Olympics

In a speech on the eve of the Olympics, George W. Bush prodded China on human rights.

Well, sort of. That's what's in the news, but in reality Bush was (to use one of his father's words) "prudent" in his comments about human rights in China. His speech was released 18 hours before he actually gave it (probably with even more back-channel advance notice to the Chinese); it was delivered not in Beijing but in Bangkok; and it was followed by a string of events that spotlighted abuses in Burma rather than China. The Chinese responded with boilerplate about how the United States shouldn't interfere in China's internal affairs. Mission accomplished. On to the U.S.-China Olympics basketball matchup!

With four days left before opening ceremonies, China's much-hyped weather modification program shows no sign of having improved the weather.

Judging by James Fallows's latest photos, Beijing's skies are the color of rice water, and they aren't trending in the direction of clarity. The public pronouncements of the weather-bureau spokesmen, once bold and Promethean, are now humbler: "The Beijing Olympic weather center will issue monitoring and weather warning and will update the weather information on a rolling basis," said Wang Jiangjie, who just last January boasted of having a team of weather modifiers to clean up the skies for the Games. Her colleagues allude vaguely to techniques that are supposedly still up the Chinese meteorological sleeve, but even they note that these techniques are "only on the stage of experimentation."

Beijing imposed heavy security on the Olympic torch’s passage through Xinjiang Province.

It isn't only Tibetans who have risen up against Chinese rule, but also Turkic Muslim Uighurs in China's far western province of Xinjiang. The Chinese have reacted by arresting Uighur activists in the Islamic center of Kashgar, and accusing Uighurs of ties to international terrorism.The Uighurs, in return, demand an independent state: East Turkestan. Even as China prepares to showcase its growing strength and dynamism at this year's Olympics, the situation in Xinjiang, as much as the one in Tibet, demonstrates how it has yet to consolidate its border areas, with profound implications for China, the United States, and the world.

Violent protests against Chinese rule erupted in Tibet, and the government locked down the city of Lhasa.

In some ways the Chinese government is patient, subtle, and sophisticated. Although it never faces a judgment at the ballot box, in domestic affairs it often acts as if it were "accountable," trying to address and fend off whatever is the latest source of popular concern. Inflation, economic inequalities, pollution, snow-borne travel disasters -- these and other problems can lead to shifts in policy that rival those in any country. And when it comes to police-state controls, the government usually pushes just far enough to get what it wants, without pushing too far and generating too much backlash. But none of this is true when it comes to a part of Chinese policy now most in the world's eyes: how it will respond in Tibet. MORE