Someone’s watching! Pretend to be decent!
An article from the Christian Science Monitor highlights how China is making strides in becoming a modern, humane society… or at least pretending to if a foreigner is watching:
On a Beijing street a few weeks ago, a man began to beat his wife. A small crowd gathered, but nobody intervened until an American leaned from his apartment window overlooking the scene and began to shoot photos.
Noticing him, a spectator stepped up to the assailant and told him to stop. “There’s a foreigner taking pictures,” he pointed out.
As the Olympic torch gets under way this week in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games–the proudest moment in modern Chinese history and a symbol of the country’s return as a major player to the international stage–incident sheds light on one of the Beijing authorities’ key concerns as they prepare to welcome the world.
Outsiders must not be allowed to see anything that reflects badly on the government or the country–such as dissidents’ complaints or the unrest in Tibet–which would lose both of them face.