As 19 current and former Longhorns head to Beijing for next month's Olympic games, we Texans, like the rest of the world, wait with bated breath for the outcome. But the world is sitting on edge for the answer to the biggest question of the Olympic spectacle - whether or not it will "open up" China.
While China uses its population and economic clout to propel its entrance onto the world stage, some hold that the increased attention to China's new prominence will cause the country to reconsider its attitudes toward democracy and human rights. Doing so would allow China to become a more palatable ally to an international community that already has economica and political ties to the country.
The world-weary skeptics, on the other hand, contest that the white glove of global scrutiny will only serve to amp up Chinese knee-jerk reactions to perceived dissidence, causing a wave of new civil restrictions and crackdowns in order to present a clean, homogeneous and unified face to its new visitors.
In reality, we should expect both. The web of international expectations and pressures, not the least of which are economic, will serve to pry open the new China, but not before a short-term crackdown that's sure to annoy (but not deter) the West and its investors.
In a rush of face-saving, the Chinese have already instituted a campaign to "clean up" their country before the wave of foreigners takes to their shores in August. Their crackdown is illustrated in stark relief by the violent reaction to Tibetan protestors, the government's seizure of homes and property to make way for Olympic venues and the sudden institution of dramatic pollution controls to the chagrin of a recently car-obsessed country that runs on the machinery of pollution.
Most of the measures reflect both a Chinese insistence on careful repression, as seen throughout previous decades by the Falun Gong movement and Internet dissidents, as well as a new obsession with pleasing an outside world that is now heavily invested in and engaged with the powerhouse nation. In just a small example, American venture capital investment in China doubled from the first to the second quarter of this year alone, according to the MoneyTree Report by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers. While numbers like that may slip somewhat after the games, they're likely to continue in a slow rise for the foreseeable future. And with such heavy interest in the Chinese rise, a morally irritated West is likely unwilling to soothe its troubled conscience by disengaging - witness the failed plans for a Western boycott.
China's meteoric ascent may help it get away with a short-term crackdown. With a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a series of deals with African countries and a huge economy powered by a growing middle class, the country is in a solid, powerful state and has built a wide sphere of influence.
The Chinese government could easily push through its restrictions on internal dissidents without much more than a few groans from Western leaders and muffled shouts from human rights groups. In the long term, however, the summer Olympics are likely to play into a greater pattern of interaction that will force China to shift itself toward global norms. The new tourist infrastructure built by the games and China's thirst for foreign investment will play into the processes of opening China, a process already underway with its classically Chinese, state-controlled concession to capitalism (or at least to capital).
The draconian measures aimed at putting on a fresh face for the world may turn out to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the long term, with China heading closer to the global center and taking on its mores and conduct. It will, of course, do it in a determinedly Chinese style - secretively, and denying it the whole time. Expect a similar, if more friendly, story when Brazil hosts the 2014 World Cup and certainly an Olympics shortly thereafter and even in the Middle East when the Games head to Doha, Dubai or Cairo in 2020.
So as we watch our hometown heroes dive, kick and jump their way into history, let's look around them at the way China postures, prods and protects itself from and for the cameras. We are likely to see a story of contradiction and control, of power and progress. We are likely to see the last remnants of an old China and the emergence of a new one.
Roush is a government senior.
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