奥运期间用铁腕掩盖丑陋的真相

China bends over backward during the Olympics to conceal the ugly truth
BY TIENCHI MARTIN-LIAO zt


Beijing residents are used to seeing a yawning gap between the reality they know and the reality the government wants to create. And they are used to the government\'s version - the government\'s vision - prevailing.

Before the Olympics began, my friend Zhou Qing, a prominent writer who lives in Beijing, told me, I don\'t care about all the fuss.

The authorities tried to move him out of town during the Games; he refused to comply. So they stationed several men and a car in front of his apartment. The car will take him anywhere he wants to go - just not to meet or give interviews to Western journalists.

The guo-an [national security police] provide me with 24 hour-a-day car service, so how can I complain about the Olympics? he now tells me, without any hint of irony.

He is not alone. Many of my political and religious dissident friends in Beijing are getting the same treatment during the Olympics. As the famous writer Liu Xiaobo said, you must endure it with humor.

Behind the grand and scripted stage of these Summer Games - so carefully planned for the cameras by a Chinese government eager for its closeup - is a very different, far uglier backstage. It is rife with pollution, corruption, poverty, bureaucracy and repression. The people of China know that world. They know it intimately. The government of China knows that world too, and tries with all its might to whitewash it out of existence.

And here\'s the sad, funny part. The people are not only used to the deception; they are, by and large, okay with it.

In Beijing now, the air is cleaner, the traffic is lighter, the city is beautifully decorated with flowers, and all the nasty beggars and migrant workers have disappeared. So too have the protesters. If you catch a few out of the corner of your eye, just wait - they\'ll disappear soon enough.

Is it live or is it Memorex? The cute little girl in the red dress who sang at the opening ceremonies was only a puppet. The real one was hidden away somewhere because of her uneven teeth and poor appearance, all for the sake of national interest. You see, China could lose face if such an unattractive kid sang Hymn to the Motherland in front of all its international friends.

Well, at least the glittering chain of brilliant fireworks that lit the sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird\'s Nest showed how glorious the great nation of China is. What? Those were fake, too?

Well, at least the women\'s gymnastics team put on a stunning, gold-medal-worthy display. Oops. Chinese state media itself seems to have slipped up, accidentally revealing that one of those gymnasts may well be under 16 years old, the minimum age for competition in the sport.

I suppose whoever revealed this news will be lucky enough not to join the 44 Chinese journalists imprisoned by the government, accused of revealing state secrets and disrupting social order.

This drip, drip, drip of deception might change - if the people of China demanded the truth. But the thoughts of one young Chinese person on the scandal, written online, are typical: That is not a problem. We Chinese grow up with these sorts of tales.

The government makes the myths, and the people eat them up. In China, it seems, it has always been this way. For example: No one died at Tiananmen Square in 1989, except for one brave People\'s Liberation Army soldier who was killed by the violent mob. The evil foreigners only want to tell us fairy tales in order to split our beloved motherland.

There\'s more: The Soviet Union wanted to start a war with China and withdrew all their specialists from our country. The resulting three difficult years (1958-1961) took the lives of unknown millions of Chinese, all owing to natural calamity. Our school textbooks said so.

Truth? What does it matter? The 21st century belongs to the Chinese. China will be big and strong. Untroubled by ugly reality. Look forward. Be optimistic. Put on a great show.

That\'s the Chinese way.


Martin-Liao is director of the Laogai Research Foundation.