China Olympics

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

No, by giving them Most Favored Nation status, by allowing them unfettered access to our markets, but doing nothing to actually sanction that government we are rewarding them.

......

If China doesn't care about the PR leading up to the Olympics, it is hard to imagine that they'll care about the PR during the Olympics

Again, I don't disagree. And I do understand that it's a tough pill to swallow for an athlete to be asked to not participate due to a gesture that, admittedly, won't do a lick to change anything.

I guess what I really want is for a boycott of the Olympics to signal a sea change in our dealings with China. Use it as a very visible forum to say, "Okay, we gave you guys a lot of rope, you had the opportunity to shine with the world spotlight on you, you blew it. So now we're going to start actually taking steps to sanction you."

I suppose if that doesn't follow along behind it, I'd oscillate back onto the no boycott side. The symbolic boycott of the Olympics definitely needs to have some decidedly non-symbolic action moving forward. And maybe I'm hoping for too much. But to me, accepting the unchangeable fact that we've already missed decades' worth of opportunities to actually sanction China's actions, I see an Olympic boycott as an ideal opportunity to begin to fix that.