Although the Olympics drew great praise from the Chinese people, reviews abroad were mixed. To be sure, foreign observers were in awe, even shock, at Beijing's imaginative architecture, the impressive organisation and staging of the Games, and the stunning performances of China's athletes. But enormous media coverage also enabled the world to see more of the negative side of the distinctive authoritarian system that produced this triumph - especially its absolute intolerance of public dissent and its indifference to fair procedures for punishing dissenters.
Nothing more vividly illustrated the repressive aspects of China's government than the clumsy efforts of the Beijing police to stop two elderly grandmothers from seizing the opportunity their government had ostentatiously extended to the masses to engage in public protest during the Olympics. For many years, these determined women, both in their late 70s, had been fruitlessly seeking adequate compensation from the Beijing city government for having ousted them from their apartments. When, in apparent compliance with the practice of previous Olympics, the government announced that China, too, would permit public protests during the Olympics, the two women followed the application procedures.
Yet they proved no more successful than the many others who applied. Indeed, they ended up among those who were formally punished for their perseverance. Local police sentenced each of the women to one year of 're-education through labour', which they threatened to carry out if the grandmothers persisted.
Every year in China, several hundred thousand people have to undergo one to three years of 're-education through labour' and, in most cases, the public learns nothing about it, due to the customary non-transparency of the system. This time, however, because Beijing was saturated with foreign reporters, the sentencing of the two women instantly made headlines around the world.
A few days later, however, something extraordinary happened. So great was the worldwide clamour and ridicule against these ludicrous punishments that the sentences were rescinded. This averted the even more disastrous public relations debacle that would have resulted from the spectacle of the police dragging the grandmothers away. How should we interpret the Chinese government's bizarre, self-inflicted wound? Does the embarrassing revoking of the sentences offer hope that the Communist Party leaders may have acquired greater sensitivity to world opinion regarding their human rights violations?
When democratic countries such as the United States commit human rights abuses, foreign criticism helps fuel domestic support for reforms. Democratic countries have uncensored media, an open political process and independent courts to deal with such abuses. Yet China's media is heavily censored, its political process is monopolised by the party and its courts are tightly controlled. In these circumstances, can foreign criticism lead to more than cosmetic repudiation of the abuses that occasionally become exposed to the world? Can foreign criticism be useful to those Chinese reformers who, despite restrictions, continue to lobby for systemic changes?
