MB Civic

The Associated Press
Monday, July 23, 2007

BEIJING: China’s intelligence services are
gearing up for next year’s Beijing Olympics,
gathering information on foreigners who
might mount protests and spoil the
nation’s moment in the spotlight.

Government spy agencies and think tanks
are compiling lists of potentially
troublesome foreign organizations, looking
beyond the human rights groups long
critical of Beijing, security experts and a
consultant familiar with the effort said.

They include evangelical Christians eager
to end China’s religious restrictions,
activists wanting Beijing to use its oil-
buying leverage with Sudan to end the
strife in Darfur and environmental
campaigners angry about global warming.

The effort is among the broadest
intelligence-collection drives Beijing has
taken against foreign activist groups, often
known as non-governmental
organizations, or NGOs. It aims to head off
protests and other political acts during an
Olympics the communist leadership hopes
will boost its popularity at home and
China’s image abroad.

“Demonstrations of all kinds are a concern,
including anti-American demonstrations,”
said the consultant, who works for Beijing’s
Olympic organizers and asked not to be
identified because he was not authorized
to talk to the media.

The government, he said, is “trying to find
out what kinds of NGOs will come. … What
are their plans?”

While foreign governments often monitor
potentially disruptive groups ahead of big
events, Beijing this time is ranging farther
afield, targeting groups whose activities
would be considered legal in most
countries.

As such, the move carries risks for Beijing.
Evidence that the communist government
is withholding visas or engaged in heavy
handed policing to suppress protests
would likely draw negative press and could
unnerve the International Olympic
Committee and corporate sponsors.

Scott Kronick, the president of Ogilvy
Public Relations Worldwide’s China
operations, said he raised concerns about
the way protests might be handled when
an official with the Beijing Olympic
organizing committee asked him about the
possibility of activists disrupting the torch
relay.

“I said, ‘People will understand that. That’s
the way different groups act. What you
need to worry about is what your response
is going to be and how you will act,'” said
Kronick, whose clients include Adidas, an
Olympic sponsor.

The Ministry of Public Security, the
national police agency which runs some
domestic spying networks, declined to
comment, as did the Beijing Olympic
organizing committee. Phone numbers for
the main spying agency, the Ministry of
State Security, are not published, and the
Cabinet’s main information office would
not provide them.

Concerns about foreign protesters are a
reminder of how the Beijing games differ
from most previous Olympics. Aside from
the hefty US$40 billion (29 billion) price tag
and the government’s outsized political
ambitions, security poses a different
challenge, complicated by Chinese leaders’
repressive policies at home and growing
profile abroad.

“They are worried about a larger number
of things and they are worried about
keeping the lid on,” said Arnold Howitt,
who runs crisis-management training
programs for Beijing officials at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of
Government.

Like all Olympic hosts post-Sept. 11,
China’s security services are concerned
about terrorism. Attacks by militant Islamic
groups, some of them homegrown, top the
list of scenarios the police and the military
are preparing for, Chinese and foreign
security experts said.

Yet China also faces a plethora of
disaffected domestic groups -Tibetans
eager to cast off Chinese rule, farmers
upset at land confiscations and Falun Gong,
a once-popular spiritual movement the
government suppressed as a cult. A
research institute involved in crisis
planning for the Olympics has looked into
possible unrest by unemployed workers,
analysts at the think tank said.

China has long been wary of NGOs, fearing
they might be acting as agents for foreign
governments or encouraging defiance of
the Communist Party.

Those worries grew in recent months as a
multiplying number of foreign groups
mounted public campaigns to tie causes as
varied as promoting labor rights and
protecting sharks to the Beijing games.

The Darfur campaigners, who threatened
to re-brand the games the “Genocide
Olympics” if China does not pressure
Sudan to stop the conflict, particularly
alarmed Beijing.

“As far as the Chinese side is concerned,
NGOs are a destabilizing factor,” said the
security consultant.

Though Chinese leaders believe a boycott
is unlikely, successful protests by foreigners
would not only tarnish the games but
could also embolden domestic critics,
Chinese foreign policy experts and activists
said.

After four Americans unfurled a banner
calling for Tibetan independence on the
Chinese-controlled side of Mount Everest
in April, China tightened access to Tibet for
foreigners, especially Americans, Western
diplomats in Beijing said.

In trying to neutralize foreign NGOs,
Beijing is in part building on methods used
to quash Falun Gong. After declaring the
spiritual movement illegal in 1999, Beijing
infiltrated the group and identified many
among its millions of followers, both within
China and overseas.

As with Falun Gong, the security consultant
said government agencies were compiling
lists of foreign NGOs and their members.
He declined to specify whether electronic
surveillance or infiltration – a textbook
tactic for China’s police and spying
agencies – were being used.

Part of the research into NGOs, including
into Darfur groups, was being conducted
by the China Institute of Contemporary
International Relations, a think tank
affiliated with the Ministry of State
Security that also has an Olympic security
task force, the two analysts said.

Officials in China’s overseas diplomatic
missions are also being tasked to gather
information on groups, the consultant said.

When The Associated Press reported in
May on plans by U.S. and other Christian
groups to proselytize at the Olympics, the
press officer at China’s U.N. mission
contacted the AP seeking more information.

“Africa, global warming, Darfur,” said the
security consultant, “without the Olympic
Games, Beijing would not be paying
attention to these things.”