China's nationalism shows nation connected but wary

By Chris Buckley - Analysis

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese scholars and officials listened with polite curiosity in mid-March when public relations expert Wu Xu warned the worst risk to the Beijing Olympics could be political shocks from protests over Tibet.

They and the rest of the world are listening much more closely now.

One day after Wu made his warning in a March 13 lecture in Beijing, riots in Lhasa and unrest across Tibet ignited international protests against Chinese policy and then Chinese counter-protests that have cast a shadow over the Games.

Wu, an Arizona State University professor whose specialty is Chinese "cyber-nationalism", worries the volatile public mood over the Tibet unrest could spill into Games venues in August.

"This could linger on and trigger some unpredictable events -- booing at teams, ugly confrontations if an athlete protests -- that we don't want," Wu said by telephone recently.

He has been invited back to Beijing to train officials in handling the Games' potential PR nightmares.

Yet even if the stadiums are as friendly as officials hope, China's surge of popular patriotic anger has exposed powerful currents set to play an increasing role in its politics and diplomacy.

The campaign to boycott the French supermarket chain Carrefour -- seized on as a symbol of Western sympathy for Tibetan independence -- ferocious verbal attacks on Western media, and rallying around the Olympic torch reflect citizens willing to speak out, when allowed by a cautious Communist Party, but also worried about their country's standing in a wary world.

"China is becoming in many ways more liberal, but a more liberal China doesn't want to be a small China, and a liberal China will be more confident, not more humble," said Shi Yinhong of the People's University in Beijing.

"But the Western response to Tibet has ignited this sense that although we've become richer, they still treat us like it's the 19th century."

TRADITIONS OF PROTEST

China's current tide of patriotism builds on a pattern of nationalist protest that has flared when sensitivities about the country's standing nurtured by the Communist Party have collided with international events.

"To a certain extent, China is reaping what it sowed by making nationalism, along with economic growth, the basis for legitimacy," said Allen Carlson of Cornell University.

"It's a genie that once let out of the bottle is hard to put back."

In 1999, demonstrators assailed the U.S. embassy in Beijing after NATO forces mistakenly bombed China's embassy in Belgrade during the war against Serbia, killing three Chinese. The protesters called the bombing deliberate.