Our view on the Beijing Olympics: As Games approach, Chinese renege on promised open

[Woodmonkey]

With just weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, China's government is placing excessive controls on visitors and some Chinese that undermine the greater openness authorities promised in 2001, when Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games.

The restrictions include a long list of rules for foreigners. Among them are not sleeping outdoors (as Tiananmen Square protesters once did) and the need to obtain official permission to stage a protest (guess how many of those are likely to be granted).

There is to be no shouting or displaying of political or religious slogans at events. And Chinese officials reserve the right to bar foreigners from entering China, or to deny visas (even to those who have tickets) on grounds open to flexible interpretation, such as having a mental disorder or a sexually transmitted disease.

Subtle and not-so-subtle barriers will also keep outsiders away from "unofficial" China. Thousands of longtime foreign residents — namely, those who best know their way around the country — are being forced to leave on bizarre pretexts, such as not having the right educational requirements to hold the jobs they do in China. (One man who owns his own business, for example, has been told he does not have the required education to stay.) Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that focuses on press freedom, has uncovered new restrictions on Chinese working for foreign news media.

Several English-language publications have been suddenly banned, including Time Out Beijing, which tells foreigners about the hip places to hang out. At the same time, a crackdown is underway on the Chinese whose views might clash with those of official China, from dissidents and patients' rights advocates to street retailers and ethnic minorities.

This overreaction is unnecessary and counterproductive. Allowing the kind of freedom that can tolerate some dissent and free speech is a sign of a nation's strength.

After a devastating earthquake hit Sichuan province in China last month, the relatively open access for reporters boosted China's image — particularly in sharp contrast to the way Burma blocked reporters and aid officials after its deadly cyclone earlier in May. The Burmese response was similar to the way China used to behave in the face of natural disasters. China's shift augured well for the Olympics. But foreign and Chinese reporters are now being hampered in attempts to cover the stories of the parents of children who died in schools that collapsed, and who blame local authorities for shoddy construction.

China has made great strides since the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, when Chairman Mao forced intellectuals to work in the fields. Its economy is booming; free enterprise is now welcomed, not punished. It has legitimate fears about the Olympics being disrupted by terrorist attacks, as they were in 1972. But the country that proudly touts the Games as its One World, One Dream."

The Source