By Michael J. Economides (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-24 07:19

I am intellectually and practically associated with the recent Olympic torch events in at least three ways: I am a Greek-born US citizen and I work in China as often as one week per month.

The spectacles first in London and Paris and then in San Francisco were revolting, especially some choice events like the attempt to wrest the torch from a wheelchair-bound young woman relay runner. Surely, not many thought that the action was some brave feat by the protesters, no matter what their cause was.

Yes, the Olympic flame is just a symbol, complete with its staged lighting using sunlight-gathering mirrors and the actors dressed in ancient costumes amidst the ruins of Olympia.

Call us anachronistic but we Greeks still view the Olympics as something special, as an embodiment of our culture and as a modern and a secular version of our ancient religion and tenets. We gave the world much of its culture and the Olympics trace their roots straight to democracy, philosophy and indeed to modern and civilized society.

It was not insignificant that during the ancient Olympics, constantly warring city-states would declare a lull in hostilities. There was and still is something high-spirited about these events. Using the Olympics to promote a political cause, that started with the Munich massacre, is not what the founders intended.

The upcoming Olympics were to be China's time to shine. An ancient land with a long culture comparable in duration and accomplishments to those of Greece was to tell the world that, finally, after a series of adventures, the country has arrived in its rightful place on the world stage. It was not insignificant that the Beijing Olympics followed right after the 2004 Athens games.

But there are those with different agendas.

Let's face it. For the demonstrators, Tibet is not the issue nor are "human rights" in China. Most of the non-Tibetan demonstrators are the same international miscreants and Hollywood misfits in search of a cause. If it is not globalization or rabid environmentalism, Tibet becomes the issue du jour, offering the demonstrators an opportunity to become relevant by rioting against an inanimate torch.

In many ways, the demonstrators exposed their psychopathological yearnings rather than made any concrete attempts to solve any problems for their presumably adopted causes.

If anything, the demonstrations had the opposite effect. In ugly scene after ugly scene they managed to turn off the world's opinion and made normal people hostile toward them. Even those that might have been critical of China for something found themselves rooting for the Chinese and the torch guards. Their physical actions made many - and certainly me - applauding and fantasizing that we were the ones fending off the attackers.

More to the point, inside China, as any casual visitor can make out by talking to ordinary citizens and not just to government officials, far from exciting anti-government passions, the demonstrators have had a diametrically opposite effect.

It made ordinary Chinese spontaneously back their country and galvanized them more into supporting the Olympics. Before all these brouhaha, the Games could have left some Chinese cold or indifferent, but now it has become a symbol of their national emancipation and self-worth.

It is bound to be among the most exciting and ebullient Olympics ever because the Chinese are now fully committed to adopting it as their own. Isn't that a far cry from what the demonstrators intended ?

The author is a professor at the University of Houston and the Editor-in-Chief of the Energy Tribune

(China Daily 04/24/2008 page9)