Tong Shan University, Zhuhai, China, May 12, 2008

“Why do the people in France hate us?” a second year student, one of almost three hundred seated in the large lecture hall, askedme. “They tried to attack the Olympic torch when it was passing through Paris. Is that because they don’t like our country?” For a split second, I was speechless. I knew the answer to the Chinese student’s question. So, I imagine, do you. The answer was: the French demonstrators were particularly angry about the Chinese government’s crackdown in Tibet, as well as their violation of human rights. With the Beijing Olympics only a few months away, however,my Chinese hosts had specifically asked me not to talk about Tibet on this ten-day book tour that they were hosting. They worked for a government-run publishing house that had just translated my most recent book "Leading Through Conflict" into Mandarin, and they did not want to risk their own positions. For that instant, which seemed like an eternity, I could not decide what to say. Do I violate my host’s request and jeopardize the rest of the trip? Do I assert that their government is at fault? Or do I sidestep the question?

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