Word: tibet
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This lack of flexibility in spite of the looming Olympics is worrying, says Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher with New York City-based Human Rights Watch. "Especially now with the Lhasa protests," he says, "they are facing a pressure-cooker period." Beijing will have to keep a lid on Tibet. But Beijing's problems are not confined to Tibet. There have also been rumblings of dissent in Xinjiang province, populated largely by the Uighur Muslim minority group. Protests by thousands of Uighurs, the Muslim ethnic group that speaks a Turkic language, over religious issues were reported by rights groups...
...invisible opposition, what Beijing prevents the rest of the world from seeing, that elicits the most concern. Recent reports indicate that sporadic violence in Tibet continues despite a massive Chinese military crackdown that has now lasted almost three weeks. According to Tibetan exiles and activist groups, Chinese police on April 3 fired on monks from the Tongkor monastery in Ganzi, Sichuan Province, killing an unknown number. China's official Xinhua News Agency confirmed that disturbances had taken place but did not report any deaths. Meanwhile, in what is certainly a deeply worrying development for Beijing, the unrest has spread...
...storm that threatens to blow in just when everyone's watching - and deciding whether they want to participate in China's Olympics. The Prime Minister of Poland has already indicated he will boycott the opening ceremony because of events in Tibet; French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he wouldn't rule out a similar move. U.S. President George W. Bush called his Chinese counterpart Hu to urge Beijing to engage the Dalai Lama in a dialogue. Others could seek to distance themselves from the Games, if only as a precaution against "being seen on television dining with Chinese leaders...
...decisions," Link says. Leaders operate under a system of collective decision making that constrains the state's ability to be flexible in the face of new challenges. Hu is painfully aware that his political position may well rest on the outcome of moves he ratifies on big issues like Tibet, where he served as Party Secretary during the last flare-up of protests in 1989. "Like the bureaucrats beneath them," Link says, top officials "are frightened about their own positions and don't want to been seen as making 'mistakes,' especially mistakes of softness...
...increasingly powerful and confident country spending more and more on its military, its economy booming, its financial power overseas growing," says Wenran Jiang, director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. "But when Chinese leadership looks at the country they see the exact opposite: weaknesses everywhere from Tibet to Xinjiang, to rising inflation and civil unrest, environmental disasters and corruption. So the overall mentality of the central authorities is very insecure and nervous." Jiang argues that the only way to move toward a solution in Tibet is to negotiate with the Dalai Lama. But he says leaders...