Editorial: China wastes no time revealing its true self

Tuesday, July 17, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.

Americans who supported the International Olympic Committee's decision to award Beijing the 2008 Summer Olympics had said that it would be an insurance policy to get China to stop its human rights abuses. The logic was that China's government would relax its dictatorial rule, even allowing for more freedom of expression since the nation would be under the microscopic eyes of the international media. Well, it didn't take long to show how naive that reasoning was.

Just hours after it was announced Friday that Beijing would host the Games, CBS News found out firsthand the kind of indignity that the Chinese people experience every day. The network was attempting to send video via satellite from its Beijing bureau back to New York, but suddenly its transmission was stopped. Why? CBS had the audacity to try to send video of members of the banned Chinese spiritual movement Falun Galung committing suicide.

There has been a hardy band of members of Congress -- both Republicans and Democrats -- who have decried China getting the Games. But big businesses, which want to tap the market of more than 1 billion Chinese, advocated China's selection. The business community's influence cowed many members of Congress, including ardent conservatives who previously have railed against other communist dictatorships, including the repressive regime on the tiny island of Cuba. Even the White House was mute on the selection. Instead of an incentive to be more open, look for the Chinese government to see this as a blessing for its past -- and continued -- repression of its people.