China Can't Hold a Torch to Olympic Standards

China may have agreed to start talking about human rights, but getting officials to act on them is an entirely different matter. In the last year, hundreds of church leaders have been brutally arrested and detained. Others have been sent to remote labor camps, where the regime plans to "reeducate" them on matters of faith. However, as the situation worsens in China and more Christians are persecuted, the U.S. is letting the opportunity to demand better behavior slip away on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Rather than leverage the influence of the international community to pressure the Chinese to clean up their act, the State Department has taken an unusually mild approach to the scores of human rights violations perpetrated by China. Just months before Beijing takes the global stage as host of the 2008 Games, China is absent from the list of the world's most "systematic human rights violators" in the latest U.S. report. Instead, the Chinese were listed with other nations which "continue to deny citizens basic human rights."

The administration's position undermines human rights advocates around the world who see the Olympics as a chance to prod China to end its cycle of abuse. Now the State Department seems more intent on befriending the Chinese than spotlighting their legacy of violence and oppression. Calls and letters which called for U.S. intervention in the case of 21 captive pastors, continues to go unanswered by the administration.