Activists will demonstrate in Beijing during the Olympics to press China to help end bloodshed in Darfur, a group said Thursday, adding to the government’s public relations headaches as it tries to quell protests in Tibet.

The announcement came as two U.S.-based groups released a report that accused Beijing of blocking efforts to compel the Sudanese government to end fighting in its western Darfur region.

“We are planning some actions during the games themselves in Beijing,” Dream for Darfur’s executive director, Jill Savitt, said in a conference call with reporters. Savitt said the group was keeping details secret “for fear we would not be able to pull off those events.”

Activists are calling on Beijing, a diplomatic ally of Sudan and buyer of its oil, to help end fighting in Darfur. They have been pressing Olympics sponsors to lobby Beijing for action or face pickets at their headquarters or other protests.

In their report, Dream for Darfur and Save Darfur rejected Beijing’s assertions that it has been trying to bring peace to the region.

They accused China, a permanent Security Council member, of blocking or weakening U.N. measures to compel Sudan to end the violence while supplying Khartoum with weapons.

“The actions of China, more than the actions of any other country besides Sudan, have facilitated the atrocities in Darfur,” the report said. “For the past five years, essentially all of China’s actions supported the government in Khartoum, thereby enabling the atrocities Khartoum committed.”

I’m glad to see it’s a “demonstration” instead of a boycott, but I’m a bit concerned about what form this might take. Considering the current international-news blackout in China, I’m wondering how the Chinese would handle an Olympic protest.

Via ESPN

Rick from PandaPassport has an interesting cartoon on the Olympics logo. Here’s a twist on Patrick’s possible origins of the Olympic logo:

Rick also includes the following note:

Note to Chinese govt: I strongly condemn this cartoon as irresponsible nonsense.

Via Panda Passport.

Wanted to let you know that the BBC’s World Have Your Say will be talking about China and Tibet tonight. Oddly enough, the main BBC page is blocked here, but the World Have Your Say blog is accessible.

Finding Olympics news is a bit of challenge right now, since international news sites, many China blogs and YouTube are all blocked in Beijing.

I did find some good news about Qingdao, the city in Shandong province where the sailing event will be held this summer.

The local government has for years been working hard to fulfill its promise to build an environmentally friendly city - and its efforts are now bearing fruit.

“The environment in Qingdao meets the requirement of a green Olympics - blue skies, clean water and harmonious city that all present a comfortable environment for the Olympic sailing competition and the life of residents,” said Xia Geng, mayor of Qingdao.

“The Olympic sailing center gives full presentation to the environmentally friendly concept,” Xia noted. “We built the first seawater source heat pump air conditioning system in China and the world’s most advanced pontoon system.”

“Hydro, solar and wind power, as well as recycled water, all make the sailing center a modern venue combining the concepts of a recycling economy and a green Olympics.”.

Via Xinhua

It’s peanut-butter-jelly time! Looks like American athletes will be bringing and preparing their own food for the Olympics.

The United States Olympic Committee, which will have more than 600 people in its delegation, is planning to transport its own produce because of fears about public health and food standards in China.

The athletes will eat their three daily meals at their training camp at a local university, which is outside the official confines of the Olympic Park.

鈥淚 feel it’s a pity that they decided to take their own food,鈥� Kang Yi, the head of the food division for the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said. 鈥淲e have made lots of preparations to ensure that the athletes can get together at the Olympic Games.鈥�

I’ve gotten Shandong Stomach enough times to completely understand the athletes’ decision! It would be terrible if an athlete missed the Olympics or couldn’t perform well, thanks to one of the random, frequent stomach upsets that plague visitors to China.

But I think it’s important not to call this a “boycott” as this article did. Calling it a boycott will definitely offend China, already so defensive about food contamination and product safety. I don’t think it’s meant to be a political statement, or meant to call China’s food contaminated or inedible, just to take all possible precautions to look after our Olympians’ health.

Unfortunately, pictures of Americans eating their own imported food doesn’t make a very good image for international friendship.

Via The Times Online

…to let you know that the “Which Fuwa Are You?” Facebook app has been making its way around my China friends.

Let me know if you take it, and turn out to be JingJing!

The folks at China Daily have come out with the unsurprising announcement that Chinese people are excited about the Olympics.

A survey released Monday revealed the intense anticipation held nationwide for the Beijing Olympics, with about three-quarters of respondents expressing their overwhelming excitement 150 days out from the opening ceremony.

The survey, conducted among 2,700 Chinese in 20 provinces and four major cities including Beijing, found 79 percent of residents in the capital were looking forward to the arrival of 16,000 athletes and coaches as well as some 30,000 journalists and dignitaries for the Aug 8-24 event.

More than 100 world leaders have expressed an interest in visiting Beijing in August, said Wu Dawei, vice-foreign minister.

“The figure is still on the rise everyday,” he said on the sidelines of the annual session of China’s parliament.

“The interesting thing is, the further people live away from Beijing and Shanghai, the more they anticipate the Games,” said Miles Young, chairman of Ogilvy Group Asia-Pacific, which co-produced the survey with Millward Brown ACSR.

Just going by how excited my Beijing neighbors are, I can’t imagine how much more excited rural Chinese residents could be.

Mike from Beijing Olympics Games Blog puts it best:

It is very seldom I have had a conversation with a Chinese person without the 鈥渁o-yuan-hui鈥� (Olympics) being mentioned.

Via China Daily and Beijing Olympics Games Blog

Here’s a quick video from ESPN about American sprinter Kelli White, who came clean about her drug use. There’s a lot of talk about what might have happened if Marion Jones had also admitted hers, with ESPN’s Mark Fainaru-Wada saying that Jones might not be in prison.

Unlike Jones, though, White became a truth-teller. She had admitted her doping to the government at the onset of the BALCO case, and she stayed that course when challenged by USADA in May 2004. White had struggled with the decision to admit her sins publicly, but the weight of the evidence and her conscience finally led her to come clean.

She admitted cheating her way to the top, confessing to the use of an array of performance enhancers, and accepted a two-year ban from competition that saw her world titles wiped off the books. White, though, used the public vetting to regain control of her life, first by becoming part of the anti-doping movement and later by going back to college.

Now, in the coming months, she is scheduled to complete an MBA program — even as Jones serves her prison term.

I’m glad White avoided prison by admitting her drug use, but I think she’s getting a bit too much credit for a moral decision. Her conscience didn’t start pricking when she used steroids to win medals, her conscience didn’t start bothering her until she was under investigation and likely to lose her medals and be banned from sports.

Via ESPN

Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie has decided not to compete in the Beijing marathon.

World record holder Haile Gebrselassie will aim for an Olympic marathon title at the 2012 London Games after deciding the pollution in Beijing this year represents an unacceptable health threat.

The twice Olympic 10,000 meters champion, who will be 39 in 2012, suffers from exercise-induced asthma and will not compete in Beijing unless he qualifies for the Ethiopian 10,000 team.

“The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42 kilometers in my current condition,” he told Reuters by telephone.

I can definitely understand not wanting to expose a world-class athlete to the air on a grey-sky day, but I do hope he’s feeling up to the 10,000 meters, anyway.

Via ESPN

Journalists here are put into a bind by stories such as that yesterday about the various terror plots alleged by the authorities at the weekend.

While a few details leaked out from police about the “incident” on board an airliner from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday, they were hardly sufficient on their own to justify claims by politicians that it represented a clear attempt to hijack and crash the plane - a mass murder suicide attack, as it would have had to have been.

Actually, none of those details have leaked to me. It’s not impossible to find, I can Google the story, but I had CCTV9 on most of yesterday and this morning, and the only story was coverage of the Two Meetings, uh, meeting.

As for the claim, also by a politician, that a terrorist cell broken up by police in Urumqi in January was targeting the Olympics, no evidence at all was adduced to support this.
It seems only right to inject a certain amount of scepticism, but how much? Some will say that all claims about terrorism, from whichever government, have to be taken on trust, and there is no reason to doubt the word of the Chinese authorities more than anyone else: in western systems there is normally some exposure to the media at court cases, where evidence is publicly weighed - but can’t this be fixed?

And if you dismiss the claims out of hand, you look pretty stupid if conclusive evidence is brought forward later.

On the other hand, if you report the government claims as fact, you deny the very real suspicions which clearly many journalists and diplomats here - to say nothing of representatives of Uighur and other minority groups - genuinely feel.

One problem with media in China is when there is a distressing story, like the construction deaths at the Bird’s Nest, or this story of possible averted terrorism, the story changes a few times, and then disappears. Now, I believe a good retraction, but the second or third time the details change, I start to imagine thing much worse. Different reports say that there were various numbers of fatalities, 2 deaths at the Bird’s Nest (Shanghai Daily), or 6 (says the Washington Post) and USA Today says that China denies 10 deaths. These are serious newspapers, not rumors from some guy’s blog. And even if it is 10 fatalities, does “10 tragic accidents” look anywhere near as distressing as “People died but we’re not telling”?

In my opinion (Warning! This is now rumors from Some Guy’s Blog!), I think the Olympics will be completely safe. The Olympic fever here is so high, and there are so many changes to make the city more tourist-friendly and accessible, and Beijing already has a very low crime rate, but I have to wonder, if something awful did happen, would a warning get out in time?

Via Richard Spencer’s Telegraph Blog