Fresh protests against CNN, Carrefour
　

VOICE OF ANGER: Demonstrators rallied outside CNN's Hollywood office and demanded the firing of commentator Jack Cafferty for his remarks against China

AFP AND AP, BEIJING AND LOS ANGELES
Monday, Apr 21, 2008, Page 1

Fresh protests broke out across China yesterday, with thousands of demonstrators targeting US broadcaster CNN and French chain store Carrefour in disputes over Tibetan unrest and the Beijing Olympics.

The latest protests came after rallies on Saturday at branches of Carrefour, which has been subject to boycotts by Chinese consumers over its alleged support of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama — a claim it denies.

Protesters also targeted the CNN TV network over its commentator Jack Cafferty, who incensed Beijing authorities last week when he called the Chinese leadership “goons and thugs” and slammed China for exporting unsafe products.

“This was a patriotic movement, people want CNN and Carrefour to apologize,” Wang Zheng, a protester at a Carrefour store in Xian, said by telephone.

“We oppose Tibetan and Taiwan independence and we also oppose the politicization of the Olympic Games,” Wang said.

In yesterday’s protests, demonstrators chanted slogans and held banners that read “Oppose Tibet independence,” “Oppose CNN’s anti-China statements” and “Boycott Carrefour,” he said.

According to the Xinhua news agency, more than 1,000 people assembled in front of a Carrefour in Xian, while demonstrations also occurred at stores in Harbin and Jinan.

Many Chinese protesters felt Cafferty’s remarks on CNN were directed at ordinary Chinese, something that they said was inexcusable, Wang said.

Meanwhile, Internet chatrooms have been awash with accusations that Carrefour has supported the exiled Tibetan government.

Yesterday’s protests came despite a huge police presence after weeks of state-backed anti-Western rhetoric over the torch relay demonstrations and the Western media coverage of Tibet appeared to whip up public outrage.

At one point, 53 police cars were seen on the rooftop parking lot of a Carrefour store in Qingdao, a photographer said.

After protests erupted in the cities of Beijing, Qingdao, Wuhan, Hefei, Kunming and Xian on Saturday, the state press urged calm yesterday.

Saturday’s protests led to Carrefour store closures in at least Qingdao, Wuhan and Hefei but yesterday those stores and stores in Xian, Harbin and Jinan were all operating normally, Xinhua said.

“The more the Dalai Lama clique tries to disrupt the Olympic torch relay and some Western politicians and media take advantage to launch attacks and condemn China, the more we need to unify with the people of the world to hold a successful Olympic Games,” Xinhua said.

State television yesterday also reported large-scale pro-China protests that occurred around the world a day earlier in Los Angeles, Paris, Britain and Berlin.

Chinese-Americans rallied outside CNN’s Hollywood office to demand the firing of commentator Jack Cafferty for calling China’s goods “junk” and its leaders a “bunch of goons and thugs.”

“We understand free speech,” Lake Wang, 39, told the Los Angeles Times. “But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he’s jealous of China.”

A crowd estimated by police at 2,000 to 5,000 gathered, chanting and holding signs that read “Fire Cafferty” and “CNN: Chinese Negative News.”

The crowd was peaceful and no arrests were made, police said.

Another two dozen people holding Chinese flags also demonstrated outside CNN’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Japan to change defense policy to meet PRC buildup

AGENCIES, TOKYO
Monday, Apr 21, 2008, Page 1

Japan plans to formulate a new defense policy outline to underline the need to meet China’s rapid military buildup, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on yesterday.

The outline, which spells out basic guidelines for Japan’s defense policies, is reviewed by the government once every five years and was revised in 1995 and 2004, the paper said.

The government initially planned to make only minor changes to the 2004 defense policy outline in the next fiscal year beginning next April.

But it decided to set up a new policy outline to signal more clearly the need for Japan to develop its defense capability amid China’s military buildup, the Yomiuri said, without citing sources.

The government will launch a panel of experts to discuss the changes and hopes to have the new outline approved at a Cabinet meeting by the end of next year, the paper said.

The Yomiuri also said the Japanese, Chinese and South Korean governments could launch an annual trilateral summit later this year to help solve regional problems such as North Korea’s nuclear development programs.

On the second leg of his first overseas trip since taking office in February, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was to arrive in Tokyo yesterday on a mission to build ties with Japan.

Lee and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda were scheduled to hold talks today focusing on their earlier promises to build closer ties, Japanese officials said.

Clash of hypocrisy, incompetence
　

By Dominique Moisi
Monday, Apr 21, 2008, Page 8

“Do not mix sports and politics!” That defiant response from China’s rulers to the threat of a boycott of this summer’s Beijing Olympic Games does not stand the test of reality. Sport and politics have always been closely linked.

Obvious examples abound. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were dominated as much by Nazi propaganda as by the athletic events. During the Cold War, “ping pong diplomacy” helped revive official relations between China and the US. In 1990, Germany fielded a single Olympic team before the country reunified.

To claim that politics and sports can be any more separated in today’s media age than they were in the past is especially naive. The Olympics were awarded to Beijing for a mixture of economic and political reasons, and China wanted the Games for the same reasons. The current tension between China and (mostly) Western public opinion on the eve of the Beijing Olympics is the result of incompetence, hypocrisy and legitimate but potentially counterproductive indignation.

China’s incompetence in its treatment of the crisis in Tibet should come as no surprise. The Chinese regime is, quite simply, a victim of its inability to reform itself. China saw in the Olympics a symbolic opportunity to consolidate and celebrate its new status in the world. Caught by surprise in Tibet, and by the virulence and popularity of what they described as “anti-Chinese” sentiment, China’s rulers have resorted to the traditional tools of authoritarian regimes, turning their citizens’ deep nationalism and sense of humiliation against Western critics.

The Chinese sound almost as stunned by the supposed mistreatment of the Olympic torch in London, Paris and San Francisco as Americans were back in 2001: “Why do they hate us so much?” “What have we done to them?”

Self-isolated from global political realities and incapable of grasping the meaning of “civil society,” the Chinese regime encourages its public in expressions of defiance of all who fail to “respect China,” which only reinforces negative reactions.

But the West’s hypocrisy nearly matches the Chinese regime’s incompetence. The moment the international community “bestowed” the Olympics on China, the West demonstrated how little consideration it actually gives to human rights and democracy. The idea that the Chinese regime would quickly reform the country into an open, moderate, and benevolent giant was either a fraud, a gigantic misperception, or wishful thinking.

The dilemma posed by China for democratic regimes is understandable. Caught between their desperate need for finance and markets and their need to respond to their citizens’ sentiments, they oscillate between condemnation and reassurance of China, struggling to find a coherent path that defends the West’s principles without damaging its economic interests.

Now the West believes that it has found a “third way” by threatening to boycott the Olympics’ opening ceremony, but not the Games themselves. Thus, the Chinese people, the world’s athletes and a planet hungry for “bread and circuses” will not be deprived, and China’s rulers will not “get away with murder” in their contempt for human rights and international public opinion. The problem is that such a choice requires governments’ absolute determination to stand by their word.

The power of indignation is a necessary component of a transparent and interdependent world that has lost the privilege of ignorance. But selective responses to the actions of dictatorships can be problematic and counterproductive.

China, for both good and bad, is a status-quo power that does not want to rock the boat of the international system — a power largely satisfied with its new status, but one that does not want to see its regime transformed, especially through external pressures.

Let us have no illusions: No “conditions” imposed from outside will bring about the “China we deserve” in the way, after World War II, we got the “Germany we deserved” through a process of integration and reconciliation. If the Chinese reform their political system and improve their human rights record, it will not be the result of anything we in the West say or do, but because they realize that the absence of the rule of law jeopardizes their long-term ambition to be strong and respected.

Dominique Moisi, a founder and senior advisor at Ifri (French Institute for International Relations), is a professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw, Poland.