THE Tibet-Olympics episode has brought to the fore one of the most fundamental tensions in contemporary global politics.

The centres of power in the West are afraid that China’s ascendancy will threaten their global dominance and control. This is why they are determined to check China’s rise.

China has to be contained. Targeting China over its treatment of Tibet on the eve of the Beijing Olympics is part of that containment strategy.

It will be recalled that a segment of the Western media, a number of Western non-governmental organisations and some Hollywood celebrities began to criticise China for its tolerance of the Sudanese government’s alleged atrocities in Darfur and had called for a boycott of the Olympics some months ago.

But the attempt to smear China over Darfur did not make an impact.

Then the protest in Tibet erupted. Well-known Western human rights organisations and leading public figures seized the opportunity to condemn China’s human rights violations in Tibet and to question its suitability as the host of the Olympics.

It is not widely known that the centres of power in the West have long been involved in the politics of Tibet.

The Central Intelligence Agency took over from the British in the 1950s and financed Tibetan dissidents opposed to the communist government in Beijing.

The Dalai Lama, it is alleged, was part of that scheme.

Western manipulation, it should be emphasised, does not exonerate the Chinese government from its misdeeds in Tibet.

Beijing has yet to understand the religious and cultural distinctiveness of Tibetan Buddhism.

It does not appreciate the legitimate aspirations of the Tibetan people for greater autonomy within the framework of the Chinese republic. Even Beijing’s handling of the recent protest left much to be desired.

Nonetheless, the world should understand that it is not the rights of the people of Tibet that the West is really concerned about.

After all, communist China has, in a sense, given the Tibetans a measure of dignity compared with their situation in the serf-based authority structure of the past.

What manipulators in the West want to do is to prevent China from showcasing the Olympics and to celebrate its arrival on the global stage.

In that regard, Tibet serves as an effective propaganda tool to shame and smear China.

Smearing China is a sophisticated game. Partly because of China’s economic clout, Western governments are not attacking her directly.

They have given the impression that they only want Beijing to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama and that they would like to see the Olympics succeed.

It is Western non-governmental organisations and a segment of the media which are leading the charge against China. This is a pattern of operation we have seen in other societies, too, when they are subjected to pressure from Washington and its allies.

The containment of China is a complex Washington-driven policy, which includes the rearmament of Japan and the strengthening of India.

Since Southeast Asia is China’s crucial neighbour, Washington is also determined to ensure that those who lead governments in the region are completely on its side.

It is only too apparent that the containment of China will widen the chasm between China, on the one hand, and Washington and the West in general, on the other.

The Tibet-Olympics episode has already created such negative feelings on both sides of the divide that it is doubtful if relations between the two civilisations will ever reach a high point.

If the goal of the ancient Olympics was to bring people from different cultures and communities together in a spirit of friendship and camaraderie, the exploitation of the Tibet issue by groups in the West has undermined that noble objective, which is why the Chinese people are so angry with the drive to contain China.

DR CHANDRA MUZAFFAR, PresidentInternational Movement for a Just World (JUST)

Source: NST – April 30, 2008