Snuff Television
Although it’s a matter of no material significance, I listen with interest to news reports of the Olympic torch and its encounters with protestors as they demonstrate in sympathy for Tibet’s condition under Chinese rule. And curiously, I find myself cheering for both sides.
Or rather, elements of both sides. I exclude China, and especially the Chinese government from my sympathies. Communist rulers have a long history of treating gross abuse of peripheral nations conquered by China, and even of wholly assimilated Chinese subjects, as “purely an internal affair.” Murder and corruption on a grand scale are considered above not only foreign interference, but above foreign comment; simply observing aloud that China treats its dissidents cruelly has been taken as grounds to break off diplomatic initiatives.
This attitude of splendid isolation is no innovation of Mao. Despite occasional fits of internationalism, like Cheng He’s expeditionary fleet, China has never really escaped its ancient self-conception as “the Middle Kingdom,” ultimately immune to external threat, any more than it has escaped a heritage of dreadful cruelty toward its subjects beginning with the Legalist movement of the Qin.
China’s recent emergence into proto-capitalism may be merely another such fit of internationalism, or it may be a lasting trend; we shall see. But for the time being, it cares about its reputation in the world—not just its status as a sovereign state, but as a decent government respectful of individual rights. In short, someone you can do business with. This makes the central government unusually sensitive about how the Olympics come off, and especially to how human rights protestors are using the occasion to focus attention on subjects China would rather not address. It can’t simply say, “Shut up, go away, you can’t look,” when it wants people to come and look at the flowering of a modern, international China.
So I really enjoy seeing organized protests interfering with the passage of the Olympic torch around the world. I’m under no illusions that such interference will change anything. The Olympics certainly won’t be cancelled just because the torch goes out—as I understand it, the torch occasionally goes out even without interference—nor will China grant Tibet autonomy over the Olympics, but it would look bad in a way that China cares about, even if that concern is puffed up out of proportion. So far, crowds have failed to sabotage the passage of the torch, although they have manage the torch procession to alter its route, and even hide the torch entirely from news coverage in several cities, with more such incidents likely. If protestors actually get close enough to snuff the torch as a gesture of disapproval towards China, I’ll cheer them for their stand, and for the organization necessary to pull off such a pointed and nonviolent gesture.
And yet…I also find myself cheering the police and the Olympic staff working to keep the torch alight. The torch is a powerful symbol of hope, knowledge, any virtue that survives the evils of the world by being passed between generations, or between cultures. The staff trying to keep the torch lit in its journey around the world are working to preserve that symbol, and not to help China conceal its tyranny. So from an entirely different perspective, I can watch the torch procession as the work of daring and clever idealists, adapting on the fly to threats of an angry (if nonviolent) mob to see the symbol of enlightenment safely to its brazier on the Olympics’ opening day.
The contest between protestors and ceremonialists is thus really engaging: rich with symbolism if not empirical significance, pitting two honorable factions against one another in gestures of national pride that don’t involve soldiers and similar ugliness. A contest not unlike the Olympics themselves.