.seeing red.

.the summer 2008 olympics hype has drawn an incredible amount of attention to china. many things have been argued recently - by both the chinese government and outside media sources - but perhaps the most disturbing part of all of this frenzy regarding china is what is not being said.

first and foremost, let me clarify - my beef is not with the majority of the 1,330,044,605 chinese people, the majority of which are rural peasants. no, my problem with china lies in the government and its policies of suppression. communist china has long quelled the media and the freedom of the chinese people. while this has been most recently highlighted with the often brutal suppression of tibetan buddhist protesters and the systematic lack of media coverage of the 2008 sichuan earthquake (69,197 officially confirmed dead), it seems as though the government has long had a gag over the mouth of the chinese people. what comes most readily to mind for me is the vicious suppression of the falun gong movement, often involving brutal torture.

the wide-spread pollution in china has also been pointed to in terms of the upcoming olympics - athletes have been trying to acclimatize themselves to preforming in more polluted environments, some even running behind cars to get the exhaust. cases like this are a bit extreme, but it is troubling to note the belching smokestacks of china's factories, and the raw human sewage and debris clogging china's rivers. while many people welcomed factories into rural villages because they would provide people with opportunities for employment, the people are now facing increased health problems due to the pollution-spewing factories, including an increase in cancer rates.

another thing that worries me about china is the treatment of women there. the government crackdown on family planning has led to a disparity between males and females - their 'one child' policy applies only if the first child is a male; if the first child is a female, you can try again in the hopes of getting a male. orphanages are full of female infants whom parents did not want. the literacy rate, too, is somewhat telling: 95.1% of males are considered literate, whereas only 86.5% of women are. the practice of the woman moving into her new husband's family's home is also detrimental to women - it can lead to the woman feeling ostracized and alone, particularly if her marriage was arranged, and not rooted in love. china has one of the highest female suicide rates in the world. perhaps more disturbing - in a country dominated by men, it is the only country where the suicide rate of women is higher than men. one every four minutes.

i am by no means saying that china is a bad place. i think the rich cultural heritage of china is incredible, and i hope to visit some day. but there are clearly problems in the industrialization of this behemoth. i think that things are slowly starting to change as more and more women leave rural areas for the better jobs in urban centers. however, i think that the mentality against women is still prevalent, and that the government does little to change this. the government also does little to change the environment. the government basically does little, except deny that there are problems. there is no system to which the people can take their grievances.

the rest of the world should keep an eye on the rapid industrialization of china. i think that it is providing people - particularly women - with increased opportunities and independence, but it is also unearthing some disturbing facts about the communist country. what this one-party country needs is a way for people's needs and grievances to be addressed.

let's just see how the olympics play out. i am not boycotting the olympics, as some people are doing due to the human rights abuses there. i do, however, have my eye on you, china.

.cheers.

ps. i love kristin