To Mrs Jane Macartney: You have made a big mistake! We Chinese think your commnet is based on bias and discrimination, which is hardly to be accepted by Chinese all over the world. I think you are going astray.

madeline, SHANGHAI, China

I think its sad that communist China has been awarded Olympic games which symbolize freedom and competition between nations of the world.

The free world should certainly use this event to highlight China's dismal record of cultural genocide in Tibet. When one understands what the PRC has done to Tibet throught tearing down traditional ethnic cultural buildings and by flooding the region with ethnic Chinese its rather sobering.

I plan to boycott the olympics in a commercial sense. Boycott key sponsors and protest PRC's occupation and oppression of Tibet at the Torch ceremony in my area.

How can any free person stand for rewarding China when they act this way against the ethnic Tibetan people?

Gabe, San Francisco, CA

I hope that the Times wouldn't give in to these jingoistic rancour in China. I don't think you need to be more sensitive about how you cover China as long as you try your best to be accurate and fair. I don't think you can ever please these nationalistic people on issues like Tibet unless you compromise the integrity of your paper.

As a Chinese, I think the boycott of the Olympics could be counterproductive. But Western leaders should put more pressure on Chinese government to improve human rights conditions.

Yun Zhang, London,

Was Jane Macartney in Tibet during or after the riot?

Frank, San Francisco,

Whether it's in the name of freedom or any other value, the use of coercive measures rarely, if ever, works when it comes to the territorial integrity of large nations. Those who ask to indulge in a quixotic quest should ask themselves whose interests they are truly serving by injecting further rancor and hatred into the world community.

It may be wrong for China to have acted repressively in Tibet, but to exploit this fact to salve the world's fragile and often hypocriical conscience is difficult to justify.

Harvey Dent, Southfield, Iowa

This row has the potential to do much damage to Chinese-Western relations and to Chinese internal development. Having lived in China for nearly two years I only ever receive one reaction from the Chinese people I meet in relation to the Olympics: they are excited and proud of it.

It is for them a symbol of the progress and a validation of opening-up and engagement with the West. Almost all Chinese consider the war in Iraq to have been in blatant violation of international law. They see Western criticism as hypocritical. Where are the calls to boycott visiting America because of Guantanamo Bay? We should not forget the progress China has made in lifting 500 million people out of absolute poverty. Is that not an issue of human rights?

Nationalism is strong in China, a pressure valve which in some ways acts in the place of democracy to relieve social tensions.

If the world moves to boycott the Olympics the Chinese people will stand with, not against, their government.

Tom, London, UK

Boycotting the games costs us nothing. No lives are lost and the Chinese lose face, that most precious gem of self-idealism. The stance of the Times is not creditable. If one of her correspondence can be vilified by the Chinese for communicating the truth, a single individual terrorised by a State machine for her candour, if we cannot extrapolate that repression to a whole nation, as with Tibet, then we as a nation that has competed on the world stage in the freedom and liberty stakes, have failed. The pursuance of such aims becomes a matter of opportunism and not a rule. Talk all you may about the handful of people that forego a flickering second of notoriety then reflect upon the millions for whom that light will be snuffed for ever; it is a small sacrifice, not worth a candle. It is all too easy to proclaim fine words, be emotional and attempt authority from afar but this is an instance where rhetoric is not enough and where not talking is most apposite.

Malcolm Turner, Alsager, England

There's a difference between being civil and being correct, and good media -- Western or not -- needs to be both. It may be acceptable to be uncivil at times when faced with the possibility of corruption or human rights abuses, but there is no excuse for being wrong; and numerous newspapers have at some times gotten basic facts wrong about the riots in Tibet.

David, Houston, TX

Western media is objective? It's a joke! No media is objective, because they must work for their or their country's interest. What's the western media's interest? Split China before she is too strong to split.

Peter, Seattle, WA

This incident shows the prejudice of Western's media, China is doing her best to change, the view of the Western countries should also change.

Grace, Hong Kong,

Interesting you mentioned Thomas Bowlby. He was imprisoned, tortured by a Mongol general and died in prison. In the context of Han vs Tibetan context, it does weaken your point a bit.

James, Seattle, U.S.A