The desire to integrate and interact with the West is a powerful spur to achieve human rights- focused reform in the country. However, China does not conform to internationally-accepted standards of democratic protocol and procedure. Election to the Upper House (the People’s Congress) is restricted to party members. China still continues to imprison and execute thousands for political crimes each year. Indeed, it performs 90 percent of the world’s executions, according to Amnesty International.

Moreover, China’s treatment of prisoners, particularly political prisoners, remains a cause for concern. Torture is widespread. Amnesty has found that the use of electric shock treatments and sleep deprivation are common. Investigations by leading human rights activist, Gao Zhiseng, indicate that prisoners’ organs are removed for transplant while they are still alive. This is not an exclusively domestic issue. Thousands of people travel to China each year to receive organ transplants. More generally, torture in prisons remains an intractable problem. On this issue, the West has lost much of its moral high ground, as a result of detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition flights. Therefore, opposition to non-democratic practice in China is best directed through non-governmental human rights groups.

China is frequently criticised for disregarding human rights in its pursuit of economic growth. China is the largest investor in Sudan and it receives 80% of the country’s oil output. At the same time, it is the one of the few nations to provide active military and political support to the Sudanese government. Over the last four years, Chinese opposition at the Security Council has prevented the deployment of UN forces to police the fragile ceasefire in Darfur, arguably also to the relief of many other nations too ‘proud’ to confess their lack of interest in involvement in the crisis. In addition, China has been the strongest supporter of the government in Burma. This has clearly prolonged the life of one of the world’s most detested regimes.

Concerns have been raised about the human rights of religious minorities. The most disturbing claims of all relate to the Fallongong, a religious movement that combines aspects of Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, founded in 1990 by Li Honzihg. At first, the government was very supportive, awarding the movement a prize for improving public health, because of its practice of a strenuous form of yoga. By 1999, when it had 70 million followers in China, the government suddenly turned against the movement, branding it an “evil cult,” a label rejected by all independent experts. Thousands of practitioners were arrested and sent to government labour camps, and survivors report that there was a systematic and cruel programme of torture in place to force practitioners to renounce Fallongong. This is evidence that governmental secularism lives on in modern-day China. Significantly, all this took place under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, a man who instigated economic liberalisation. It seems that amongst China’s political elite economic freedom and religious freedom are considered separate issues, though they are clearly rooted in the same basic ideology.

On a provincial level, there are some positive signs. Yunan province has accepted 20,000 Rohingya Muslims refugees, fleeing the persecution of the Burmese junta. The group has been well-treated and has become one of the most prosperous minority groups within China. By contrast, China still maintains an iron grip over Tibet. Mistreatment of independence activists continues. There is great concern for the welfare and whereabouts of monks who took part in recent protests. The biggest worry for the international community is that the campaign for Tibetan independence might turn violent. Images of Chinese businesses being looted only provide ammunition for crackdowns on the people of Tibet. For this reason, it is critical that world leaders rally around the Dali Lama and his call for peaceful resistance.

There have been improvements in press freedom. The Party has recently allowed its citizens to access the BBC news website. This is a crucial step, for increased press freedom can only fuel demands for democracy. It also continues to tolerate press freedom and public demonstrations in Hong Kong. However, further lifting of censorship restrictions is far from inevitable. In recent local elections on the mainland a number of high-profile independent candidates have been elected, and only time will tell whether they can maintain an independent voice. The outlook, however, is not good; the Party still excludes candidates it deems too radical.

In 2005, individual landowners were given the same property rights as the state. This should help prevent corrupt officials forcibly removing land from rural farmers for urban development. In the long term, to maintain high rates of economic growth the government will have to deal with the high level of corruption and the lack of an adequate social safety net. If growth slows sharply, the public mood will turn against the government, particularly amongst the Party’s key support base, the aspiring middle class.

What are the implications for the Beijing Olympics? According to its charter, “respect for universal ethical principles” is a cornerstone of the Olympic movement. There is international consensus that the abuse of dissidents and lack of democracy in China violates these principles. What, then, is the international community’s best response? A boycott of the Games would be deeply damaging. If leading nations did not compete, then China’s leaders and its people would view it as a grave insult to national pride. China would respond by becoming more inward- looking. The government would blame democratic activists and minority rights groups for undermining The Games and inflict even worse abuses on them.

A more effective approach might be for world leaders to boycott the opening ceremony, in the way that Nicolas Sarkozy and Hillary Clinton have intimated. For, in an effort to save face, China might be forced to make significant concessions, freeing dissidents and allowing opposition groups freedom to protest. However, the challenge would be to make sure China would not revert back to its old ways after the Games have finished. Therefore, the key for the international community is to focus its diplomatic pressure on winning tangible long-term commitments from the Chinese government- most importantly- self-government for Tibet. Contrary to widespread cynicism, this is a realistic goal. It was the international diplomatic and media attention around the Seoul Olympics that caused dictator President Chun to resign and call elections that precipitated South Korea’s move from military dictatorship to full democracy.

There are clear precedents for athletes to lead protests. Most memorably, in 1968, the medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos made the famous Black Power salute to protest against a racist Olympic team coach, apartheid in South Africa and lynchings in the American South. A similar one could make a profound mark on the Beijing Olympics. It would be most effective if Chinese athletes were involved, as this would stop the Chinese government claiming that human rights protesters were imperialist foreigners imposing their own values upon China.

China’s human rights record remains poor and its political system is far from democratic. In the short term, the main stimulus to the movement for democracy and human rights is coming from external forces. In particular, Beijing hosting the Olympics has led to far closer scrutiny of China’s human rights record by the international community. This increased attention has been heightened by the recent unrest in Tibet. The Olympics provide an outstanding opportunity for the international community as a whole, to take a stand against human rights abuse in China and push for a resolution of the conflict over Tibet. In the long term, greater prosperity will fuel the democratic movement within China. Indeed, China may actually need economic reform to maintain the rapid rate of economic growth that its people are becoming accustomed to.

The strike, which ended this month, came in the wake of a series of difficult periods in the Chinese-Zambian relationship. Two years ago, more than 40 miners were killed in a blast in a Chinese-owned explosives factory at Chambishi, blamed on lax regulations. A year later, the giant 30 year-old Mulungushi textile mill, originally funded by Beijing, was forced to close after a flood of cheaper Chinese goods effectively strangled its business.

Many are calling for ‘equilibrilisation’. The most prominent case of African ‘push-back’, as the phenomenon is known among Africa and China experts, is in South Africa. Although a vocal advocate of a Sino-African partnership, partly as a counterbalance to the US-dominated global architecture, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has delivered the most poignant warning yet of the potential dangers of the new relationship. In late 2006, he told the South African Students Congress that African states ran the risk of getting stuck “in an unequal relationship” with Beijing, such as had developed between Africa and the former colonial powers.

This warning came as the South African government put the finishing touches to a deal on quotas for Chinese textiles, aimed at propping up the struggling local garment industry. Analysts do not believe the quotas have had much effect, but symbolically they represented South Africa drawing a line in the sand, sending a powerful signal of assertiveness.

China was recently hailed by The Economist as the ‘New Colonialist’, a title and a sentiment certain Chinese Officials clearly resent, given the rebuttal found in the People’s Daily, which, like all other Chinese media, is State controlled. According to the People’s Daily, “some Western media have attempted to discredit Sino-African relations by propagating their African version of the ‘China threat theory’.” There is a saying in Namibia that, as the sun rises in the east, so do all good things come from the east. On a recent trip to Namibia, I was surprised to find just how far China’s influence had extended.

Namibia is a vast country, the size of France and Germany put together; with a tiny population of 1.4 million. Although you are unlikely to see many clear signs of Chinese culture, the indirect impact of Chinese investment is evident. China has undeniably boosted the Namibian economy, with its demand for raw materials; it has also created an abundance of well paid jobs. For better or worse, many Namibians are leaving behind their traditional lives and values to work in the mines and factories that have sprung up to meet China’s demand for natural resources. In most of Africa, the structure of employment is such that, in industry, the demand is mostly for male workers. Consequently, men tend to migrate alone, leaving their wives and families behind, at least initially.

This has shaped the perception of the sex roles, which tend to associate women almost exclusively with the task of housekeeper and mother. There is a lack of data about the involvement of women in the migratory process, owing to the numerical preponderance of males in the migratory streams and the ‘invisibility’ of women who, as wives, merely accompany or join migrant males.

The propensity to migrate correlates closely with educational attainment. Migrants are generally younger and better educated than the rest of the population in their place of origin. Migration itself is linked to the pursuit of formal and informal education in the cities, where most post-primary institutions and apprenticeship opportunities are concentrated. Since most wage employment is found in cities, rural youths who invest heavily in education must, out of necessity, invest also in migration, if their education is to pay off.

China repays its debt with large injections of investment into Namibia’s infrastructure and her people. The Chinese Embassy in Windhoek offers numerous scholarships for further education. On a visit to the Namib-Rand reserve, I met a guide who was about to begin training as a pilot on a scholarship from the Chinese Embassy. He told me that they were offering a large number of scholarships like his to pursue higher education.

Over the last 30 years, China itself has witnessed one of the largest cases of rural-urban migration in history, and the situation is still escalating. There are 103 million urban migrants in Chinese cities but, by 2025, there will be 243 million; the total urban population of China will be nearly a billion. More than 40% of China’s urban population will be migrant within two decades, putting huge pressures on the ability of local governments to provide adequate services for their urban dwellers, according to a study by the Mckinsey Global Institute. It seems plausible that this process may, to a certain extent, be due to China’s labour shortage which is feeding greater import dependence. Likewise, Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest rate of rural-urban migration. This is driven, in part, by greater employment opportunities instigated by the building of new factories – most of which are Chinese investments. People are moving to the cities and often there is nowhere for them to live; townships continue to expand and for a large proportion of the poor in urban Africa living condition are deteriorating, as the strain on resources increases. Furthermore, the improvements in infrastructure cannot keep up with the pace of population growth in urban areas.

But China also has its supporters. Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s president, recently defended China’s growing economic role in Africa in an article in the Financial Times, writing that “China’s approach is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronising post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organisations and non-governmental organisations.” He observed that the Chinese model for stimulating rapid economic development has much to teach, not only Africa, but also Europe. Through direct aid, credit lines and reasonable contracts, China has helped African nations complete infrastructure projects in record time- bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, dams, legislative buildings, stadiums and airports. The President concluded that “In many nations, including Senegal, improvements in infrastructure have played important roles in stimulating economic growth.”

China has also been a much needed friend to Robert Mugabe. With the possibility of change in the air, Chinese companies have been actively exploring opportunities in Zimbabwe, which boasts rich deposits of gold, uranium, platinum and diamonds. Chinese Deputy Commerce Minister, Gao Hucheng, who was in Harare last month on a trade mission, said Beijing had invested $1.6 billion in Zimbabwe in 2007, although analysts say Chinese investment has yet to take off. The Chinese Government seemed to ignore the possible moral objections to supporting Mugabe. China’s role in Darfur has also been heavily criticised.

China may appear as confident and ambitious as ever. However, in the current economic climate even the Chinese government admitted its outlook for 2008 is grim. The financial crisis which has brought several banks in the West to the brink of bankruptcy- Bear-Stearns, Northern Rock, and several of the state owned banks in Germany- have led some commentators to view this as a seismic shift in the global economy. If they are right, who will be the winner and the losers in the new order?

In October 2007, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China took a stake of approximately 20% in Standard Bank, a South African bank with total assets of US$119 billion, for just US$5.5 billion. China is investing throughout the developing world, but most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, not only mining its resources, but also taking strategic stakes in its businesses. When the world economy emerges from the present downturn, China will be propelled further forward; that is, if its government doesn’t make too many mistakes. But will the African nations, with which China is forming such strong ties, move forward with China?

According to Open Democracy, an internet-based forum for democratic debate, Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China, has said he is the most worried man in the world. Consumer spending in China is low, representing only 36% of the country’s GDP, yet inflation is higher than ever. There is a labour shortage in the manufacturing sector, and market forces are causing wages to rise. Although a large middle class has been emerging, many workers still suffer from poor living conditions, and there is a serious power shortage. Then there is Tibet.

The Beijing Olympics have been orchestrated by the Chinese government to mark China’s emergence as a superpower. As China tries to deal with the major economic, environmental, social and cultural issues that confront it at home, the cultural impact of its investment in Sub-Saharan Africa may not be high on its list of priorities. But for Africa, the stakes are high: undoubtedly, Chinese investment has brought significant economic benefits, but the loss of traditional values and social disintegration are a high price to pay.

The largest ethnic group in Kyrgyzstan are the Kyrgyz, a Turkic people that make up around 70% of the population. They are traditionally semi-nomadic herders, living in yurts, which are felt and animal skin tents built around a wooden frame, in the mountain pastures during the summer, and then bringing down their sheep, yaks and horses to escape the snows at the end of September. When the yurts are in the summer pastures, you can travel from one to the next, staying with local families and using their horses. The Community Based Tourism organisation, CBT, has a network of local guides across the country to help you find your chosen homestay in the seemingly endless mountains, take you trekking and show you the very heart of Kyrgyzstan. They are not professionals in the tourism industry, but usually farmers and herders in neighbouring areas, sharing their personal experience without any of the crass commercialism of tour buses, action-packed itineraries and the rest of the West crammed in beside you.

The highlights of Kyrgyzstan have to be the lakes of Issyk-Kul and Karakol, surrounded on all sides by the soaring peaks of the Ala-Too Mountains. Despite its elevation, Issyk-Kul never freezes; it is heated from below by volcanic activity. The warm water has enabled a number of sanatoria with thermal springs and mud baths to develop on the northern shore, but the real attraction in both areas undoubtedly remains the natural landscape. Whether you explore it by horse or on foot with a guide and porters, it is easy to see why this part of the world was so little known until the arrival of Russian explorers partaking in the Great Game.

Kyrgyzstan’s greatest draw is that, in a world where the greatest sites are so often spoiled by the presence of too many people, well meaning or otherwise, you can still leave the capital, Bishkek, and enter into a natural environment of awe-inspiring proportions that is still completely untouched by mankind. The few people you encounter, with their temporary shelters, mobile flocks and four-legged transport leave no mark on the landscape when they move on. If tourists to the country were to be any different in their approach, they would be nothing but destructive. Kyrgyzstan has, it seems, got the balance right, bringing in much needed tourist dollars and projecting an overwhelmingly positive image on the international community, without falling for a model of tourism that blights so many other developing countries.

For more information on CBT look at http://www.cbtkyrgyzstan.kg and for photos and footage of Kyrgyzstan, see http://www.tracingtea.com.

Tibetan protest in India is not new. Since Nehru first took the monumental decision – bowing to huge popular and parliamentary pressure – to admit refugees who were following the Dalai Lama into exile from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959, the Tibetan community has maintained its vociferousness, even while it has bedded down in India. During the early 1980s protests were especially frequent, as resurgent Chinese repression caused outrage among the exiled community in India. This was not least because of the swelling of its ranks with thousands of new arrivals, thanks to India’s largely ‘open door’ policy towards Tibetans.

Such protests have been treated with wariness, but a remarkable degree of tolerance, by Indian authorities. They have generally been dispersed with a minimum of violence - even when the threat of factional feuding surfaced on the arrival of the head of Tibetan Buddhism’s second most important sect, the Karmapa Lama, in India in 2001.

This has largely been because Tibetan protesters themselves have rarely been violent. This month’s protests, initiated to mark the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight to India, were overwhelmingly peaceful: the marchers responded to police attempts to arrest by sitting down in the road, linking arms and chanting prayers, according to one BBC report.

The detention of 100 protesters at once, however, has very little precedent, and speaks more of parallel events in Nepal, where Kathmandu riot police ‘clashed’ with up to 3000 protesters who were trying to march to the city’s Chinese embassy. 80 were arrested.

In Nepal, there has historically been a much more frosty ‘welcome’ for Tibetans. Most of those fleeing from Tibet first cross into Nepal, and the country - much less able to accommodate them and much less willing than India to aggravate the Sino-tiger perching on its northern shoulder – has largely functioned as a holding bay for Tibetans on their way to settlement in India. Those who do stay in Nepal find the authorities much less amenable to their cause. Tibetans were accorded more rights and tolerance in India than in Nepal, even during India’s short-lived war against China in 1962.

That first decision by Nehru was the result of a campaign in the Indian parliament, as well as a widespread public sentiment, in favour of unlimited hospitality towards Tibetans, and the rhetoric of shared culture eventually won the support of India’s first prime minister. The kinship felt by many Indians with their Buddhist neighbours held much weight- the symbol of the fifth century BCE Buddhist emperor Ashoka, who ruled large parts of Tibet and northern India, appears on the Indian flag – and continues to do so. Throughout the twists and turns of India’s complex relations with China, Tibetans were admitted and settled using Indian government money, resulting in a population of over 120,000 today. Although they still live largely separately in most of the areas they have been settled, there has been relatively little tension between Tibetan and native Indian communities, especially in a state so ravaged by ‘communal strife’.

Despite the minor blotch that this month’s arrests make on the wider scene of India’s communal troubles, therefore, they do suggest a downward trend in tolerance towards Tibetans. Many reasons for this emerge. The rise of Hindu nationalism, especially in Himachal Pradesh where the BJP secured a landslide election victory in 2007, may be influencing a more broad-brush suspicion of non-Indian or non-Hindu groups. The rising noise about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the parallel rise of the Dalai Lama to international fame and regard over the past two decades, may have made India more aware of the wider implications of such protests, in its desire to stay on the right side of Asia’s new economic superpower. The Dalai Lama’s hard-hitting remarks on human rights violations in Tibet, coinciding with but not explicitly endorsing the protest march, will not have helped the Indian authorities to turn a blind eye, as they have done occasionally in the past.

Early in the new millennium, a movement emerged among a group of ‘Eminent Persons’ -mostly judges- in India demanding a standardised refugee law, which is something India has so far done without, and which the government might argue continues to be superfluous. The treatment of refugees in India since independence has been resolutely idiosyncratic, and piecemeal, with each separate group accorded different statuses – ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’. This totally ignores international proclamations that all refugees are equal, and is somewhat hypocritical, as India felt that the international community ignored one of the largest refugee crises in history: partition.

In India, some refugees are far more equal than others. Tibetans have historically been firmly on the fortunate end of the scale, treated as ‘guests’ and provided with documents and homes, while many other nationalities are routinely arrested under the Foreigners Act and deported. If the clamour for a national refugee law is victorious, they could see their treatment deteriorate further than it already has under that clamour’s attitude-changing effects. As a new system creaks under the weight of its responsibility to treat all refugees equally, the raising up of some will inevitably mean the erosion of good treatment for others.

Luckily for Tibetans, perhaps, this seems unlikely to go ahead with any great urgency. Since the Eminent Persons introduced to the Indian Parliament a Model Refugee Law in 2002, various ministers have uniformly responded to questions regarding the law along the lines of “it is being considered.” They appear to have spent the last six years passing it around various ministries and committees. In the grand tradition of Indian, and, indeed, subcontinental government, politicians do not seem to consider it worth relaying any real information to the public, and so the true progress of the law through the legislative process is as opaque now as it has ever been.

The recent detentions, though, may indicate that despite this lack of tangible progress, India is tightening up on Tibetans, seeing them as a ‘refugee community’ rather than as ‘guests’, as ran the original rhetoric. Rumours prevalent in the Border States of Tibetans being arrested as Chinese spies – unfounded according to local jurists – suggest that Tibetans are being linked to ‘national security’ with a directness not seen before, but one which is characteristic of other immigrant and refugee groups, such as Sri Lankan Tamils, Pakistanis, and Afghans.

It is ironic that this new perception has so far manifested most publicly in preventing the ‘outsiders’ from leaving the country, rather than in working towards deportation ,as has mostly been the case for, for example, Afghans. India has forcibly returned very few Tibetan refugees since 1959, and this is one trend that seems permanent. Given the number of Tibetans already present in the country and the rate of new arrivals, it is unlikely that refoulement will ever form part of India’s Tibetan policy. It is Tibetans’ potential to add a small yet sharply audible note to the symphony of communal violence in the country that may prompt Indian politicians to keep the law enforcement agencies’ eye more firmly trained on the Tibetans.