We don't boycott their clothes, so why boycott their Olympics?

Britain does have an ambivalent attitude towards China, but it is better to talk and trade than to fight, says ALLAN MASSIE

THERE is a good case for saying the Olympics shouldn't have been given to Beijing. China's record on human rights is very bad, which is one reason. Unfortunately there are precedents: Moscow was the Olympic host in 1980, Berlin in 1936, and, deplorable as is China's disregard of human rights, it's no worse than that of the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

More persuasive is the argument that sport and politics should, if possible, be kept separate, and, since China evidently sees the Olympics as a political opportunity, a chance to impress the world with its wealth and power, that should perhaps have been enough reason to choose some other city as this year's host.

However, even this argument is less cogent than it seems at first sight, for any city given the Games will find its national government seeking to make political capital out of the occasion – even if this is done benevolently. So, for instance, the choice of Munich for 1972 offered compelling evidence of West Germany's return to complete respectability after the horrors of the Hitler years – very dramatically, indeed, since Munich was the birthplace of the Nazi party. (That these Games were blighted by the kidnapping and killing of Israeli athletes is another matter altogether.)

Now, after Stephen Spielberg's resignation from his unpaid position as artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing, because of China's support for the Sudanese government and its role in Darfur, anyone optimistic enough to hope these Games will be free of politics is living in a fool's paradise. Admittedly, as many have remarked, it's odd to make Darfur, where Chinese influence is limited, the occasion for protest, rather than Tibet or the Chinese regime's persecution of dissidents and churches. Nevertheless, Spielberg's decision has drawn renewed attention to the propriety of having the Olympics hosted by China, and there is even some talk – rather vague talk – of a boycott.

Meanwhile, a report that the British Olympic Committee had originally included in our athletes' contracts a clause forbidding them from expressing political opinions has stirred things up further – though it seems this clause may now have been removed.

Obviously, the United Kingdom is not going to boycott the Games, and not only from fears that this might spark off a reciprocal boycott of the London Games in four years' time; and, indeed, it is unlikely there will be any boycott, though it's possible that a few individual athletes may decide to put conscience and respect for human rights above ambition, and refuse to go to Beijing. But they will be very few indeed.

The truth is, of course, that our attitude to China is ambivalent. On the one hand, we criticise its record on human rights. On the other, we trade happily with it. When Gordon Brown went to Beijing recently, he took with him a plane-load of British businessmen, all eagerly looking for investment opportunities in the People's Republic.

Our own Royal Bank of Scotland has a stake in the Bank of China; it would be surprising to learn that this has persuaded any customers to close their account with RBS and move to another bank.

The comparatively low level of inflation here in the past few years owes much to the influx of cheap goods from China. No boycott there; quite the contrary. We gobble them up. Should critics of China's human rights record not be just a wee bit discriminating, and when they see something labelled "Made in China", leave it on the shelf?

At least those people who used to boycott South African oranges to mark their disapproval of the apartheid regime showed some consistency; likewise, those whose abhorrence of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians prompts them to refuse to buy Israeli fruit. Anyone who regularly buys clothes from Tesco or Gap or other stores which stock Chinese goods is in no position to call on our athletes to boycott the Beijing Games or even to make some sort of public protest.

As consumers, we are customers of the Chinese regime, and even its accomplices. To pretend otherwise is hypocrisy, something which, as heirs of Holy Willie, we Scots usually do rather well.

That said, it's perhaps to our credit that, hypocrites though we may be, our ambivalent attitude to China does leave us feeling rather uncomfortable. Of course, our tolerance of the Chinese regime, and even our complicity with it, are defensible. Talking and trading are better than fighting, and the hope that economic development and the spread of prosperity will eventually lead to a liberalisation of the regime is not necessarily vain, though one has to add that there has been precious little sign of a relaxation of political control or the emergence of even a fledgling democracy in the 20 years since the massacre in Tiananmen Square, no sign that the offering of a carrot is producing happy results.

But what else can we do? We can't return China to isolation. We can't bully China. The most we can attempt is to apply gentle pressure for reform and respect for human rights. It's not what we might like, but that's the reality of it.

All the same, it would be agreeable if, far from being a triumph, the Olympics proved just a bit of an embarrassment. Alas, this is unlikely. Even Spielberg's absence from the opening and closing ceremonies won't prevent these Games from being the best choreographed since Berlin in 1936 – and one can't see any equivalent of Jesse Owens to embarrass or anger the hosts.