The Beijing Olympics are 22 days away. I can't wait to catch the best athletes in the world compete against each other (exception: baseball, but the "athlete" label is only marginally applicable anyway). I am also excited about getting to watch all manner of sports that rarely make the airwaves in these parts, the presence of a half-dozen 24-hour sports channels in the cable line-up notwithstanding.
But I am not eager for the glory that China hopes the Olympics will bring to her, and for the media coverage sure to oblige. Setting aside Tibet, about which I cannot profess to know much, China’s support for the genocidal regime in Sudanand the murderous thugs in charge of Zimbabwe is grounds for shame, not glory.
The question is what to do.
(First, I should note the following hypothetical: if the U.S. were hosting, I’d be thinking about the ways in American opponents of war in Iraq and the death penalty could use the global attention as an opportunity to show up our own government on those issues, and to show the rest of the world that many Americans are, in fact, in opposition to the war and the death penalty. But I would also be cognizant of the extent to which being in America gave one the liberty to express such opinions – a liberty generally not enjoyed in, say, China).
I would have been opposed to an athletic boycott, had it been seriously considered. We tried that in 1980, and it was, in retrospect, pretty clearly the wrong course. A political boycott, most visibly by our president and of the opening ceremonies on August 8, would have been nice. However, Bush has announced his intention to join the global leaders in Beijing. (Thanks to Friedman's suggestion, I am deeply hoping that he’ll be seated next to fellow Sinophiles Robert Mugabe and Omar Bashir.)
One course of action is still very much available, though: a consumer boycott. Like I said, I am very much looking forward to watching the games themselves – even what I anticipate to be the jingoistic version of them that the networks will serve up. I do not intend to watch the opening ceremonies, though. If this is the moment where commentators are supposed to declare "China has arrived," I don’t want to hear it. For one, China, as far as I can tell, has been around for quite some time. For two, their salient feature in the international politics of the day is not that they can build dorm rooms to accommodate however many thousands of athletes and hotel rooms for however many hundreds of thousands of spectators. It is that they can protect, enable, and arm leaders around the world that show no hesitation in killing their own citizens.
So I will turn off the TV on August 8. Myriad other activities beckon.
Beyond that, I will also boycott the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics, at least for the course of the games. No Cokes, Big Macs, or Taureg crossovers for me in August. And I guess I’ll be using my American Express and generic baby powder. But really, even if it only accomplishes something symbolic for myself (though, if enough people take a similar course, it could send a message of sorts), it is still pretty close to (literally, perhaps) the least that I can do.