Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of Mct Campus An artist's rendering of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, which is being constructed by workers who won't be paid until the end of the Olympic Games, if at all.

Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a three-part series about the economic, social and political rise of China.

Imagine you are living in a state where the government rifles through your e-mails, monitors your Internet and phone use, tortures civilians and creates secret institutions to disrupt dissenting organizations.

You wouldn't have to use much of your imagination. After all, you're living in the United States. But this also happens if you are living within the political boundaries of the People's Republic of China, under the repressive governance of the Chinese Communist Party.

In fact, my grandmother fled the conditions produced by the CCP during the Great Leap Forward with my mother in her womb. My grandmother's other daughters, who had been lost amid panicked crowds, grew up in this tumultuous era, and were forcefully relocated to non-Han dominated regions within China. By displacing my aunts and three million other youths, the government hoped to sinify the local population, culture and land (not unlike what happened here in Hawai'i), thus strengthening CCP control.

Today, Han settling of historically non-Han regions, such as East Turkistan (Xinjiang), is not coerced, but encouraged. Nonetheless, indigenous sentiment remains the same: anger toward a "foreign" rule that continues to change local demographics and extracts oil from the land with little economic benefit to locals.

Thanks to the U.S.-led "War on Terror" and its accompanying rhetoric, the CCP is now able to identify activists who advocate the secession of Tibet and East Turkistan from the PRC as "terrorists" rather than "separatists" and "dissidents." This re-labeling justifies the government's harassment, detainment, torture and execution of these so-called terrorists.

Yet all civilians within the PRC - whether Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian, non-Han or Han - live under these threats, as demonstrated in the years following China's successful bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. When Beijing won the right to host the Olympic Games in 2001, the CCP promised the International Olympic Committee that improvements would be made to China's human rights record.

Despite these assurances, China still has the highest death penalty rate in the world (though Western demand for organs and body parts have done nothing to end this). Furthermore, the CCP has begun using loosely defined subversion charges to suppress civilians prior to the opening ceremonies, including leading human rights activist Hu Jia and land rights activist Yang Chunlin.

If you visit Beijing or Shanghai during the games, you'll be greeted with tall skyscrapers, recently renovated historical landmarks, modern stadiums and enthusiastic crowds. What you won't see are the backs upon which these markers of progress are built. You won't see most of the migrant workers who constructed the buildings, as they've been evicted. You won't see the houses that were destroyed for Olympic-related construction, or the one-million civilians who were left homeless, since they've been forced out as well.

You also won't hear of farmer and vegetable dealer Lin Hongying, a 56-year-old woman who was beaten to death by city patrols, because the story would carry a death sentence for the journalist who reported it.

But remember, you have a choice. You can choose not to participate. On Feb. 12, Steven Spielberg did just that when he stepped down as the artistic director of the games. Spielberg, deciding that the CCP had not sufficiently contributed to resolving the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, said, "With this in mind, I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual."

Furthermore, we should remember that it's impossible to point our finger at the CCP for the oppression and occupation of peoples within the PRC without pointing fingers back at the U.S. for its own involvement in the illegal occupation of native lands and the overthrow of foreign leaders, such as Queen Lili‘uokalani.

There are those who believe change is impossible, especially when it means going against governments as monolithic as the CCP. While the path to a better world is long, it's even longer following it. But the Chinese have a saying: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

It has been brought to our attention that the article implied the Chinese government routinely condemns journalists to death. While journalists have occasionally been subjected to the death penalty, they a're more frequently imprisoned for the results of their reporting. According to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, China leads the world in the number of journalists detained. Ka Leo regrets the error.

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