Mao and Minneapolis

"Charter Schools Shouldn't Promote Islam." That headline for an oped piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago just as easily could have run above a Chinese newspaper story with a dateline from the province of Xinjiang. And therein lies an insight for Westerners visiting Beijing for the Olympics.

The Journal article recounted the controversy surrounding a Muslim academy in Minneapolis, Minn. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Minnesota Department of Education, and others have questioned whether the school's religious practices make public funding of it improper.

Separation between church and state is one of the bedrock principles that guide America: Congress may not act on religion. No matter how enduring the principle, however, in its application the line has shifted back and forth across the national landscape for more than 300 years, and it has been the centerpiece of some of America's most celebrated constitutional litigation.

China is wrestling with the line between church and state, too. The Chinese government today appears moderately comfortable with religious practices that remain unorganized and non-political. An increasing number of Chinese identify themselves as believers and even practitioners. What makes the Communist Party squirm and sometimes react with hostility is the mixture of religion with politics, whether by Buddhists in Tibet, Muslims in Xinjiang, or Falun Gong anywhere. Indeed, the Chinese leadership is considerably more sanguine about democracy in politics — even occasionally promotional — than it is about monks or mullahs as political leaders.

Why?

China and the rest of the world can debate the importance of individual freedom — whether it matters to most Chinese, about the extent to which freedom to worship exists in China today, and about how much freer China is today than in decades or centuries past. But there's not much argument in China about national unity. As political values go, national unity is as important in China as the Magna Carta in England or the Bill of Rights in the United States.

In the West, and particularly in the United States, we get nervous when religion mixes with government, because we worry about religious freedom. When a religious movement takes on political overtones in China, the government — and many, many Chinese citizens — worry about national unity and political stability.

This is what's animating the crisis over Tibet. National unity is as big a deal in China as it is in America, which, after all, fought a civil war to preserve its union. Most Chinese and many Tibetans feel strongly that Tibet has been a part of China for a long time, and they suggest that Americans and Europeans who defend the legitimacy of the occupation and settlement of North America by their ancestors are applying a double standard in their criticism of Chinese policies in Tibet.

Many Chinese, however, mistakenly believed that the West's sympathetic response to the Tibetan protests reflected a desire for a weakened and divided China when, in fact, Western reactions seemed largely rooted in genuine concerns over religious freedom and cultural expression. Abiding concerns for human freedoms are not inconsistent with wanting a united and confident China to become truly engaged with the rest of the world.

China would benefit enormously from a more sophisticated understanding of Western public opinion, press relations, and techniques of issues management. Rightly or wrongly, the Dalai Lama is generally regarded with affection and respect in the West, so terms like splittist, hooligan, and the Dalai clique were bound to be cognitively dissonant. And it might have been wiser to recruit bobbies and gendarmes as guards for the Olympic torch in London and Paris instead of relying on 30 big guys straight out of central casting.

The fact is that though the Olympics Games constitute a grand celebration of sport, they are also the world's largest stage. The Chinese government may expect the athletes, visitors, and thousands of reporters to behave themselves, but it is naïve to expect that people accustomed to self-expression will simply check their individual views, opinions, and biases in a cloakroom at the border.

But it would also be naïve for Westerners sympathetic with Tibetan monks who demand greater freedom for religious and cultural practices to suppose that the Tibetans are agitating for some Jeffersonian ideal. The monks want to cross the line between church and state and reassert a more central political role for the temples and dzongs — a fact that the people of Minnesota fighting to retain their secular school system would appreciate.

It would be good for both Olympic guests and hosts to remember, as we say in American politics, that where you stand depends on where you sit.

Mr. Cutler is the resident partner in charge of the Beijing office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.