University of Alberta professor Wenren Jiang writes that the conventional media narrative on China doesn't paint the whole picture.

From the Aug. 9 Globe and Mail:

By any measure, the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics yesterday were a spectacular show. But in the weeks before this highly anticipated and in many ways controversial event, there has been hardly any good news. And the narrative from most of the Western media has been something like this: Back in 2001, China promised to behave and improve its human-rights records, in exchange for hosting the Games, but has broken its promises; there is more repression of Tibetans and other minorities, more jailing of dissidents, more harassment of the foreign press, more pollution, more censorship; in short, China is not democratizing.

Some of these concerns are genuine and understandable. After all, the Olympics is a great occasion for people from around world to celebrate the human spirit, to have their national teams compete under fair rules, and to bring us all closer together, as a global family. The host nation is called upon to live up to high expectations. China must learn to live with international scrutiny and with protests both inside and outside its borders. But the heavy reporting of negative news is painting an incomplete picture.

Few people I have talked to during my frequent visits to China accept the story that their country is worse off in terms of human rights than in 2001. ...

In addition to keeping a sense of balance in assessing where China is today, we also have to be realistic and patient about where China should be. Clearly, many human-rights advocates have strongly hoped and wished that the 2008 Beijing Olympics would follow the pattern of the 1988 Seoul Olympics in South Korea – that is, the Games would shortly lead to Western-style democratization. With a growing realization that this is unlikely to happen, some people have questioned the usefulness and even the legitimacy of having granted the Summer Games to Beijing in the first place.

Others, more moderately, have complained that neither human-rights groups nor the Western news media are doing a good job in highlighting China's human rights-problems, with the result that this Olympic year will be a sadly missed opportunity.

Such a perspective, well intentioned though it is, seems to have ignored the lessons from the Tibetan crisis and the Olympic torch relay protests earlier this year: A well-organized movement intended to raise awareness of the Chinese government's Tibetan policy overstepped into an attack on the Chinese people themselves, as if they were not worthy of hosting the Olympics. Scenes such as that of pro-Tibetan independence protesters violently seizing the Olympic torch from a wheelchair-bound female Paralympian in Paris were counterproductive; they angered the Chinese public and pushed them to rally around the government, strengthening the hand of the hardliners.

Jiang advised patience. He thinks democratization will come to China from the ground up, that there is more debate than we know -- even within the Communist Party itself -- and that the main question is one of speed, not the ultimate goal.