China clearly didn’t anticipate the Olympic torch fiasco, and neither, it seems, did the International Olympic Committee. Last week IOC President Jacques Rogge described the Olympics as being in “crisis,” and this three months before an athlete has placed a foot in the starting blocks on the Beijing track. The Tibetan protestors whose inspired sense of timing has threatened to extinguish the torch, now appears to be casting a pall as well over the opening ceremony, which will be missing some – and perhaps many – Western leaders. It is hardly the kind of triumphant inauguration to their Olympic extravaganza which the latter-day mandarins around the politburo table had envisaged.
China wanted the Olympics to showcase its friendly, modern face and to celebrate its accession to the world stage as a major power. But it made a critical miscalculation. It underestimated the probability that international attention would be drawn to its dark face as well as to its friendly one in the run-up to the games. And this would have happened whether or not the Tibetans had mounted a violent challenge to their Chinese overlords, given that there is an activist constituency in the West which supports the Tibetan cause, and some of the members of that constituency are both high profile and vocal. Since the grand tour of 21 cities would have been too good an opportunity for them to miss, the Olympic torch would probably have encountered a similar stormy reception to the one which in fact greeted it last week. The violent repression of the Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere, however, infused the campaign with especial vigour, urgency and poignancy, and, it might be added, guaranteed it exceptional publicity.
