Back among the bright and shining lies of the Bill Clinton administration looms the moment when a huge contingent of American corporate and political leaders traveled to Beijing to stand in Tiananmen Square. They did not go there to pay homage to the hundreds of unarmed students murdered on this sacred ground by Chinese government troops on June 4, 1989 (the Red Cross estimates the numbers of those killed were as high as 3,000). They were there to embrace the criminal regime that did this, to celebrate the opening of markets with them.
When this occurred—when this group from the "free world" stood on the ground where blood was spilled—it should have been the wakeup call for the world. It should have been the moment when we all understood that a totalitarianism of Communism or fascism or Islam-ism or whatever-ism was being replaced by a totalitarianism of money.
With the end of the Soviet Union, this moment represented the transnational victory of corporatism. It had not been long enough after the Tiananmen massacre for American government leaders to do such a thing. Indeed, on the clock of history, the blood stains were mere seconds old; the Chinese leaders responsible were still in power.
These murdered students did not seek to overthrow this regime. They simply wanted the freedom to assemble and speak their minds. They wanted a more democratic, open society. And for that they were murdered like the unarmed non-violent marchers being murdered right now by this same regime in Lhasa, Tibet.
Doesn't this all sound familiar?
After the 1989 massacre, the Chinese government went on a rampage. They banned the foreign press from the country. Those expressing sympathy for the protesters were placed under house arrest or "purged." The massacre was a pretext to consolidate their power, a plan that had been in the works for some time (the Tiananmen protesters had been assembling since the previous April).
It was, in short, all part of the plan. Just as the protests in Tibet have given them the pretext to consolidate power, repress and stomp out the very life and culture of a repressed people.
No, this column will not be a plea to boycott the Olympics. I wish it could be. I would love to think that the world community will, in outrage and disgust, finally decide that the moral price of participating in China's coming-out party this summer is too high to pay. However, the United States cannot do that. Even if our joke of a government were to suddenly grow a conscience and participate in a boycott of the Beijing Games, it would mean little to the world, and perhaps even undermine the very message they hoped to convey.
The United States has, sadly, relinquished our moral high ground in Iraq. We no longer have a leg to stand on in this debate. These are our corporations who will benefit most from a Chinese Olympics.
Let's face it, that's all the Olympics are any more: a cash cow, a golden goose that pits countries and cities against one another to "host" them. As we learned in the past two Olympiads, the committee that chooses the sites and sanctions the games is all filled with corrupt officials who vote according to who pays them the most money under the table.
And because the Olympic "spirit" is really Olympic "money," a 2008 Olympiad will take place in Beijing. It will be, as Sally Jenkins recently reported in the Washington Post, an Olympic Games at which every hotel and dorm room will be under camera and microphone surveillance, where every homeless person and criminal will be hidden from view and where the suffocating pollution will choke the participants in its embrace.
It will be simply, and cynically, business as usual.
