One thing clear is that if the protesters wanted to ‘embarrass China into submission’, they are most likely to find their efforts totally counter-productive. Not only this forces China into a stand off confrontation, but also galvanises Chinese people into showing more support of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese students in Edinburgh are organising a show of support demonstration at city centre this Saturday, followed by a separate protest against the misreporting outside BBC headquarter in London on 19 April. Some may believe Chinese students are either blinded by Communist Party’s nationalistic propaganda or totally insulated from the outside world. However what it really shows is that, just like their counterparts in Britain, Chinese students are usually not into politics, but will rise up to express their views when the issue they really care about comes by.

It is interesting to compare the live broadcast of torch relay in London and San Francisco. The NBC presenters were upbeat and giggling, often indicating the torch relay is a fun thing (even the torch run, torch drive and the cat-and-mouse “where is the torch” thing is fun), positive for San Francisco’s image, including the display of rivalry between anti-China and pro-Olympics demonstrators. BBC News 24’s broadcast, fronted by Chris Eakin, however, gave the overall impression that the torch relay in London, and in San Francisco, were distasteful embarrassment or miserable disasters. I’m not suggesting any conspiracies. Perhaps Americans are not so ashamed of highly-visible, security-minded operation, or just the weather is better there. A serious point, though, is that if violent disruption of Olympic torch relay becomes a fair game to any protest groups, or even turns into a competition of who can, literally, grab the biggest prize, if attempts of grabbing the torch, extinguishing the torch, or worse physical violating the torch bearers can be justified if you happen to like the course, as some British columnists suggest, then the biggest victim will be the Olympic movement.

Those who use violence to disrupt the torch relay may enjoy the maximum media attention they are seeking for, but the consequences are going to be suffered by all of us who rather enjoy Olympic Games and all the festival atmosphere it brings, whatever one’s views on Tibet are.

A new website, anti-cnn.com, has been set up to expose the western media outlets like CNN, German N-TV, as well as BBC and The Times of “manipulation of evidence” and “biased reporting”. It looks many quite a few western news organisations, in the immediate aftermath of Lhasa riot, used the pictures of Indian and Nepalese police taking away demonstrators in their reports as the evidence of “Chinese army used brutal force to crack down protest”. One screenshot of BBC News website shows a picture of Chinese soldiers wearing medic arm band standing behind an ambulance with the caption of “a heavy military presence in Lhasa”. A YouTube video then shows a slideshow compilation of the materials.

In the UK, an open letter to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been circulated among Chinese students in which the author points out the biased reporting by western media and asks Gordon Brown “not to meet Dalai Lama” when he comes to the UK in May. After the disruption of Olympic flame-lighting ceremony and torch relay in Greece, there are also calls on the message boards to “support the Olympic torch” when it tours through the UK.

Those are highly-educated, well-informed, worldly young generation of Chinese. If even they are suspicious of west’s fairness and motivation, one can imagine the reaction from Chinese public if the west try to boycott or demonstrate publicly during Beijing Olympic to “send a message”. For many Chinese, those actions will be seen as unjust and unfair, a bullying tactics. Moreover, it underlines the mistrust and snobbery towards China among some members of the western activists who see Olympics as a reward given to China for the good behavior, which can be taken away at any time, solely on westerns’ judgment. The freedom and fairness of western media used to be what Chinese people look up to, however, in the recent years, in particularly among the younger generations, west’s sometimes automatic self-entitlement to the moral high ground when dealing with affairs related to China has been seriously questioned.

For many years in the last century, China lived in a sometimes forced, sometimes self-imposed ideological and economical isolation. Now with the rapid growth of economical power, China starts to feel the need to be loved and respected by the international community. What the west can do is to find an effective way to show China how to behave responsibly to order to gain respect and influence. If the western media and pressure groups fall into the old habit of bashing China with the morality stick (while the economy stick is no longer available) every time, it won’t help to convince the Chinese authority to leave their old habit of the siege mentality behind and learn to live under the international spotlight. The problem China has to resolve in Tibet, is a common issue faced by many countries, that is how to deal with the grievance of ethnic minorities and their fear of lose of cultural identity. The west can certainly share some lessons with China, but if they simply want to teach China a lesson, I’m afraid the message won’t be well received.