THE OLYMPICS OF FACE

As we enjoy watching the debacle of the Chicom Torch Relay disastrously unfold from London to Paris to San Francisco to points beyond, let's step back to the bigger picture of what these Olympics are all about.

They are not about sport and Olympic Ideals, that's for sure.  The competing athletes from scores of countries all over the world are only props.  These Beijing Games are about one thing only.  They are about face – Chinese face.

The concept of face – as in "losing face" or "saving face" – plays a critical role in Chinese culture and the way most Chinese deal with reality – a way that is fundamentally opposed to that of Americans.

If your "face" is the primary concern of your life, controlling your conduct and morality, then you believe that reality is what other people say it is, not what it is in fact.

Telling a lie, for example, is not morally wrong, no matter what the lie.  It is only wrong if people find out you have lied, for their finding out causes you to lose face.

Telling the truth, in contrast, is morally wrong if it is a truth others do not like.  Such truth-telling causing others' displeasure results in your loss of face.

The morality of face is the morality of pretend.  As one observer of Chinese culture explains:  "If you are speaking with someone and do not understand something he says, asking him to repeat will cause you to lose face. Pretending to understand and never asking what was said, even if so doing leads to disastrous consequences, saves your face."

Another major face no-no is exposing a contradiction between what someone is saying now and what he said earlier.  That person will never forgive you for making him lose face.  Better to pretend there's no contradiction at all.

Such of concept of reality is alien to normal Americans.  We don't much care about face, and thus don't agonize, for example, about "what the world thinks of us."  Only liberals care.  For normal regular Americans, if the British or French or Moslems hate us, that's their problem, not ours.  Why should we care what they think?

Liberals care, and that's why they're not normal regular Americans.  For liberals, reality is people.  For us, reality is facts.

You can see, though, how much easy it is for a government to control people who believe the former rather than the latter.  People who believe in group-think rather than in their own mind's capacity to think.  Thus the Chicoms can slaughter demonstrators in Tienanmen Square on live world-wide television, as happened in June 1989, wash the blood off the cobblestones, announce to the world the slaughter never occurred – and indignantly demand the world nod its head in agreement.

For, from the perspective of Chinese face, if people say it didn't happen, it actually didn't happen even though it actually did.

For any country to host an Olympic Games, it's a matter of national pride.  But for China, that's all that it is.  The purpose of the Beijing Games is China's "coming-out party," during which the world accepts Chicom China as a morally legitimate nation, and publicly pretends it is not a dictatorship.  For the Chicoms, this pretense is the Games' only purpose.

Which means, if the party is spoiled, it will be a catastrophic loss of face for the Chicoms, and the Han Chinese they rule.

The party is already being spoiled with the torch relay fiasco, and world leaders such as Germany's Angela Merkel and England's Gordon Brown (and many more to come, maybe GW himself) refusing to come to the Chicom PR opening extravaganza.

So the immediate question is not, will it be a disaster, but how much of a disaster will the Games be for the Chicoms.  The way things are going, we are looking at the possibility of a major disaster – such a disaster that the Chicoms could well decide to cancel the Games outright before they begin.

Thus the deeper question:  How will the PRC government and how will regular Chinese react to such a catastrophic loss of face?  Who will they punish, who will they strike out at and in what ways?  How will the Chicoms and the Han Chinese attempt to regain face?

What will be the target of such an attempt?  Will the Chinese people blame their government, unleashing uncontrollable urban unrest in cities throughout the country, precipitating the implosion of the PRC economy and government control?

Or will the Chicoms be able to redirect the anger away from them with appeals to Han fascist nationalism, directing it instead towards the "foreign devils" who have humiliated China once again?

Yes to the second – you can depend on it.  A fair chance for the first.  And you might even get both at the same time.

Which means a war, the time-honored patriotism-of-scoundrels distraction for dictatorships in trouble.  The most obvious target would be Taiwan.

There is only one way to head this off at the pass – and it is, of course, the exact opposite of what State Department squishes will advocate.

Here's an excerpt from a State Dept. Advisory on "Chinese Negotiating":

Foreigners when negotiating with the Chinese need to be aware of the fundamentals of face dynamics, a highly delicate process by which social interaction in China is regulated. To the Chinese, "face" is their most precious possession, and care must be taken by foreigners when negotiating not to cause them to lose face; and foreigners should endeavor to give face when appropriate.

There is no mention whatever of how "American negotiating" should be explained to the Chinese – why Chinese should be aware of the fundamentals of reality dynamics, and should be sympathetic to the American concepts of not-caring-about-face, and caring-about facts-and-reality-instead-of-childish-embarrassment.

Will Condi Rice, will George Bush, have the nerve to shoo away the pin-striped squishes to forcefully and publicly explain to the Chicoms that the catastrophe of the Beijing Games was their fault, that they have no one to blame but themselves, that the only way to truly apologize to the people of China – including the people of Tibet – is to give them political freedom?

Stranger things have happened in these strange times.  The bottom line thinking has got to be this:

The extent of disaster for the Beijing Olympics will result in a similarly disastrous loss of face felt by the leaders and people of China.  The greater the loss of face, the greater the attempt to regain face will be violent.  The overriding goal of the U.S. should be that the violence, if it cannot be prevented, be directed inward and contained within China, rather than it exploding outward into war, against e.g., Taiwan.

Oh, yes.  The Olympics are in August – which means this crisis will unfold during the fall, during the final two months of the presidential campaign frenzy.  Buckle those seat belts.