Symbol of Hope

The torch be theirs, to hold it high. And that, precisely, is what the young Chinese Olympic torch guards were attempting to communicate to British television presenter Konnie Huq, through the London Torch relay; she taking offence that they shouted orders at her, pushed her arm to make her lift the torch higher. This Olympic party is theirs, after all, it is their pride and hope. Surrounded by raucous protesters, how else could the torch be seen at her insubstantial height?

Let's face it, China, particularly at this heated period in time and place and particularly occasion, can do no right. The colossus, so eager to prove its worth to all the other of the world's countries, each smaller and less-populaced then hers, yet in their aggregate- though she disdains their criticisms - bearing great weight on her own self-perception of having arrived as an elder statesman of this great world order.

An ancient heritage, advanced in cultural and artistic achievements and possessed of a system of governance much in advance of her time, when other countries were stirring into slow realization beyond tribalism. So far advanced had she become that she carelessly snipped all those binding ties and re-invented herself in a great social experiment that sacrificed not only that ancient culture and the traditions that went enriched it, but an essential segment of her people.

Only now is she slowly reversing the tide of social failure, finally understanding that it takes a great deal more than a theory of self-sacrifice to motivate and impress upon her populace that we are indeed our siblings' keepers. Not matricidal, fratricidal automatons. China seeks to improve mightily upon her past failures, to create a harmonious society where equality of opportunity is within the reach of the majority. She has almost succeeded in the gigantic task of feeding her people adequate to survival.

Irritating little intrusions into her internal affairs so impatiently shrugged off in the past as she went resolutely on her way to re-forming her style of governance and ultimately, her vast society, no longer work in this new atmosphere of vulnerability. A vulnerability that she herself engineered, so certain that she had earned the right through determined social engineering, and energetic manipulation of world trade, for respect.

She would awe the world that came to celebrate with her on the occasion of her hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. All would be forgiven, forgotten in the atmosphere of athletic prowess and brotherly love. And the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry.
It is no easy task governing 1.3-billion people, inclusive of so many diverse human strains. China's determination to crush those square pegs into the round holes offends outsiders.

And what is a country's governing body to do when a small but vocal minority resists integration and insists on singular treatment? Even if it is as a result of inferior treatment, of state-sponsored terror, the state's decision to obliterate a beloved culture, religion, traditions. It is the collective interests that governs responses. Such an immense undertaking as to collectivize the social good in the national interest cannot afford to be led astray by claims of inherited cultural rights.

What are incidents of human rights abuse in refusing autonomy to a long-embraced minority in relation to the much larger obligation to the whole of the nation? Enter the reality of a world which delights in emphatically selecting and targeting unwary deviations from the considered norm. Now that the Olympic Games in Beijing rise near on the horizon, the fault lines have been breached.

Anxious Beijing, so willing to cultivate good relations among other nations on this auspicious occasion of her global coming-out party, is suffering a set-back of enormous proportions. A dagger has been sent straight to her valorous heart. Her honour has been impugned, her pride derided, her ostentatious aspirations to herald the world into an atmosphere of excellence, despoiled.

Her sensibilities have been outraged by the spectacle of screaming, swarming crowds of protesters, ill-wishers, outrageous western thugs, clamouring for her downfall, clustering menacingly about the torchbearers as the triumphant spectacle becomes a tarnished misery of failed theatre. Never did she imagine the consequences of leaving herself so open to critical abuse.

Through inviting the world to attend her very special party, her willingness to open her borders to foreign visitors, her people eager to demonstrate their sweet neighbourliness to the world at large, she has revealed a very weak position indeed. Even the young Chinese men sent as Olympics-suited emissaries to accompany the Olympic flame have been derided: "They are horrible. They did not speak English... I think they were thugs."

To this has the world descended in their fury with the recalcitrant and determined nation that vowed to maintain its borders and possessions intact against the unspeakable potential of "splittism". It is not religion, nor culture, nor tradition that is sacred in the governing body of this great, this fabulous country, but the security of its territory. There is no cost too great. Add to that the unspeakable company of tyrannical murderers she keeps.

The ungracious, unseemly, and, in the end, irrelevant outrage of human rights groups appears inappropriately staged. Targeting the world's athletes, the population of a great country, the aspirations of a government that will slowly emerge to face down representatives of those other nations whose own traditions and ongoing circumstances of internal oppression of specific deviating groups give them no claim to moral superiority.

In the short term, poor disillusioned China. Her 1.3-billion people are surely feeling a bit of high dudgeon over the shabby treatment they and their country are receiving. Their much vaunted symbol of hope has been transformed to the symbol of universal damnation.