Don't boycott China's shame

NO, DON'T. Let's not boycott the Beijing Olympics. Letting them go ahead is hurting China much, much more.

How desperately China wanted these Games so it could announce the dawn of the Chinese century.

But, after spending a reported $40 billion to show off its glittering new might, China is startled to find it's showing off its pimples instead.

Its propaganda showpiece risks turning into a huge flop, and people like me -- who figure we're safer if our neighbours are democrats, too -- couldn't be happier.

China's troubles started last month with Steven Spielberg, the world's most famous film director, who quit as the Beijing Games' artistic adviser in protest at China's support of Sudan's genocidal regime.

The Chinese regime was furious, denouncing the walkout as "unreasonable, irresponsible and unfair", but the damage was done.

Millions more people had suddenly learned that China, to secure Sudan's oil for its own booming rise, had sold the country's Islamist regime the very gunships, planes and guns it was using to slaughter countless civilians in Darfur. Many learned, too, that China had even blocked attempts to get the United Nations to stop this genocide.

On Monday came another propaganda disaster, when protesters for Tibet's independence burst into a ceremony at ancient Olympia being held to light the Olympic torch for the Beijing Games.

Chinese state television immediately cut its broadcast, and screened pre-recorded footage instead to avoid showing a torch ceremony for China turning into a torching of China. But again the damage was done -- and the censorship made it worse, not better.

The damage was not to the regime's power at home. After all, few Chinese will be allowed to hear of the protests that will buffet the torch relay for the 130 days it will take to reach Beijing.

The damage was instead to China's image around the rest of the world -- in countries whose people have not yet yet considered what this Chinese century will mean for them. And a lot of those people are sure to get nervous.

No wonder. Those two Tibetan protesters were drawing attention to the bottom line of China's power. This is a regime built not on democracy, but on force. The killings of Tibetan monks and protesters today are just the most vivid illustration of this truth.

But more worrying for those of us who aren't Chinese is that China is now exporting its anti-democracy to the world. China's Communist Party doesn't just bully its own people, but helps other autocrats bully their own.

Most obviously, of course, China, with a veto power in the United Nations Security Council, has blocked attempts by the West to get UN approval to topple the deadly regimes of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, as well as to curb Sudan.

You see, China figures that if the UN gets the taste for tackling tyrannies, it might one day decide to tackle the one in Beijing, too.

So it's red-hot for promoting its principle of "non-interference" -- which it also uses to justify propping up a gaggle of corrupt and tyrannical leaders in Africa in particular.

Our own protesters like to scream abuse at the West, but at least Western countries and institutions insist that when they give money to foreign nations it's in exchange for promises to be less corrupt and more democratic.

But China gives no-strings loans and aid to any leader, no matter how corrupt or tyrannical, as long as they can do it a favour in return.

Angola is a perfect example of how China's diplomacy is white-anting efforts to spread "Western" values such as good government.

Angola is said by Human Rights Watch to have "lost" $4 billion of oil revenues between 1997 and 2004, and in 2004 the International Monetary Fund got it to agree to manage that income more transparently.

But just before the big signing of this deal, the Angolans told the IMF it could keep its cash and leave town: China had just offered it a $2 billion loan, no questions asked.

It's the same story all over Africa. The President of corruption-plagued Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, gloated: "China's approach to our needs is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronising post-colonialising approach of European investors . . ."

Which means Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, shunned by the West, can instead buy his arms and radio-jammers from China, greedy for his platinum, nickel and copper. Hell, China even accepted eight tonnes of his elephant ivory as payment.

Human rights -- let alone elephants' rights -- just isn't on China's agenda. As a recent US Council of Foreign Relations report said: "China doesn't have the same human rights concerns as the United States and European countries, experts say, so it will sell military hardware and weapons to nearly anyone."

With methods such as that, China has grown rapidly to become the third-biggest trader in sub-Saharan Africa -- after the US and France -- and may soon outstrip even them.

And with its trade, arms and aid, it's won plenty of friends in bodies that vote on decisions affecting even us.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the United Nations General Assembly, where the influence of the greatest democracy is falling as the influence of the greatest autocracy is rising.

In 1995, the US won 60 per cent of the votes on arms control, and 81 per cent on human rights. By 2006, it won just 30 and 28 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, China, says leading foreign policy analyst Mark Leonard, went from winning 43 per cent of the UN votes on human rights to 82 per cent. China a human rights paragon at the UN. Who'd have thought?

Indeed, it is even on the UN's Human Rights Council, along with such champions of rights as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, Egypt and Angola. But the US is not.

The world is changing fast, and those you may have counted on to protect you are growing weaker.

China has been counting on that, in fact, and especially on the weakness of Western leaders, hungry for its trade.

Until now it seems to have counted rightly. The lure of China's gold has had Western leaders mute their criticisms of its human rights abuses.

Our own Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, for instance, can furiously vow to do "everything within our power" to stop Japan's "slaughter" of whales, but dares only murmur that China should "exercise restraint" in slaughtering Tibetans.

As with the politicians, so with the International Olympic Committee, which awarded Beijing the 2008 Games with the excuse that this would encourage China to adopt more Western values, such as free speech.

But instead of getting China to adopt Western values, Olympic committees have tried to get Western athletes to adopt Chinese ones, demanding they sign agreements curbing their freedom to speak in Beijing. Even Australia's athletes need their team managers' permission to talk politics in China.

Now IOC power broker Kevan Gosper is even telling the rest of us not to protest near the torch relay. How chuffed China would be by his efforts.

But none of this feebleness on which China has relied will work. If there's one thing that pricks our politicians sharper than Chinese gold, it's the rage of voters, activists and celebrities.

As the torch relay wends through Western democracies, more people will finally confront a question they've never even been asked. Is it really the United States that's the biggest threat to human rights? Or should we worry more about Chinese oppression?

Sure, the US will remain the Left's pet bogey. But China has now advertised itself as a target, and built a multi-billion-dollar platform for a demonstration, complete with a torch relay whose bobbing light will drag in thousands of protesters in capitals around the world.

With showbiz causes such as Tibet to push, protesters will make appeasing China a political no-no. The pressure will also go on torch-bearers such as pediatrician Fiona Stanley and humanitarian Gillian Hicks to pull out from the Canberra leg -- whether in support of democracy, Tibet, the Falun Gong, Darfur or so many other casualties of China's autocrats.

Through 20 countries this torch will run, and each will have this debate. China will come under a scrutiny it's never had before, and not before time.

What a marvellously subversive idea it's turned out to be, after all, giving the Games to Beijing. Let's make the very most of it.

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