MANAGEMENT FAILURE:

Ditch the tatty flag of nationalism: When it took on the games, China promised heroic efforts for change. But the torch debacle has left it snarling in a corner (Isabel Hilton, 4/12/08, The Guardian)

On the day that the Olympic torch - or, as Beijing calls it, "the sacred flame" - went into hiding in a San Francisco warehouse, Beijing's second in command in Tibet, Qiangba Puncog, held a press conference. He was talking against the background of another news management failure: the appearance of a group of monks at the lovely and historic Labrang monastery in Gansu, bearing a Tibetan flag to remind a visiting press party that this was another propaganda exercise.

Puncog joined the Communist party in the cultural revolution, and his political attitudes do not seem to have progressed much. He epitomises the policies that have helped to generate this perfect storm of bad publicity for China. Of his fellow Tibetans he observed, in a phrase that would not have shamed a recalcitrant 19th-century imperialist, "I believe Tibetans are a good, simple people who know how to be grateful". And in the event of any of these humble, grateful people disrupting the torch relay through Tibet, he promised: "They will be dealt with severely." As western political leaders glumly contemplated their August diaries, conscious that there were no good options, Beijing's putative public relations consultants must have been reaching for the hemlock.

Since the unrest in Tibet began, everything Beijing has done and said has reinforced its critics' case.

If you didn't know better, you'd swear the critics were right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 12, 2008 6:05 AM