Must be nice to have your very own newspaper if you're a government. You can use the organ to call on the government to commit all sorts of unspeakable acts and pretend it's the "will of the people."

In the case of the Tibet crackdown, the official Chinese Communist newspaper has called on the government to "resolutely crush" the protestors in Tibet while trying to prove that the rest of the world thinks it's a dandy idea:

Fighting back against the criticism, Beijing has begun releasing tallies of statements of support from foreign governments and trying to get its version of events before the international community.

"It is a clear proof that the international community is on the side of China," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, which reported that 100 governments have endorsed China's handling of the protests.

China's government has portrayed the protests as having been instigated by supporters of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

"We must see through the secessionist forces' evil intentions, uphold the banner of maintaining social stability ... and resolutely crush the 'Tibet independence' forces' conspiracy," the People's Daily said in an editorial.

China’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet is having powerful political reverberations in Washington, where the White House is weighing how far to go in condemning the Chinese government, even as it defends President Bush’s decision to attend the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.

In the meantime, the presidential candidates are speaking out, as is the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. On Friday, Ms. Pelosi visited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, at his headquarters in Dharamsala, India — and poked a finger in the eye of Beijing.

Describing the clashes in the past week between Chinese security forces and Tibetan demonstrators as “a challenge to conscience of the world,” Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”