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China, Spielberg, and a counter-offensive

Having received its first major Olympics-related public relations blow last week when Hollywood director Steven Spielberg announced his decision to withdraw as artistic director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Games, China is hitting back.

As justification for his decision, Spielberg claimed China had failed to use enough of its clout with the Sudanese government to press for peace in the country’s Darfur region where more than 200,000 people have died in a conflict between rebels and militias backed by government forces.

China’s response to the director’s move was at first muted, with the government simply expressing “regret” over his decision. This week, however, it launched a major counter-offensive against its critics, calling Spielberg “naïve” and insisting that politics and sports must be kept separate.

Earlier in the week, Premier Wen Jiabao went on record to say how much China had done for peace in Darfur. Beijing also announced that its special envoy to Darfur, Liu Guijin, would travel to Britain and Sudan later in the month.

In the meantime, newspaper commentaries and Internet chat rooms are buzzing with citizens expressing outrage and, more often than not, bewilderment at the fact that China’s Olympics should be linked to Darfur by Spielberg and others.

A front-page editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, ridiculed Spielberg for his decision. “A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics,” it said.

Last weekend, Guangming Daily, another party newspaper, ran an editorial that said that Spielberg “broke his promise to make his contribution to the Beijing Olympics and betrayed the Olympic spirit.” He “is not qualified to blame China because he knows nothing about the great efforts the Chinese government has made on Darfur,” it concluded.

In deciding to quit his Olympics role, Spielberg made common cause with a coalition of Hollywood celebrities including Mia Farrow and human rights groups that have been calling for a boycott of the Olympics based on China’s relationship with the Sudanese authorities.

China buys two-thirds of the African country’s oil exports and sells weapons to Khartoum.

While claiming that it has done much in the last year to exert a “positive influence” in the area, Beijing insists that to blame it for a crisis in Africa whose origins are unconnected to China is unfair.

In an interview to Chinese media earlier this week, Mr. Liu Guijin said that Western countries could help take forward the peace process by pushing rebel leaders to participate in negotiations. “Western powers can exert more positive influence on those rebel leaders because many of them live in Western capitals,” he said.

For example, Abdel Wahid Nur, one of the most influential rebel leaders, lives in France.

In the meantime, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge came out in support of the Beijing Olympics saying he was confident of its successful conduct despite boycott threats. “I have much respect for Spielberg’s decision; and if an athlete doesn’t want to go, I’ll respect that, too. But the Games will be a success, without a doubt,” Mr. Rogge said in an interview published in the sports daily Marca. “The Games are bigger than any one person.”

The Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) has held a series of press conferences this week aimed at countering criticism of China’s human rights policies, and to publicise the wide support that the Games continue to receive.

One issue that was dealt with related to massive relocations of families to make way for 31 Olympic venues. The relocation programme has been one of the focal points for complaints by human rights groups which allege that local residents were often forced to move against their will and without adequate compensation.

However, Zhang Jiaming, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Construction Committee, said at a press conference this week that over 6,000 households had voluntarily relocated over the past several years and that all of them had been given fair compensation.

Beijing’s stance on the Olympics has been backed by the sponsors of the Games. “Not a single sponsor told us it plans to quit the marketing programme or stop supporting this Olympic Games,” Yuan Bin, director of the BOCOG marketing department, said this week.

Major sponsors include Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, Volkswagen, General Electric, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola.

Spielberg’s pullout has been an embarrassment for a China that is anxious to ensure that the Olympics focusses the world’s attention on its economic achievements. However, Beijing is aware that as the Games approach, its critics are unlikely to stay quiet.

The Olympics will undoubtedly be a testing time for the country, but China has shown itself to be capable of handling such situations well. As a spokesperson for BOCOG, Sun Weide, put it, “The best response to our critics is simply to host a successful Olympics.”

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