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Let’s consider that most important of ceremonial and symbolic moments – the lighting of the Olympic flame by the final torchbearer. It’s a moment full of meaning and passion. But who should have this honour? Who could Beijing choose to best embody China’s hopes for the Games, to best symbolize China’s regard in the international community, to best represent Chinese culture and history? Can one person achieve all these things? Here’s my shortlist:

Liu Xiang. One of the favourites and China’s big hope to get the flags waving and the anthem playing in the stadium; a reigning Olympic champion and worthy of consideration.

For: my students assure me that he can sing as well as jump.

Against: arguably a bit of a prima-donna and not so recognisable to a wider audience.

Yao Ming. China’s vertically gifted NBA star is another leading contender and comes across as a people’s man with an image recognisable the world over.

For: will have no problem reaching over the rim of the cauldron and has proven more reliable than other Chinese exports.

Against: has developed a tendency to fracture lower extremities under pressure.

Liu and Yao are the hot favourites, but what about the chances of the old guard?

Mao Zedong. An interesting ‘dark horse’. This could be China’s chance to stun the world with its advances in cryogenic technology.

For: everyone knows that lovely smile and history tells us he has a 70% chance of getting it right on the night.

Against: as Icarus discovered, when wax gets too close to something hot there can be disastrous consequences.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A rank outsider. Although still very much alive, reliable sources indicate he has less chance than either a Japanese revisionist or the aforementioned Mao. After all, who wants a Nobel Peace Prize winner when we can see a brutal dictator in action?

For:  Loved by everyone except China.

Against: Loved by everyone except China.

None of the candidates mentioned so far create enough of a spark for my liking. What about this man?

Hu Jia. A no-hoper for Olympic flame duties, but more deserving of the honour than any mentioned above. A true winner in life.

For: he’s presently incarcerated and could do with stretching his legs.

Against: he’s too good, too selfless, too honest, too pleasant, too humble, and too hard-working in campaigning for the rights of the disadvantaged, the dying, and the dispossessed. Clearly not the sort of person China wants as a symbol of the nation. 

Did I miss anyone?

Updated to say that the wise men of Beijing have decided to jail Hu for three and a half years - an unjustified, undeserved, petty, senseless sentence. Hu Jia should be held up as an example of how far human rights have come in China, not a victim of its suppression. I suspect this will turn out to be a regrettable move, and not just for Hu himself. 

….well written essay on the Chinese response to recent foreign media coverage of the T1betan protests. Here’s a taster:

For its part, Xinhua blamed the Western media bias on a “cognitive blackout,” and many foreign journalists in China do need a more sophisticated understanding of the issues in Tibet. Unfortunately, the government chose to respond to this cognitive blackout with a news blackout. In the absence of information, the mind races even as the fingers type, and western journalists are generally trained in such a way that when a government appears to be hiding something, it must be something worth hiding, and so they begin to suspect the worst. On the day the violence erupted, only The Christian Science Monitor and The Economist had people on the ground filing stories as Beijing Street in Lhasa burned. Everybody else was in Beijing (the city) desperately trying to get as close as they could to the action but to little avail: the government was not letting any more foreign journalists into Tibet.

The site is well worth a visit, but you’ll need a proxy if you’re in China!

Click here to see it.

I’m not sure how long this will last – until the next criticism, I suspect.

The timing is interesting. My guess is that Beijing are confident in the way they have been spinning stories of bias in the western media, such that any alternative views on Tibet, for example, will now serve only to reinforce the seed planted in the mind of most Chinese.

Timesonline today runs an article about Yang Chunlin, an unemployed factory worker who exercised his right to petition the government on behalf of farmers who have had their land swiped by local authorities. He was protesting that the Olympics ought not to be the government’s priority in light of so many injustices. One would have thought that such an act of goodwill would bring praise from the party who came to power on the back of a peasant insurgency. After all, it is the People’s Republic of China; right? Apparently not:

China has sentenced a man to five years in prison for protesting against the Beijing Olympics. The sentence was passed only a month after the Foreign Minister of China told David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, that police would offer a cup of tea to any Chinese protesting against the Olympics.

That ‘cup of tea’ offer sounded a bit hollow, if not sinister, at the time. Another remark made by Yang Jiechi, China’s Foreign Minister, during Miliband’s visit can only be regarded as a lie:

“No one will get arrested because he said that human rights are more important than the Olympics. This is impossible.”

Beijing’s capacity for making the ‘impossible’ possible is truly amazing. Five years in jail for a legitimate protest on behalf of the nation’s backbone! That’s one year for every millennium of civilization in this part of the world.

Of course we can’t forget another of China’s greatest heroes, Hu Jia, at this time either. I’ll have more to say about his case later. In the meantime, if the Chinese Foreign Minister offers you a cup of tea, run away as fast as you can.