had remained at such a fever pitch, the Olympics would have been in serious trouble. China's leaders were gambling that they could restrain this nationalism and restore some feelings of friendship between China and the West. In the end, their gamble succeeded.
Z.S., from Montreal: Hello, Mr. York. Thank you very much for taking the time answer questions. There is no doubt that China doesn't have a good history record of human rights. This government isn't a democrat government and the freedom of press in China is limited. But what is your suggestion for Western countries to take actions to force Chinese government to improve that? Isolate China? (China had been isolated for 30 years after 1949.) Impose sanctions against China? (Sanctions against Iran don't look promising.) Or engage China? (China promised to allow people to demonstrate in three places in Beijing during Olympic game, but not even one application was was allowed.)
Mr. York: This is one of the most difficult dilemmas in the world today. How does anyone put pressure on another country to improve its human rights? You're absolutely right to suggest that sanctions usually don't work. Iran is a good example, but we can also see that sanctions and embargoes were completely ineffective against countries such as Cuba (under Castro) and Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and Myanmar (under the military junta). On the other hand, international action against South Africa during the apartheid era did have some positive effect, so nobody should conclude that the world should just ignore a country's human rights violations.
China today, of course, is not nearly as vulnerable as South Africa in the 1980s. Sanctions against China would probably be doomed to failure. But at the same time, let's acknowledge that the preferred solution of most Western politicians — engagement — has also failed to bring about any major improvement in human rights in China. I'm just a lowly reporter and I don't have to solve this dilemma, but I would like to point out that "engagement" might be more effective if it went beyond merely engagement with the Chinese government. If there was less engagement with the Chinese authorities and more engagement with the ordinary Chinese people — the people who best understand what they need in their lives — the policy might have a better chance of helping the people.
Vivaldo Latoche, from Ottawa: Mr. York, I do believe that what you call 'a gamble' paid off for the Chinese rulers. As you know and everybody knows, whatever we thought about China before was only through the media. But this time — even with some restrictions — people around the world were able to see the Chinese reality behind the myth. The respect and trust that the Chinese leaders were looking for from the world, before they organized the Beijing Olympics, will be given to them by the whole world. My question to you is: Will the West and the rest of the world continue to trust and respect China from now on or will the Western leaders continue mistrusting it?
Mr. York: I'm a little surprised by this question, Mr. Latoche. I presume that you watched the Olympics on television. You're unlikely to see the reality behind the myth if you watch a made-for-television spectacle. It's true that this spectacle — like many other forms of entertainment — did capture a huge television audience. But entertainment is not the same as trust. Many people around the world, including many national leaders, have expressed a lot of concern about China's broken promises during the Olympics. The Chinese government pledged to improve human rights and provide freedom to the media during the Olympics. It also promised to allow protests in designated zones. These promises were very blatantly broken, according to every independent assessment that I have seen. When some Chinese citizens decided to take the government at its word — when they decided to believe the government's promises of a zone for protests — they were actually arrested by the police. Two elderly Beijing women were sentenced to a year of "re-education through labour" — merely because they applied for permission to protest. After these broken promises, the Chinese government is still not trusted by many people and many leaders around the world.
Robert Earley, from Beijing: Mr. York, thanks for taking questions. Not sure if you would answer this or not, but might as well ask: As a journalist who receives quite violent feedback on your writing, how does the feedback affect your analysis? Do you end up second guessing yourself? Thanks a lot for this opportunity. I think you're brave to write what you do, but I also think it's informative.
Mr. York: Thanks for the interesting question. Actually I always welcome feedback from our readers, whether it is "violent" or not, and I'm always happy to reply to their comments if they write to me by e-mail. Whether their comments are positive or negative, I always make an effort to reply to those who write by e-mail. But most of the criticism is from anonymous people who don't seem to want any dialogue at all. Mr. Earley, I greatly appreciate that you have included your name and you are giving me a chance to respond. When people attack a writer, and then hide behind a cloak of anonymity, it's obvious that they don't have the courage to engage in an honest dialogue. I would encourage all of the anonymous people on the Globe's website — those who accuse me of "China bashing" for example — to write to me by e-mail so that we can exchange our views in a more intellectual way. Brief anonymous comments have no impact on my analysis. But a more serious and thoughtful comment, by someone who takes the trouble to write to me, could help to improve what I write.
Mr. Oziewicz, globeandmail.com Foreign Editor: Geoff, that's as good a note as any to end this discussion. I always think it's helpful to all for our readers to have some understanding of how our correspondents go about their work.
