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[personal profile] rfmcdonald
Am I alone in finding the calls for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics on the grounds that Chinese investments in Sudan may have some link to the ongoing genocide in Darfur strange (1, 2)?

The activists who want to punish China could make use of the partial precedent of the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow, but that was part of the hostile international reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Note that this decision could come about only because it was the Soviet Union itself that had invaded Afghanistan, not a mere Soviet trade partner with very ambiguous ideological and other links to the Soviet Union. (The retaliatory Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles seems to have been simple tit-for-tat, perhaps accompanied by gerontocratic paranoia.) A case can be made that Chinese moneys bear a certain measure of indirect responsibility for Sudan's latest traumas, yes, but it would be a fairly weak case that could also be extended to Sudan's neighbours and, indeed, to Western countries which purchase their oil from the same fungible international markets to which Sudan sells. Should the Olympics be closed down on the grounds of global culpability? One might as well have boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics because of the death squads active in the United States' Central American proxy states/satellites--if anything, the case in favour of a boycott would have been stronger because of the United States' role in training the militaries which committed those crimes in the first place.

This won't happen, of course. The Darfur activists involved might be able to sway public opinion in their countries somewhat, but they aren't going to be able to get their governments to insult a rising China that's intent on making next year's Summer Olympics a globally-televised demonstration of China's evolution into a world-class power. I just find it irritating that they've been trying to make this case, and in fairness, perhaps also a bit sad that this tactic is one of the more effective that they can come up with.
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