Double standards on migration

The economic achievements of China have been talked about a lot. As the host of the Olympic Games, China has got an excellent chance to prove that its peripheral status on the world stage is coming to an end, Vlad Grinkevich, an economic columnist, wrote in his article for the RIA Novosti.

After all, permission to hold the Games is a kind of recognition from the world community: "You grew up and you are ready to become one of us."

China intended to use the chance of hosting the Olympics to present a new image to the world. As Petr Vasilev, director of Communications Application Committee "Moscow 2012", pointed out, it only took Beijing seven years to prepare for the Games, which in other circumstances would require 30 years.

The Chinese authorities want to show the world that the time of bad public manners has passed. The government has strengthened the penalties for spitting in the street, polluting the environment and disrupting public order. The staff of transport organizations, sports facilities and the police force have been enrolled in special courses on good manners.

Thirty years ago, the West threatened to boycott the Moscow Games. Then the reason was the Soviet Union sending troops to Afghanistan. In the case of the Beijing Olympics, the excuse is China's actions to "suppress" the riot in its own autonomous region.

"We should not exclude the possibility of boycotting the Olympic Games in Beijing. We want them to be successful, but not at the cost of Tibetan cultural genocide," said Hans-Gert Pottering, the president of the European Parliament.

The claim of the EU officials has revealed their double standards in dealing with one of the key problems of our time - the issue of migration.

What is the reason for unrest in Tibet? Approximately 93 percent of the inhabitants of the autonomous region are ethnic Tibetans and about 7 percent Hans, who are migrants from other parts of China. These 7 percent became the main victims of the recent riots.

The West sympathized with the rioters because Tibetans "throughout history have sought to preserve their ethnic, cultural and religious identity". However, why is migration considered a "genocide" for Tibetans while for the Europeans (in Germany, for example, the number of migrants exceeds 18 percent), migration is seen as "happiness" and "enrichment" and anyone who dares to question it would get the stigma of "racists" and "neo-Nazis"?

China responded calmly to the criticisms against it, firmly knowing that it is unlikely that anyone would truly boycott the Beijing Olympics. Will there be anyone who really wants to fall out with a country which accounts for more than 70 percent of the world's output of electronics and up to three-quarters of its textile products?

Now, without China and the Chinese market, the world economy will be at the risk of a collapse. That is why the West failed to impose economic sanctions on China in the late 1980s. We can say that China has succeeded in pursuing its interests through hard work and its unique path, and the Olympic Games in Beijing will be the new evidence.

(China Daily 05/09/2008 page9)