The constant protest and demonstrations against the Olympic Torch Relay and the Olympic is of concern to everyone. There are a few theories and possible reasons behind all these fiascos.
1. Jealousy and Hatred: The demonstrators have been all brain washed by corrupt western ideas. They are just against China for the sake of just opposing China. China is a success story. From suffering poverty and hunger to exporting of food and technology, from hand building of The Great Wall to launching of rockets into space, from riding bicycle to driving motorcars, whatever you can think of, it is impossible to call it a success. The West is jealous of China’s success. They want to discredit China. The Tibetan issue comes handy as an excuse to be used worldwide. They say that Tibetans are a different people, have different language and with different culture. Hence they must be independent from China. If this argument is valid, why not free Hawaii, or Alaska, or Acheh or Jaffna or Kurdish? They are different peoples with different cultures too. Instead of using their hands, their legs and their mouths to protest, perhaps they should use their heads to think whether their actions justify their cause.
2. Ignorance: China and Tibet has long historical tie. In the 7th century, the Tibetans were all nomadic people living in the wild, at most at tents without religion. The Chinese Princess Wencheng married the Tibetans King Songtson Gambo in the year 634 and introduced agriculture, poultry farming, printing and other technologies to Tibet. Above all, Buddhism was introduced and practiced until now. The famous tourist attractions, the Jhongkang Temple and the Potala Palace were build by the Chinese engineers and trades person during the 7th centuries. Tibetans has gained a lot in terms of knowledge and technology due to the influence of China. (See
http://www.wku.edu/~yuanh/China/tales/princesswencheng_b.htm ).
Tibet has 2.7 millions people. Whether they are well treated depends on one’s individual knowledge of China and Tibet and their current affairs and current state of development. The majority of China 1.3 billion is still poor and suffering. The Olympic is an opportunity for the Chinese people to get together to improve their contacts with the rest of the world and to improve their livelihood. We should not suppress the wishes of 1.3 billion people to join the world through the Olympic to improve themself.
In welcoming the Olympic, 200 millions Chinese are learning English. More westerners will visit China and influence Chinese people and its Government as well on some good western way of life and the western democratic ideas. China is progressively opening up. The Beijing Olympic is a golden opportunity to further open up China. The demonstrators are ignorant thinking that they can just tell China what to do but they are not aware that by doing so they are helping to kill this opportunity. Moreover, they are also interfering in the internal affair of a sovereign country.
3. Greed: The demonstrators have ample opportunities to protest against their own governments. They can fight for free education, free medicine, equal opportunity and better social support. They can fight to prevent the rich from getting richer, and fight for the poor from getting poorer. There are so many issues that they cannot fight or they have no resources to fight. Instead, these issues are not enough to occupy them; they are greedy for more issues. So they demonstrate against the Olympic Torch Relay and against the Olympic.
Whether one agrees to the above depends on an individual. There may also be other theories beyond me. Whatever we do, I believe it is counter productive to boycott the Olympic or to injure the spirit of the Olympic Game. We should look into ourself and think we can help to make China or our country or any other country more progressive.
It is basically wrong to take the moral high ground and condemn others for what we do not like or for what we do not know fully.
