This past Friday, the Chinese-language website eastday.com, operating under the direct supervision of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist party’s Shanghai branch, carried a commentary titled “An Absurd Logic: the Beijing Olympics and Darfur.” The author, Wang Weinan, is a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He writes:
Wang goes on to declare that these “hideous” attempts to “vilify China” and “politicize the Games” have “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” And he ends the piece with this:
The Chinese idiom, “chongcao jiuye,” used to describe Farrow’s actions refers to someone who, out of desperation, returns to a prior, often morally dubious, vocation. One of its earliest usages was in connection with the famous prostitute Sai Jinhua, who “returned to her prior profession” upon the death of her first husband. It is hard to imagine that the author of the commentary, a researcher at the venerable Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, would be unaware of the genesis of the expression and the meaning it connotes. What did Mia Farrow do to deserve such hostility? Farrow’s op-ed piece, titled “The Genocide Olympics,” was co-written with her son Ronan Farrow, a law student at Yale. In it, they urged corporate sponsors of the Beijing Games to recognize that “one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil is their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics.” They also cautioned Steven Spielberg, an artistic director for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Games, against helping to “sanitize Beijing’s image,” warning that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games.” Four days after the Journal piece was published, Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao asking the Chinese government to use its influence on Khartoum. Soon thereafter, on April 6th, assistant foreign minister Zhai Jun traveled to Sudan, visited three refugee camps, and urged the regime to show flexibility and accept UN peacekeepers. On April 16th, Sudan agreed to the deployment of UN helicopter gunships and 3,000 peacekeepers in Darfur. During his visit to Sudan in February, President Hu Jintao reportedly urged al-Bashir to consider allowing the deployment of significant UN forces. However, it seems even more likely that by striking where Beijing is currently most vulnerable, Mia Farrow can claim credit for this latest breakthrough.
Mia Farrow in Darfur. Courtesy of Nasser Nasser / AP
