KEY POINTS:
It is hard to know who is being more foolish, China in sending its Olympic torch around the West, or the West for its failure to recognise China's efforts this year.
Predictably, the torch's tour of Western capitals is proving to be a public relations disaster. The athletes carrying the flame through London this week had to run inside a cordon of police in fluorescent yellow bibs and a further cordon of Chinese security guards in blue coats to protect them from spectators along the route, many of whom were waving Tibetan flags and banners. News coverage featured attempts to seize the torch, extinguish it or lie in its path.
In Paris it had to be put on a bus to protect it from demonstrations shortly after it left the Eiffel Tower. Next it is scheduled to appear in San Francisco, where it is bound to be a red rag to America's bull. What possessed the Chinese to give the torch its longest tour in Olympic history and send it to places where it was bound to draw protesters like moths to a flame?
The answer to that is probably the naivete of a regime that does not itself tolerate protest and seems unaware that diplomatic gestures are not part of the language of popular politics in free countries. In fact, a friendly official overture is almost bound to be misinterpreted in public debate. China might intend to light a candle for cordiality wherever the torch touches down but, in the West at least, it will be taken to be seeking a respectability its internal conduct does not deserve.
Popular opinion is right to withhold its approval from states that do not observe Western standards of civil and political rights, but the opinion leaders should also be capable of crediting a country with signs of improvement. Western political leaders, facing calls to boycott Beijing's Olympics over recent events in Tibet, should confront those calls with more argument.
China has made considerable efforts in recent years to improve its participation in the world. These efforts predated its bid for the Olympic Games and were recognised by the International Olympic Committee when the 2008 host was chosen. Dissension over Taiwan, Tibet or civil rights generally were always on the cards this year and so it has proved.
The Tibetan riots last month were more predictable than China's response. A few Western tourists and a reporter for the Economist saw the violence and the way it was handled. Their accounts agree that the Chinese soldiers did not open fire on demonstrators this time, as they did in Tiananmen Square nearly 20 years ago. They have been restrained to the point of resentment from Chinese whose lives and property were in danger.
It might have been different, of course, if the Olympic Games were not imminent. Nevertheless, credit should be given where it is due. If the Chinese leadership receive no kudos for their apparent restraint under provocation last month, they may see no purpose in adopting more acceptable policing practices from here on. If, however, they find their efforts for the Olympic Games win their country a more respected place in the world, they might be inclined to maintain their present course. That might not mean democracy in our time; criticism of leaders might always spell disrespect to an unacceptable degree in the Chinese mind. But if the Games leaves a positive legacy for China's engagement with the world, it will be an historic advance.
Now that China's economy is largely capitalist and its trade barriers are coming down, it is emerging as an economic superpower with potential fearsome military capacity. It would pay the West to understand China a little better than it has lately, and give its torch a fair go.
