Shame! Shame! Shame on China! What a Stinky Olympics -- Little support
found in West for boycott of Beijing opening ceremony

International Herald Tribune

Little support found in West for boycott of Beijing opening ceremony
By John C. Freed
Friday, August 1, 2008

PARIS: While most people in six major Western nations feel that some
protest over Tibet would be appropriate at the Olympic Games, a boycott
of the opening ceremony by political leaders is not the solution,
according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive for the International Herald
Tribune, the global edition of The New York Times, and for France 24
found that most respondents feel that the politicians should simply hold
their noses and attend the ceremony one week from today.

The form of protest most favored by people in the United States, France,
Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain is for individual athletes to express
their views in public. More than two-thirds of the respondents in every
country thought some form of protest should be made, with the French and
the Germans the most outspoken. But even in France, where support for a
boycott of the opening is strongest, only 44 percent say President
Nicolas Sarkozy should stay away.

The White House announced during the Independence Day weekend in the
United States that President George W. Bush would attend the opening
ceremony, although both of the men likely to be competing to replace him
in November, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, had called for him
to skip it.

"He believes he's going to China to support first and foremost our
athletes," the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said at the
time. "He sees this as a sporting competition."

A few days later, Sarkozy said he, too, would attend. He is in a
particularly sensitive place, because France holds the rotating
presidency of the European Union, so his presence will carry the weight
of Europe with it.

He had said he would make his decision contingent on progress in talks
between the Chinese and representatives of the Dalai Lama, the exiled
spiritual leader of Tibet, but the statement announcing his decision
made no mention of that. It did say that he had consulted the leaders of
the other EU nations and that France wanted to "deepen its strategic
partnership with China."

Reporters Without Borders, a journalists' group that made headlines in
protesting the transit of the Olympic torch through Paris and other
cities, called the decisions by Bush and Sarkozy "a capitulation and
stab in the back for China's dissidents."

Leaders of the other West European countries surveyed will apparently be
avoiding the opening ceremony, though none used the word boycott.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany made her position clear months ago,
saying it was not a political matter. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of
Britain said he would attend the closing ceremony, to receive the torch
on behalf of London, the host of the next Summer Games, in 2012. Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy demurred this week, citing China's
humidity and hot temperatures - considerably lower than those in Rome.
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain promised to send a
high-level delegation but did not promise he would be in it.

China's being host to the Games is a powerful symbol of its emergence on
the world stage, a development viewed warily both by leaders and people
in the West. Large numbers of respondents see China as an economic
threat, and substantial minorities see it as a military threat as well.

Far more Westerners see China as a threat than as an ally in the
marketplace. Even in Britain - where the survey showed people are most
likely to see Beijing as an ally - only 11 percent hold that view, as
opposed to 42 percent who see it as a threat. Two-thirds of people in
Italy and France see China as an economic threat.

No consensus has developed, however, on the best way to respond to that
perceived threat. In most countries, people were evenly divided on
whether to increase or decrease economic ties with China.

Only in Spain and the United States was a view clearly stated, and the
views were opposite. Of those seeing a need for change, the Spanish, by
a ratio of more than two to one, supported closer ties with Beijing,
while among the Americans, the numbers were reversed.

In the military arena, small numbers of Westerners see China as an ally,
but only one in five of the Europeans sees it as a threat. Among
Americans, that number rises to one-third, although even there, nearly
all the rest see China through a neutral lens or are unsure.

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