Beijing Olympics: a resounding success for everything but democracy

Thank you, Jay, for being one of a few Olympic journalists to actually scrutinize the Games in the context of the real world.  This short story notes that the Games were a huge success for host country China, but a real failure in pressuring the Chinese to open their political system and allow basic political freedoms.

Around the sports, there were promises broken. The major Catch-22 was the so-called protest zones. Those alone are not unusual. At the U.S. political conventions in Denver and St. Paul, similar zones for demonstrations have been set aside. They were established in Athens and Sydney, too, for previous Games.

But here, it's been reported in the Western media, if a Chinese citizen applied for a protest permit, they instead were arrested. (emphasis mine)

...As for Darfur and Tibet, they were distant shouts amid the festive din. The only news was that visas were denied to Darfur advocates. It's too bad there was such a news blackout.

Hard to believe that before the Games began, there were a number of highly respected journalists and democracy advocates calling these the Genocide Olympics.  All I heard about was Michael Phelps.

P.S. Though he was awesome.

China's carbon emissions: how much are ours?

One of the big hangups in a global climate agreement has been the interest of the United States in holding developing economies accountable for their climate emissions.  But there's one big problem - a lot of the carbon emissions in China and India serve their export businesses, ones that U.S. firms often set up to obtain cheap labor and more relaxed environmental standards. 

In other words, we own a great deal of China's carbon emissions, because they serve U.S. consumption.  In fact, at least 23% of China's emissions are from exports to industrialized countries. 

I think our share is a bit bigger than we've admitted.

Why these games could be called the 'genocide Olympics'

You may have heard news reports about the protests during the carrying of the Olympic flame in Europe, but may not know why. Two reasons:

• China's human rights violations in Tibet
• China's prevention of action in the genocide in Darfur, via the UN Security Council.

There's a great NY Times Magazine piece about how one group, Dream for Darfur, hopes to change China's behavior via action during the Olympics.

There are also those who point out that Western countries could be doing more, as much as China is a convenient scapegoat.

Eat more, get big

I read a lot about agriculture for my job, since renewable energy production often involves conversion of biomass to fuel or electricity. One agricultural economist has become required reading for me, because he talks a lot about the price pressures things like corn (because of ethanol production). I just read a column he wrote in 2003, and this non-agriculture fact jumped out:

In 1976 China had a population of 948.6 million people and the per capita daily calorie consumption was 2,051. By 2000, China's population had grown to 1.282 billion people and the per capita calorie consumption had risen to 3,029. (emphasis added)

Whoa! It's not surprising that the obesity rate has doubled in the past 10 years. What's even more amazing is that while Americans get over 600 calories a day in sweeteners (read: sugar or HFCS), the Chinese only get about 65 calories from sugar. While calories are calories, the Chinese situation can only get worse as they adopt a more American diet with more meat and sugar.

The truth about offshoring

When the United States is in the middle of a domestically and internationally unpopular war, is it really the time to reveal that our economic "investments" overseas are often about avoiding labor laws to get cheap, expendable workers? China has just announced that it plans to pass new laws boosting the power of unions and ending labor abuses. From the story, we find that

The move, which underscores the government’s growing concern about the widening income gap and threats of social unrest, is setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories here. (emphasis added)

Nothing like exposing the American international business slogan: "the cheapest labor money can buy." Maybe it's time to pay a little more for that plasma tv to make sure it wasn't assembled in a sweatshop by an 8-year-old.

A Leader by Example

It's fairly depressing when the world leader in freedom and democracy gets berated in front of a UN panel on torture. By China.

But before your righteous and indignant retort about Chinese hypocrisy, read up on the allegations and the American response to allegations of torture.