Crackdown Taking Place in Beijing, China
What is most amazing about the recent crackdown taking place in Beijing, China’s capital, is not the fact that the Chinese government is trying to make sure that foreign journalists will not talk to any disgruntled Chinese. No, what’s most surprising about the crackdown is that journalists and others actually seem to be surprised by the crackdowns.
Last week, Chinese officials ordered copies of The Beijing News removed from newsstands and censored the newspaper’s Web site after it published a photograph of victims wounded during the 1989 democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. The authorities have barred distribution of the English version of Time Out Beijing, a magazine for which I write, for the past two months. A good friend who is an American professor had valuable political texts in Chinese seized when he arrived at Beijing’s airport. And a shipment of my recently published food memoir, which I intended to distribute to friends, was detained and sent back to the United States by Chinese customs officials, who explained that my books were not “approved materials.”
Officials have proclaimed that protesters will be able to demonstrate at locations around the city. In reality, they have rounded up numerous activists and put them under house arrest. I know of one case in which the government has locked up a dissident in a mental asylum.
Undesirables like beggars and migrant workers have also been pushed out of the Olympic spotlight, and many of them have been forced out of the city. New visa regulations have made it hard for tourists to enter the country and for long-time foreign residents like me to stay. Visa agencies estimate that thousands of foreigners have left the capital because of the new measures. The revised rules prompted my fiancé and me to move up our wedding day by several months, so I can remain in China on a spousal visa.
Community groups have organized my neighbors to don red armbands and sit on Nan Luogu Xiang, a trendy alley full of Western cafes and boutiques, to watch for “suspicious activities.” Proprietors have been told not to talk to journalists. Police officers have made sweeps of neighborhoods, where they knock on doors to ensure that everyone is properly registered at the local police station.
The above is all quite terrible, and we should give attention to it, but what I cannot understand is how anyone can be surprised let alone shocked by it. This was to be expected. It is how the communist Chinese government has dealt with its citizens for decades. Whenever a foreigner goes somewhere, the Chinese government has been sure to remove all signs of poverty, opposition, etc. from the streets. Olympic Games in Beijing means that all ‘weak’ aspects have to be removed from society.
OGs in Beijing means, quite simply, that Beijing residents suffer so that we can watch sports.
More here.
It’s one thing to hear about it, it’s another thing to see it first hand. I only saw some minor abuse of government power in Nepal, and it stuck with me.
Just think, we all know car accidents happen all of the time, yet everyone is always surprised when they see one.