WITH THE TORCH COMES FREEDOM

Just a couple of weeks before I entered Tibet, a group of four Americans and one Tibetan-American had hiked to the base of mount Everest and unfurled a simple homemade sign. They were each almost immediately arrested by the Chinese authorities, but not before one of them managed to transmit a live feed of a video recording of their activities. The five individuals were detained for several days and then permanently expelled from China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that they were arrested for "carrying out illegal activities aimed at splitting China," and that they had been expelled according to Chinese law. Shortly thereafter the Chinese announced a new policy of travel restrictions for foreigners in Tibet. To travel out of the capital city of Lhasa now required a costly "Alien Travel Permit" and the hiring of an official Chinese guide that would accompany foreign groups at all times. There were a lot of pissed of foreigners complaining about their spoiled travel plans when I arrived. I found the whole thing fascinating.

How five people with a sign and a video camera were able to create such a disturbance and incite such a swift and drastic reaction from the Chinese Government is an indication of both the potential strength of this form of protest in the modern technical age, as well as the weakness of the moral ground of the Chinese position on Tibet. The sign read: "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," a strategic play on the slogan of the Beijing Olympic Games. Within hours of the incident, news of the protester's arrest was on the Internet along with a downloadable version of the footage through YouTube.

Timing was everything.

Organizers of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics were just about to announce the much anticipated Olympic torch route. What they had planned was the most ambitious in Olympic history, including the longest torch relay ever — an 85,000-mile, 130-day route that would cross five continents. The highlight of this remarkable route would be when a team of Chinese, bearing the Olympic torch, scaled the 29,028 feet to the top of Mount Everest.

At the time of the protest a Chinese team was already at Everest Base Camp looking into the practical aspects of bringing a lit torch to the top of the highest mountain in the world, as well as the logistics of broadcasting their progress to the world live. There have been some unconventional methods used in the past to transport the Olympic torch - it has traveled by elephant in India; camel at the Pyramids in Egypt; and by tram in Rio de Janeiro. In the 2000 Olympics the Australians designed a torch that could stay ignited under water as it was brought down to the Great Barrier Reef by scuba divers. The carrying of the torch has become an integral part of the Olympic tradition and perhaps the most widely viewed event of the Olympic ceremonies. The torch that the Chinese intend to bring to Everest will be outfitted with a special oxygen tank to keep it burning in the thin air and an igniter to re-light the flame when gusting winds blow it out. It will also be the first ever live-broadcast of an attempted summit of Everest. One thing is for sure - the whole world will be watching. So, the implications of the actions of the small band of protesters was not lost on the Chinese Government - if they are not careful, rather than seeing the glory of China on their carefully choreographed day, the world might instead be watching segments that highlight China's highly controversial occupation of Tibet.


Tibet isn't the only controversial stop on the torch's path either. China is also using the torch's route to make political statements about the status of Taiwan. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade state and has claimed sovereignty over the self-ruled democratic island since the losing nationalists fled there at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. China has repeatedly threatened to bring the island back into the fold, by force if necessary. When discussing the Olympic torch route, the executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, has repeatedly referred to Taipei (Taiwan's capital) as an "overseas Chinese city". Then it came out that the Taiwan leg of the Olympic torch relay has been designated a part of the "domestic route," thereby creating the misimpression that Taiwan is a region under China's control. Officials in Taiwan are furious.

But maybe some good can come from this in the end.


The very first Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C. at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. From its start the Olympics marked the beginning of a period of peace for the often warring Greeks. At the start of the Games, torch bearers would be sent out to travel throughout Greece, declaring a "sacred truce" to all wars between rival city-states. The truce would remain in place for the duration of the games, so that spectators could safely travel to the Olympics.

Perhaps the progress of the torch through the controversial regions of China's politics during this period of intense international attention will force issues to the surface that have until now had very little opportunity for public discussion within China. One can only hope.

A Curiosity in China

This man sort of sidled up to me with a great grin and tagged along for a while as I walked down the street in Shanghai. I could tell he just wanted a good look. This kind of curiosity regarding foreigners is still very much a part of China. It's very common to catch someone taking a sneaky picture of you with their cell phone, or sometimes they have their friend take a picture for them as they get in next to you. You have to wonder who's scrap book you have made it into after spending any time in China. But, when it really sunk in that I was a physical anomaly here, was when I woke up on the train to find a girl tugging on my arm hair and making monkey gestures to her friends. I forgave her - it was probably her first close look at a hairy albino like me.

A big part of this curiosity is likely due to the tiny ratio of foreigners in China today relative to the enormous Chinese population. It is very easy to feel like the the odd drop in a sea of over a billion. But it's also due to the fact that up until pretty recently China was practically closed off to foreigners. I remember that when my next door neighbors visited China in the late eighties it was a very big deal to go to China then. They had to have a government minder with them at all times and their interaction with local Chinese were very restricted.

Historically the Chinese have a right to be a little suspicious of foreign influence, particularly Westerners. There was a time when foreigners took parts of china by force and in many cities in China you can still see the remnants of these concessions in the foreign quarters. In light of this period, when China was carved up into different spheres of influence by the west, it's understandable, if not excusable, that the word for foreigner in Mandarin is yangguizi and in Cantonese it's gweilo. Both mean devil.

The Other Great Wall: Censorship in China

Late one night in an Internet cafe in Shanghai, as people were clearing out and only the owner and a couple of kids playing video games were left, I decided to give Chinese censorship a test. I took a look over my shoulder, typed in "Tiananmen square 1989", and clicked search. No Red Guard soldiers stormed the building, but the results were telling. Many of the sites that came up were of general tourist information, inviting me to visit the Great Hall of the People, the Monument to the People's Heroes, and Mao Zedong Memorial Hall. No mention of any protesters being mowed down by the Chinese military yet. A few sites with informative soundings titles did appear, but when I clicked on these, a window opened up telling me that the sites were unavailable. When I did a google search for images using "Tiananmen square 1989", I got nothing. Not one image!

The photo that is now ubiquitous everywhere else in the world, that of a lone man in a face-off with a row of Chinese tanks, has somehow been completely erased from Chinese cyberspace. I actually got the chills thinking about how a social event as significant as China's crackdown on demonstrations that took place in Beijing in the summer of 1989 could be so thoroughly removed from public awareness.


Just in case you forgot what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, I'll give you the short version of it:

For several months in 1989, a crowd of several thousand pro-democracy students gathered in Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, and staged a massive protest. Foreign journalists brought the protester's story to the rest of the world and people everywhere watched to see the result of the pro-democracy movement's stand-off with the Chinese government. Most memorable for Americans perhaps was when students built an effigy of the statue of liberty. When the protesters defied government calls to disperse, a split emerged within the Communist Party of China on how to respond to the protesters. Out of the party turmoil, a hardliner faction emerged and the decision was made to quell the protests. Army tanks and infantry were sent into Tiananmen Square to disperse the protesters.

Estimates of the resulting civilian deaths vary - 23 according to the Communist Party of China. 400–800 according to the CIA. 2600 according to the Chinese Red Cross.

Following the violence the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress the remaining supporters of the movement. They banned the foreign press and strictly controlled coverage of the event inside China (evidently to this day).

So, how does a government control information about an event like this? Relatively easily in a country with one political party that has control of all newspapers, television and radio. But how does China manage to maintain this control of information in the "information age"? What about the Internet?

Well, Access to the Internet is strictly regulated in China. Internet cafes, called Wangba, are required to keep detailed logs of their customers' online activity on file for 60 days. If a user tries to access forbidden Web sites, the Internet cafe must disconnect the user and file a report with state agencies. Penalties for violations include fines and even imprisonment. Also, every Chinese person who signs up for Internet service at home must register with his or her local police department within 30 days.

Once on line, personal e-mail is also filtered through a screening system. Text and subject lines are scanned and blocked if anything objectionable is found. So, if I were to send an e-mail with the subject "Free Tibet" from inside China, to someone in china, it most likely would simply not arrive. As a result it is very difficult for people in China to exchange information about certain topics.

What about trying to search the web for information from inside China? The companies like Yahoo and Google, have cut a deal in order to operate in China. In order for search engine companies to work in China they have to agree to censor certain topics. As a result the top 10 Google results using the key words "Tibet," "Taiwan China" and "equality" were all blocked, as were eight of the top 10 results using "democracy China" and "dissident China." Also, sites like Wikipedia, which allow people to contribute to them freely and are difficult to monitor, are simply banned all together in China. The result is a very effective control of information.

When it comes to politics, China has a media completely without dissenting opinions or any critical debate on subjects of real importance. Chinese people trying to find an independent source of information about Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square, SARS, the Falun Gong movement, opposition political parties, and anti-Communist movements, won't find anything easily on the Internet.

When I cautiously spoke to Chinese people about some of these same subjects, they either had no knowledge of them, had a very different knowledge of them than my own, or I couldn't tell because they refused to talk. More than one person told me plainly that they were fully aware that the government censored their information. However, the most widespread reaction I got was that they just weren't really interested in politics or the news. Of course, why would they be? Any topic that is even slightly controversial isn't covered.