After Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee?

Following months of pressure from rights advocates and high-profile celebrities, film director Steven Spielberg last month opted out of his role as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics, a move that was praised by many -- except those in Beijing.

As a filmmaker with a conscience who gave us, among others, Schindler's List and Munich (the Olympic link couldn't be more obvious), Spielberg's association with a government that has no compunction in supporting the genocidal regime in Sudan was also proving too damaging to his image.

But while Spielberg has been the focus of all the bad publicity, other advisers to the Games have managed to avoid pressure -- and one of them is Taiwan's Ang Lee (李安).

Lee's reasons to reconsider his role as an arts and culture consultant for the Games (under Chinese director Zhang Yimou [張藝謀]) are perhaps more numerous than Spielberg's. While the Hollywood director pulled out over the crisis in Sudan alone, Lee is a son of Taiwan, a land that every day is threatened by Chinese predation and whose existence as a democracy Beijing holds in contempt.

Beijing's agenda hit closer to home over the weekend when the government announced that Chinese actress Tang Wei (湯唯) had been blacklisted because of her role in Lee's award-winning Lust, Caution, which Beijing said "beautified" the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. (Ironically, Hong Kong-born Tony Leung Chiu-wai [梁朝偉], who plays a Japanese collaborator in the movie, has so far been spared Beijing's tar and feathers.)

In and of itself, this should be sufficient to dispel any illusion that art and politics do not mix, for in Beijing's world, politics -- World War II, Sino-Japanese relations -- are being used to destroy an artist's livelihood.

While artists may seek to transcend political differences, they should never lose sight of the fact that they, too, have responsibilities and that art, even in its "purest" form, cannot be apolitical. As role models, artists of Lee's caliber are in a far better position to fire imaginations -- and ultimately influence views -- than most politicians. Consequently, by choosing to work with Beijing or by remaining silent in the face of injustice, Lee could be seen to be rationalizing Chinese repression.

As George Orwell observed: The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

And now, should he remain silent on Beijing's attack on one of its own, Lee would send a signal that it is acceptable for a government to use politics to violate freedom of expression and dictate what artists can and cannot address in their work.

In fact, by accepting Beijing's invitation to serve as an adviser to the Games, Lee was telling the world that it was negotiable for China to ban his previous movie, Brokeback Mountain.

If genocide in Sudan, the jailing of Chinese dissidents, the suppression of Taiwan and molestation of Tibet are not enough to change Lee's mind, then perhaps this latest overt attack against one of his creations and one of his stars will be the last straw.

Lee now has no choice but to put aside the "softly, softly" approach, stand by Tang's side and follow in Spielberg's footsteps.

Taipei Times Editorial, March 11, 2008.

Collateral Risk for China

By Jonathan Fenby of THE GUARDIAN, LONDON

Beijing is not inclined to bow to foreign pressure. Why should it, one may ask, since ... the outside world is still beating a path to its door?

When China won the right to stage the 2008 Olympics, the outburst of joy around the nation was overwhelming.

This was to be a major sign of global recognition for the way in which China has emerged from its Mao-era shell and become a world player over the last 30 years. Now things are looking rather less rosy, with implications that go beyond the sports events of August.

The announcement by Steven Spielberg, that his conscience about the "unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur" would not allow him to go through with directing Beijing's opening ceremony, brings home the collateral damage that China risks from its association with such regimes.

Mia Farrow's warning that Spielberg risked becoming a modern Leni Riefenstahl if he did for Beijing what she did for the 1936 Berlin Olympics seemed overblown. But the director's decision shows China cannot expect people to slot its behavior into neat little boxes, as it does -- one for trade, one for Confucian culture, one for the propagation of reassurances that China's rise is a peaceful one, one for ensuring the flow of raw material to its industry, and one for the defense of national sovereignty.

China has played such a bad hand in Sudan one can only conclude that it is tone deaf when it comes to international politics. Sudan is a useful supplier of energy, but China has other sources. Its own policies in Sinicizing the vast western territory of Xinjiang may be cloaked from the world, but Darfur is out in the open, and its foot-dragging cannot escape criticism -- sharpened by the latest actions of Khartoum.

Some will dismiss Spielberg's decision as grandstanding by a member of the California elite. Others will wonder why he undertook the job in the first place. But even Chinese critics of the regime hold back from advocating a boycott. Engagement remains, for many of them, still the best way to get Beijing to adopt a more liberal path.

But despite recent signs of a more liberal stance, the system remains oppressive toward anything regarded as an organized threat. The plight of Chinese internal critics has largely been abandoned by the West. Trade and investment opportunities have trumped concern for dissidents.

After Spielberg, the focus will be on Sudan, and the question will be how many others will follow him. Nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates have written to the Communist Party leader, Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) , urging him to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing Sudan to stop the atrocities.

On past form, Beijing is not inclined to bow to foreign pressure. Why should it, one may ask, since it has done so well over the last 30 years and the outside world is still beating a path to its door?

With the Olympics neatly slotted into development plans for the Beijing region and foreign governments taking care not to say anything out of place on the human rights front, decisions such as Spielberg's or the letter from the Nobel laureates will be filed away.

Its stance could lead to a toughening of positions outside China, be it from US politicians veering towards protectionism or from corporate sponsors worried about being associated with China while human rights lobbyists step up the pressure in the West.

Beijing has to learn that engagement is a two-way street -- and that the neat boxes of its policy approach cannot always be separated as it would wish.