[+/-] : Olympic Torch news on the New York Times

News about the Olympic torch, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times....
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[+/-] : Coca-Cola Faces Critics of Its Olympics Support

Bradley C. Bower/Associated Press
Pro-Tibet demonstrators picketed and chanted outside Coca-Cola’s annual meeting in Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday.

Coca-Cola Faces Critics of Its Olympics Support
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD , The New York Times
April 17, 2008

It is getting tougher to be a global brand these days. Just ask Coke.

As one of the most prominent sponsors of the Olympics, Coca-Cola found itself on the hot seat on Wednesday at its annual shareholder meeting in Wilmington, Del. Outside, protesters chanted and waved picket signs. Inside, they engaged the chief executive, E. Neville Isdell, in a rare public dialogue about China’s human rights record in Tibet.


“Will you tell the I.O.C. to stop taking the Olympic torch relay into Tibet, because Tibet belongs to Tibetans?” asked one protester in the audience, Lobsang Choefel, who described himself as a native Tibetan. He was referring to the International Olympic Committee.

Mr. Isdell — who had just described first-quarter results that rose on the strength of international sales in countries like China — stood firm. The torch relay “has symbolized openness, it has symbolized hopes,” he said. “I don’t believe that stopping the torch run is in any way over the long term going to be the right thing to do.”

The moment seemed to encapsulate the quandary the Olympics sponsors face as protests unfurl across various continents. In India, home to more than 100,000 Tibetans in exile and their religious leader, the Dalai Lama, even the official corporate sponsors avoided buying television and radio ads that were timed to the Olympic torch relay on Thursday, media executives there said.

And in China, a different sort of backlash has been taking shape — against the companies from countries that seem to be putting pressure on China. French companies like Carrefour are a particular target because of the mayhem during the Paris leg of the torch relay and because the French president has said he may skip the opening ceremony in Beijing over China’s human rights record.

“I think boycotting Carrefour is a peaceful and polite way to express our anger, our Chinese feelings got deeply hurt by France,” said Li Meng, a 25-year-old mechanic who is selling T-shirts in support of the boycott movement in the city of Yantai, in eastern China. “France humiliated China during the torch relay and keeps making trouble for the Olympics.”

American brands like McDonald’s and KFC have also been named as targets of a boycott because some American politicians seem to be supporting the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing blames for instigating violence in Tibet to disrupt plans for the Olympics.

No one knows whether there is widespread support for the boycotts, but the opposition comes at a time when many of the world’s biggest brands — including Coke — are expanding aggressively in China and planning huge sales and marketing campaigns to coincide with the Olympics.

Coca-Cola’s most recent quarterly results suggest the extent of its reliance on the Chinese market. During the first quarter, Coke’s unit case volume sales in China were up 20 percent in the quarter, one of the highest figures from any country. Over all, the company’s net income rose 19 percent in the quarter, to $1.5 billion, from $1.26 billion a year ago.

Bill Pecoriello, research analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that 5 to 6 percent of Coke’s total revenue comes from China (Coca-Cola does not break out the figure).

The importance of China for Coke should increase, Mr. Pecoriello said. He estimated that Coke sold 1.2 billion cases in China in 2007 and forecast that it would sell 1.5 billion cases there in 2008. That compares with larger but slower-growing sales in the United States: 5.4 billion cases in 2007 and 5.45 billion cases in 2008, Mr. Pecoriello said.

Neither Coca-Cola nor any of the other Olympic sponsors has flinched in its public support for the games, but the groups that are protesting China’s policies in Tibet and Darfur are vowing to step up their pressure. This could lead to showdowns, or even to a possible whipsaw for the companies if Chinese youths start protesting en masse in the other direction.

“We’re not asking Coke to solve Tibet’s problems,” Lhadon Tethong, the director of an organizing group called Students for a Free Tibet, told Mr. Isdell at the shareholder meeting on Wednesday. “We’re not asking you to do anything else but tell the I.O.C. this is not the time for the torch to go to Tibet.”

Ms. Tethong added, “You have influence, and you know you have influence. Please don’t hide behind a spin.”

Mr. Isdell — who will be succeeded by the company’s president and chief operating officer, Muhtar Kent, by the time the Olympics start in August — responded politely and at some length. “I want to thank you for your clarification and also for your declared integrity,” he said, adding that, technically, the route of the torch was not governed by the I.O.C., but by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. On a philosophical note, Mr. Isdell added, “We still believe that the torch is a light of hope, and we trust that’s what it will be as it goes every single place in the world.”

In the future, Mr. Isdell suggested, the company does still want to buy the world a Coke. “We are already a sponsor of the Olympic games — wherever they may go — through 2020, and I trust that will continue through 2028,” he said.

Last week, several other sponsors, including Visa International, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Home Depot, United Parcel Service and AT&T reaffirmed their support of the Olympics and said that their marketing plans had not changed because of the protests.

“As critical as Tibet is, I think sponsors are looking at the situation saying, ‘We’ve still got days to go,’ ” said Damien Ryan, director of Ryan Financial Communications, a Hong Kong media relations firm that has sponsors as clients. “Things can change quite quickly, and from their point of view, they realize that Beijing has got a long memory.”

David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai and Heather Timmons from New Delhi.

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[+/-] : Bracing for Games, China Sets Rules That Complicate Life for Foreigners

Christie Johnston , The New York Times

Outside a visa application office in Hong Kong. China has imposed new restrictions on visas that concern many foreigners.


Bracing for Games, China Sets Rules That Complicate Life for Foreigners
By ANDREW JACOBS for The New York Times

April 24, 2008
BEIJING — In little more than 100 days, China will open its arms to a deluge of foreigners, many of whom will be pleasantly surprised to find a dizzying array of designer boutiques and painfully hip martini bars that divert expatriates and middle-class Chinese in this once dowdy capital.

But even as Beijing is promising to welcome 1.5 million visitors to the Olympic Games, public security officials are tightening controls over daily life and introducing visa restrictions that are causing anxiety among the 250,000 foreigners who have settled here in recent years.

The visa rules, which were introduced last week with little explanation, restrict many visitors to 30-day stays, replacing flexible, multiple-entry visas that had allowed people to remain for up to a year. The new rules make it harder for foreigners to live and work in Beijing without applying for residency permits, which can be difficult to obtain. The restrictions are also complicating the lives of businesspeople in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore used to crossing the border with ease.

“I can’t begin to explain how serious this is going to be,” said Richard Vuylsteke, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. “A barrier like this is going to have a real ripple effect on business.”

The government wants to present a blemish-free image of Beijing for the Olympics. Police officers have cleared away street beggars and closed down shops selling pirated DVDs, while also forcing some migrant workers to go back to the countryside.

Over the last month the police have raided bars and clubs suspected of harboring drug dealers. An operation two weeks ago that netted a group of French teenagers has provoked charges of heavy-handed police tactics.

Other restrictions can seem random, like a decision on Wednesday that forced the cancellation of a popular music festival a week before its start. Organizers of the eight-year-old event, the Midi Festival, said officials had told them they were concerned about security. More than 80 bands, many of them from abroad, were scheduled to perform.

But most of the fear and consternation has been prompted by the new visa rules, which have thousands of foreign residents scrambling for black market documents — or contemplating leaving. Residents who in the past could apply locally to extend yearlong tourist or business visas have been instructed to return home and apply for the short-term visas at the Chinese Embassy in their home countries.

Some, like Desmond McGarry, a jazz musician who has lived here since 2002, said they would probably leave. For Mr. McGarry, returning to Canada would mean abandoning his apartment and a network of friends. “It’s been very comfortable until now, even if we existed in a gray zone,” he said. “Maybe I’ll leave and try to come back in the fall when things calm down.”

The new visa rules come at a time of heightened tensions in Beijing and other cities, where public anger has been directed at Western governments and overseas news organizations seen as sympathetic to Tibetan independence. Over the last week, that discontent has fueled demonstrations at the French Embassy in Beijing and at outlets of Carrefour, a French supermarket chain whose executives have been accused of aligning themselves with the Dalai Lama. Some foreign residents are nervously awaiting next Thursday, the first day of a planned Carrefour boycott.

Although the majority of foreigners say they have seen no change in the behavior of their Chinese neighbors and co-workers, some French residents complain that nationalist ire is seeping into their daily lives. One businessman who plays tennis at a Chinese sports club said acquaintances refused to join him on the court last weekend.

More ominously, the owner of a popular French restaurant here said he was denied a visa extension on Wednesday by an official who simply told him, “It’s because you’re French.” The man, who asked that his name and business not be printed for fear of antagonizing the authorities, said he was in a panic. “My whole life is here,” he said.

Most Westerners readily acknowledge that they enjoy privileged lives, including unspoken immunity from the tangle of rules that can complicate the lives of average Chinese.

That may be about to change. Last week English-language signs began appearing on Beijing streets and in high-end apartment buildings directing foreigners not staying in hotels to register with the police. The regulations, which are not new but are rarely enforced, promise steep fines for those who do not comply.

Because the government has not issued formal guidelines about the new visa rules, rumors and uncertainty have been rife, and travel agents say that a handful of tourists have been denied visas without evident rationale.

Cloris Yip, the manager of Smiley Travel in Hong Kong, cited the example of two tourists, a Swiss and a German; the Swiss citizen received a 30-day visa while his German companion was given one for five days. The men, she said, canceled their trip.

“Maybe the Chinese government is not so happy with the Germans right now,” Ms. Yip said. “Maybe they think some foreigners want to protest Tibet during the Games. Either way, you cannot argue or negotiate.”

Businessmen are also feeling powerless. Hong Kong executives accustomed to visiting mainland factories or construction projects every few days are now spending one day each week waiting for new single- or double-entry visas.

“Everyone is affected by it, and they are very unhappy,” said Seth Peterson, a vice president of Techtronic Industries Company, which manufactures vacuum cleaners and power tools in southern China.

Asked about the restrictions, Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, insisted that there had been no change in visa rules. “The Chinese people will welcome foreign friends in a warm, enthusiastic and open-minded way,” she said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Whether or not these are just temporary measures, those who depend on foreign expertise for their businesses say the impact has been real. Collin Crowell, the managing editor of City Weekend, an English-language entertainment guide in Beijing, said the new requirements were causing consternation among the magazine’s freelance writers.

And Raluca Riquet, an event planner who is organizing art shows for the summer, said she was struggling to find curators with valid visas.

“We’ll find a solution, but it’s not so easy,” said Ms. Riquet, who holds dual French and Romanian citizenship. “The government really wants to control everything and everybody before the Olympics. For us foreigners, it’s a really big change.”
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[+/-] : Foreign Press Set for Curtailed Everest Torch Trip

Foreign Press Set for Curtailed Everest Torch Trip
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
April 25, 2008

BEIJING (Agence France-Presse) — A group of foreign reporters prepared on Thursday to go to Tibet to cover the ascent of the Olympic torch to Mount Everest. They were the first overseas journalists allowed into the riot-scarred region in a month.

China plans to take a special high-altitude Olympic torch to the summit of Everest, the world’s tallest peak, in May, and had invited reporters from around the world to cover the event as a triumphal symbol of Beijing’s role as host of the Olympics in August.

The media delegation was to leave Beijing on Friday for the tightly managed trip. China made late changes this week to curtail reporting, in the wake of unrest in Tibet.

Olympic officials said no coverage would be allowed of a mountaineering team’s departure from base camp with the torch, tentatively set for Saturday, nor of anything unrelated to the torch.

Reporters have raised concerns about their health because a new schedule calls for a trip of about three days through Tibet to the Mount Everest base camp. The journalists said that ascending too quickly to the camp’s elevation of 16,900 feet could cause severe health problems.

Experts say the trip from Beijing, which is near sea level, to such a high altitude should not be made in less than a week.

Officials denied that the plans had been changed in response to the unrest in Tibet. The Olympic torch has become a magnet for protests against China’s crackdown on Tibetan unrest and China’s human rights record.

The trip appeared thrown into further chaos early Thursday when the organizers of the Olympics suddenly set a Thursday morning payment deadline for air tickets to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. An Olympic official charged with collecting payments then inexplicably refused to accept fees from some news organizations. Later, several were invited to go ahead with the trip. The New York Times was not invited to participate.

Some news organizations decided not to participate. Agence France-Presse decided not to send a reporter, mainly because of health concerns.

China tightened control on Tibet after anti-Chinese rioting broke out in Lhasa on March 14, spreading across the Tibetan plateau, and expelled foreign reporters and tourists from the Himalayan region.

Reporters Without Borders, which advocates press freedom, has echoed widespread calls for unfettered news media access to Tibet. Human rights groups continue to report disturbances and arrests in the region.

”Things are clearly far from being back to normal as the authorities claim,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The few reports emerging suggest a very different situation, one of arrests and a climate of fear in the cities and around the monasteries.

Foreign journalists last were allowed to enter Tibet for a government-led news media trip to Lhasa in late March.
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