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China's Olympics: What's Reality Got To Do With It?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

As a huge fan of John Pomfret, based on his excellent book, Chinese Lessons (for my review of that book, go to my post not so subtly entitled, "John Pomfret's Chinese Lessons -- LOVED IT!"), I was happy to learn from Danwei that Pomfret is just starting a blog on China for the Washington Post. It took all of two posts for him to come out with a big money quote that I have to repeat. The quote is from the post, "Don't Expect Protests to Hurt Chinese Regime," regarding the impact of foreigners putting the heat on China for its conduct in THAT Western Region getting so much press lately:

So is this going to weaken China?s government? On the contrary. The more pressure the Chinese get from foreigners and barbarians ? which are actually synonymous in ancient Chinese ? the stronger the system becomes. Indeed, China?s system feeds off this kind of adversity. The Communist regime has a peculiar genius for turning these types of threats into opportunities.

He is, of course, absolutely right and this is pretty much what I said when interviewed a few weeks back on BBC Radio. If the goal is to effect positive change in China, back channel diplomacy is the way to go. Do you agree?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).