Activists Fail to Stir Opposition to China's Float

Los Angeles Times ^ | December 30, 2007 | By David Pierson

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The shell of the Rose Parade float celebrating the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games sits in a sprawling warehouse complex in Azusa.

In a matter of hours, it will be adorned with thousands of carnations and roses, outfitted with fireworks and accompanied by 124 costumed Beijing opera singers, acrobats, traditional dancers and plate spinners down Colorado Boulevard.   Critics of China's communist government hoped to use the elaborate float and its worldwide stage at the Rose Parade on Tuesday as a rallying point for protests about the nation's human rights record.

But despite months of news conferences and protests, China foes have done little to change the parade's plans and have generated little support -- or interest -- from Southern California's large Chinese American community.

The lukewarm response underscores the increasingly close relationship Southern California shares with China. There may be no other time in which China has commanded as much influence and interest as it does today.

The San Gabriel Valley is home to one of the largest Chinese American communities in the nation and a growing business class that has made Southern California the chief trading region with China in the United States. To many, the 12-hour or longer flight to Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou is more of a commute than a voyage.

Business ties between the two countries forge quickly, and though many here believe China needs to improve its approach to human rights, more attention is paid to fueling the economy to improve the lot of ordinary Chinese.

"We haven't talked about it," said Cat Chao, host of a popular Mandarin-language talk show on KAZN-AM (1300), about the Olympics float. "The majority of Chinese think the Olympics is bigger than human rights and that human rights are already improving. They'd rather see China improve on issues like......

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Some activists who oppose China’s human rights practices plan to turn their backs as the float passes. Others say a protest is out of place at the parade. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

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(Please FReepmail me if you would like to be on or off of the list.)

[onedoug]

Livers, kidneys, lungs, hearts....

[hellbender]

Some astounding quotes from the original article:

"The majority of Chinese think the Olympics is bigger than human rights and that human rights are already improving. They'd rather see China improve on issues like pollution."

With that kind of priorities, I'm sure most of these people vote Demonrat.

China's government had no role in building the float, and that it was paid for by Pasadena-based label maker Avery Dennison Corp. and a coalition of Chinese American business people and philanthropists.

I hereby resolve to boycott the products of Dennison, another of America's Chicom-loving corporate whores.

Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on student demonstrators, human rights groups have accused China of mistreating those who oppose the ruling Communist Party.

As if Mao hadn't killed tens of millions long before that?

"Relations between the U.S. and China are so numerous and so substantial that people find it difficult to engage in daily life -- where every other product in your hand is made in China -- and at the same time suggest that there should be total condemnation of China and the Chinese government," he said.

Translation: the Chicoms have penetrated our economy and bought our management and political class so effectively that we no longer have the guts to oppose them.

I think the Chinese-reform advocates should make their own float, in the form of a Chinese tank running down democracy demonstrators in Tienanman Square.

[Michael.SF.]