[Saracen]

It's the whole background of China, or to be more accurate, the background of the regime in power, and the way they treat both their own people and Tibet .... though they would no doubt say that is their own people.

It's an oppressive regime. It doesn't stand for dissent, and rules by virtue of a mailed fist. It locks up anyone that criticises, is in no sense democratic and then, of course, there's events like the Tiananmen Square massacre which, depending on which reports you believe, left several hundred to several thousand protesters dead.

China is coming out of a self-imposed isolationist period. Until very recently, by which I mean a few months, foreigners (and especially foreign media) couldn't travel outside Beijing or a few other tightly controlled areas without a permit, and often as not, a minder. China also (somewhat unsuccessfully) tried to clamp down even on internet access for it's citizens. All this, of course, was supposed to change as part of the agreement for hosting the Olympics and, to be fair, it has to a certain extent.

But there's still been the recent problems and violence in Tibet, they are still preventing large numbers of people from going anywhere near Beijing if they're on a watchlist and might protest, and a significant number of people have been arrested and detained to ensure they don't protest. As I said earlier, numbers of people have had their houses knocked down and been forcibly relocated to make way for Olympic facilities, and this is all so that China, or again I stress, the current regime, can put on a pretty face while the eyes of the world are on them. In other words, it's a PR exercise by an oppressive regime, and the rest of the world is going along with it, and by and large, pretending not to notice the huge warts on that pretty face.

And the great shame of it all? China is a great nation. Ancient, sophisticated and highly cultured, with an extremely intelligent people. One of the, and arguably the greatest nation on Earth. It's the regime that lets it down.

There are signs that the regime is slowly dragging its attitudes into the 21st Century. It's woken up to at least some aspects of freedom and free enterprise, and clearly, is shaping up to be an economic powerhouse of the future .... if it hasn't already achieved that status. It's going to be a major player at least, if not the dominant one. But it needs to lose that oppressive, dominating, centrist and paranoid political culture that oppresses and suppresses it's own people. If it does, if either the regime can change or China can get rid of the regime, then hold on to your hats because it's going to be an impressive ride. The trouble is, the regime fears that the people won't let the regime change but will get rid of the regime, and like most people with effectively unlimited power, they're determined to hold on to it, whatever the means they have to employ.

That's my gripe. The regime needs to exercise a little (actually a lot) less control over it's people and instead, let the people of China take their rightful place on the world stage as one of it's most (rightly) proud nations.