By Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun, August 13, 2008
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24171047-5000117,00.html
THE Beijing Games are a party held in a prison. Never have the Olympics been held under such oppressive military control.
It's bad enough that the security is choking the life out of the Games. Worse is that its aim seems less to protect athletes from terrorists than to save China's regime from its people.
A reported 110,000 soldiers and police - more than twice the size of the entire armed forces of Australia - now patrol Beijing's streets, helped by 290,000 citizens wearing the armbands of security "volunteers".
Fully armed Chinese soldiers and police have manned almost every intersection for kilometres around the main stadium, in an open show of force not seen at the previous Games in Sydney or Athens.
Tanks have been seen on the roads, and surface-to-air missiles were positioned to defend the opening ceremony from attack.
But the authorities clearly had more than terrorists on their mind.
Television coverage of the opening ceremony revealed that thousands of the spectators in the stands were in fact police and soldiers, while official cheerleaders stood in the aisles choreographing the applause.
Outside, most Beijing residents have been kept well away from the venues. Crowds trying to watch the opening night fireworks from the subway station nearest to the athletes village were pushed away by paramilitary police. Crowds in the street were moved on.
A huge fence keeps locals hundreds of metres from the Olympic Green Common Domain, admitting only the rich few who can afford to pay almost an average day's wage just to walk outside the venues.
"Inside, it's more like a military compound than the beating heart of a sporting celebration," complained Herald Sun Olympics reporter Ben English.
So paranoid are the authorities - almost certainly of protesters - that even relatives of the cyclists were kept away from the finish line of the 245km men's event on Saturday and the women's race on Sunday, leaving the stands near the sensitively iconic Great Wall half empty.
Rumours are now rife that the reason so many "sold-out" events also have rows upon rows of empty seats is that the regime kept back tickets to ensure it could rein in the crowds.
Certainly any spontaneity in the stands is seen as a threat. Spectators are banned from bringing in any banners or flags other than national ones, and 30 official cheering squads instruct them on how to express themselves in the approved way.
Even that's not enough control. The regime has also given cheap tickets to 800,000 students, and in return trained them in the official Olympic cheer, as written by the Spiritual Civilisation Development Office of the Chinese Communist Party and the Games organising committee.
Sure, China did promise to open up and allow protests during the Games, but that turned out to be the hoax that was predicted by everyone but the International Olympic Committee.
Any protesters must apply at least five days in advance for a permit to hold a rally in one of only three designated protest areas, each in parks kilometres from the Olympic sites. And from reporters.
And as The Australian's Rowan Callick reported yesterday, not a single protest has yet been approved. Surprise! Not.
In fact, some of those mad enough to ask for permission to complain have been arrested and ejected from Beijing. Taxi drivers taking anyone to the parks have been ordered by police to inform on their passengers.
Yes, I've heard some reporters and IOC officials in Beijing, enthralled by the lavish party-party-party thrown by the regime, complain that to mention this overwhelming security is to nit-pick on the negatives.
The sport's the thing, they squeal, hogging up the regime's entertainments, paid for by people who can't afford to see them themselves and can't afford to complain about it, either.
Ignore the signs of overwhelming state control, we're told, even though the IOC assured us that the reason China got the Games was precisely to help hustle it into a more liberal future.
It's true that the opening ceremony gave some cause for hope that this might indeed happen -- that China would continue to open up and, maybe even one distant day, to democratise.
The ceremony was remarkable, for instance, in skipping any reference to the founder of China's authoritarian state, Mao Zedong, or his communist creation. Instead, it lavished praise on China's venerable past, and especially on Confucius, who took the role in the ceremony that Mao would have had just 25 years ago.
Sayings of Confucius, the philosopher born in 551BC, were displayed or chanted during the show, and hundreds of performers dressed as his disciples.
How significant is the choice of Confucius, not Mao, as the deity of the Games?
Consult Mao himself. The tyrant famously purged Confucius during the Cultural Revolution, destroying his shrines and teaching that the sage and his followers were "buffoons who had a place only in the garbage of history".
Mao likewise waged war on China's past by ordering a campaign against the Four Olds - old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. Old buildings were destroyed. Libraries of the classics were trashed. China was to become a country that had no past, only Mao's future. It was to have no gods or seers but Mao himself.
But at the opening ceremony, Mao was removed. His face, for the first time in a decade, does not even appear on currency printed for the Games.
Confucius and China's past were hailed instead as China's greatest glories. The world's, in fact.
Mao tried to erase China's past, but the past has instead erased the old monster, and we should at least celebrate that. But the soldiers in Beijing's streets should make us hold back from cheering too hard.
What the Games show is that nationalism has replaced communism as the ideology of China's leaders. What's more, the authoritarian state created by Mao lives on, and the regime now promotes the philosopher who most famously preached obedience and duty to the state.
Enjoy the sport from Beijing. But do not miss the jackbooted message from the stands and the streets outside.
This is a Games built on military power and a hyper-nationalism. That can be a lethal mix, and no happy splashing from the pool should blind us to its danger.