The Olympics: about winning gold or improving sport? – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Winning gold medals has been key at the recent Tokyo Olympic Games 2020, with China as one of the major winners. But is that what the Olympics should be about, wonders China veteran Ian Johnson at the Council for Foreign Relations. It should give people in western countries pause to think about China’s course—is it really so brutal, or just a reflection of a system that we all, wittingly or not, follow, asks Ian Johnson.

Ian Johnson

For many, a quick glance at the Olympics medals table reinforces the idea of China as a threat—a country pursuing victory at any cost. Its surge up the table in recent years seems like a perfect allegory for its rising military and economic power—a modern-day Soviet Union that uses a state-sponsored sports machine to game its way to international glory.

The numbers buttress this view. As of Thursday, the People’s Republic sits atop the gold medal race with thirty-four to twenty-nine for the United States. But it has relatively few silver and bronze, a sign that resources have been aimed at disciplines with a higher probability of success. This perception is reinforced by golds being concentrated in a few sports: relatively marginal, rarely involving teams, and disproportionately female.

These are smart choices for winning gold. But it feels against the spirit of the Olympics—the work of a sports bureaucracy that aims to win in the standings rather than create a national sporting culture that organically produces elite athletes.

These concerns are legitimate, but focusing them on China is wrong. Instead, we should recognize that China is little different that other countries at the top—including the United States. Rather than challenging or upending the international system created by western countries over the past century, China is trying to win in Tokyo the same way as rich countries: by spending huge amounts of money on elite sports.

The role model for these sports programs is the old Soviet Union. Today, the last vestige of this system is Russia. Like the USSR, Russia is a relatively poor country and is fighting a losing battle for Olympic glory—perhaps reflected in its athletes’ repeated penalties for doping. Still, it clings near the top, not quite as good as in the old days but still punching above its weight…

China’s sports machine is more transparent. This is not meant to relativize the pain and suffering of those who don’t make it in China, or the gross inequality of a relatively poor country investing heavily in sports. But it should give people in western countries pause to think about China’s course—is it really so brutal, or just a reflection of a system that we all, wittingly or not, follow?

More at the Council for Foreign Relations.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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China's changing attitude towards white people - Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo

When opening and reform of China took off, Western visitors were received as saviors. But that attitude has changed dramatically, writes Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo at SupChina. "While I full-throatedly decry this kind of anti-foreignism, I think at some level it’s entirely natural, and I’m actually thankful that it’s kept mostly in check," he says.

Kaiser Kuo:

But as the Olympics approached, China’s growing online population in China had both the means and the incentive to see what the rest of the world was saying about their country. This was a generation that had been taught English — well, taught enough English, anyway, to understand when China’s honor was being besmirched. And they clearly believed it was being besmirched, constantly. Comments sections on any online media allowing comments exploded with vitriol, coming to a real boil in March of 2008 in a groundswell of Chinese anger over Western (read: American) reporting on the Lhasa riot of that month. This was the time of AntiCNN.com, and of the fenqing — 愤青, the “angry youth.” Ensuing months saw things worsen, with protests against the Olympic torch relay in some Western capitals touching off retaliatory boycotts (most notably of the French store Carrefour). 

More importantly, in the first decade of the century and still more in this one, Chinese were traveling, studying, and working abroad much, much more than had been the case in the early days of reform and opening. Not surprisingly, the rose-colored glasses came off, and the picture they formed of Western society — always a comparative exercise — was colored now by the changes they had seen in China. 

While I full-throatedly decry this kind of anti-foreignism, I think at some level it’s entirely natural, and I’m actually thankful that it’s kept mostly in check. It lacks, mercifully, a religious tradition around which it might congeal (unlike, say, Hindutva, or various Islamic nationalisms, or extreme forms of Christianity). The party-state keeps the embers glowing because it’s occasionally useful for the rally-round-the-flag effect. But it recognizes the double-edged nature of it and doesn’t allow it to flare up uncontrollably. 

As for the second part of this question — “Conversely, what do old Chinese think about the young Chinese attitude towards white people?” — my sense is that there’s a wide range of responses to it. Some are sympathetic, and perhaps even embarrassed over any sycophancy they might once have evinced. Some are probably analytical about it, and see it as natural for many of the same reasons I’ve sketched out. And some doubtless see it as dangerously hubristic — and shake their heads sadly at the irony that these angry youngsters should take on the same pathologies they profess to loathe in the Westerners.

More at SupChina.

Kaiser Kuo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau. Do check out this list.  

More internet blocks abolished

In China, when you predict trends, you always keep your fingers crossed, but this time I seem to have been very much spot-on.
My analysis said last week that ahead of the Olympics, the internet censorship would become much more subtle and illustrated this with a few new features. That trend has now continued as also Wikipedia, blogspot and others are unblocked. Danwei does not believe yet it will stay, but unless the new censorship system is an obvious failure (a partly failure would not be that bad, since the system has never been flawless) the url-blocks will be gone.

Who can go to the Beijing Olympics?

Danwei quoted earlier an entry in a newsletter by Access Asia, bearing the hallmarks of Chinabiz Speaker Paul French, where he wondered who would actually visit the Beijing Olympics. Unlike Paul, I have at least one friend who is very sure he will be there, but I must admit, that is not enough to fill a stadium.

So, I was a bit surprised when I noted a headline by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf announcing that almost all flights to Beijing for the Olympics in 2008 were sold out already. The Dutch are mostly pretty serious about planning their holidays and most households would have reached an agreement about their summer destination by Christmas. But one year ahead? Was here a hype brewing I had been missing?

The article itself showed the explanation. Almost all tickets to Beijing, about 6,000, have been bought for the Dutch Olympic Committee and related organizations. So, no hype, only a terrible shortage of flight tickets is developing. I do expect a similar pattern in other European countries. Even if European enthusiasts might want to come to China in that period, there are not enough tickets. Expansion of the flight capacity is hardly possible, so Beijing might have another problem in getting European to the Olympics. They cannot come, unless they arrive a month earlier.

Beijing Olympics has its own nail house

You might still remember those nail houses in Chongqing, Shenzhen and Shanghai? Angry house owners did not want to leave for the bulldozers. Well, Beijing has its own and today it made it to the International Herald Tribune.
Sun Ruoyu is fighting to retain a 1840 bakery that is unfortunately on the route of the marathon of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. They can make a detour, can't they?

Cleaning up Beijing before the Olympics

In my search for new speakers at our now very soon starting speakers bureau I bumbed into this website by Beijing resident Gilbert van Kerckhove, also advisor of the Beijing government regarding the Olympics next year.
On his weblog he describes the still unclear features of what will happen to Beijing during the Olympics and it is not a happy story.

Yesterday I met a lawyer with office in Jianwei SOHO. They received notice they will not be allowed to operate during 3 weeks. SOHO to be closed. Forced holidays. Hm…. interesting. Switch off your computers, lock the door and come back later. More puzzling, many firms in SOHO - and other buildings - will have a peak of workload during the Games as they will be involved in organizing events, assisting visiting foreign colleagues and clients, and much more.

Foreign residents are already planning a holiday in Thailand during the Olympics, he suggests. A much needed call for sanity.

China Development Brief ordered to close

Authorities in Beijing have ordered the leading publication on NGO-activities in China, the China Development Brief, to close its Chinese edition. reports Time at its blog.

Nick Young, founder of the publication that has been around since 1996, keeps hope:

"My hope is that these actions have been precipitated by zealous security officers," he says, "and that more senior figures in the government and Communist Party will realize that actions of this kind are not in China's best interest."

The publication was, according to the local security officials both "illegal" and conducting "illegal surveys". The closure, last week, comes at a time when China seems busy in trying to control non-governmental activities by foreigners, one year ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Earlier a US group also accused China of deporting over one hundred foreign missionaries from China.

While those acts are obvious going to be an embarrassment for the central government, zealous local official might have their own interpretation of what is needed in the country.

Nick Young remains faces a 5-year ban from China, but remains optimistic for the time being:

One irony of the moves against the publication is that the China Development Brief, whose motto is "to enhance constructive engagement between China and the world," has editorialized against what Young describes as "more or less openly hostile" Western criticism of China. "I do consider myself to be friend of China," he says. "I think it's a serious problem if the state cannot distinguish between friends and enemies."

Update: I just learned from a press release that the servers of this online publication are based in the UK, making it - if it has any nationality - a British publication that should adhere to British laws and regulations. When the authorities have any misgivings about an online publication, they can block it.
That is most likely why Public Security in Beijing got the local statistics bureau involved and included "illegal surveys" as another offense. I'm not sure how much meat is on that one. Anyway, even if the accusation by the Beijing authorities are illegal, it would not make the life of Nick Young much happier.

Child labor on the rise

picked up from Shanghaiist

Child labor is suddenly an issue in China, where it traditionally was not. Children - especially if you only have a few - are too valuable not to send to school. That is suddenly changing, partly because of a research report into companies that produce products for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The rumor was first denied, then admitted and so now there is a real issue.
Access Asia's Paul French focuses on the issue of the labor shortage in Guangdong:

What a visit to Guangdong would tell you is not a story of worker shortages, but rather one of misallocation. Factories with poor conditions often have no shortages, while cleaner, better and newer factories struggle to staff-up... CSR reps, journalists and sourcers visiting factories around Guangdong report that the age of workers appears to be getting worryingly low, as the search for low end assembly workers intensifies. Add to this some more bad news in the run up to the Olympics (see our advertisers nervous about Darfur piece last week) with stories on the BBC, in the Guardian and from lobby group Play Fair 08 claiming to have found children as young a 12 producing Olympics merchandise in Guangdong (click here). All very worrying.

Even worser charges come from Shanxi province where a group of angry parents have set children free that were used for slave labor. Forty of them were rescued from brick kilns. The action came with a petition on the internet and was earlier this week taken up by the state media. From the AP-report:

It said up to 1,000 boys were being held, but that Shanxi and Henan police had shoved responsibility for investigating onto the other side.
"Our children's safety is everything, but who will help us? With governments on both sides passing the responsibility, where can we go for help?" the petition said.

More at the Wall Street Journal.

Paul French is also a speaker at our upcoming speakers bureau. If you want to book him for a lecture, do let us know.

Press freedom with Chinese characteristics

Over the weekend I discussed with an editor of a Dutch magazine for journalists about press freedom in China, and especially the campaign NGO's have started accusing China of backtracking on its promise to allow foreign journalists do their work without any of the old restriction that were placed on foreign media after June 1989 ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008.
Now, at this stage most looks rather positive, maybe with the exception of Tibet: a few foreign journalists have been called in by the headmaster of the ministry of foreign affairs after they went to Tibet without explicit permission. As far as I know this is the only place in China where all foreigners need permission to go to, and journalists a special one that is hard to get.
But otherwise, when journalists were detained for working in a region without explicit approval, one phone call from Beijing was enough to sort the local officials out.
Probably because their is not so much bad news to tell about the position of foreign journalists, in a strange twist now the position of Chinese journalists has become the issue.

"There is no justification for denying to Chinese journalists even the limited freedoms that their foreign colleagues enjoy," said Richardson. "If China is genuine about press freedom for the Olympics, it must also emancipate its own journalists."

First, the Chinese government has never promised Chinese media would be treated equally as the foreign once, so it is hardly decent to say China is breaking its promises. Further, talking about press freedom in terms of giving journalists more rights is not really helping if the ownership relations in the traditional media do not change. (And I do not see that happening.)
Anyway, the editor generously allocated 250 words to explain this story to a largely ignorant audience.
This morning I was reading this translation by ESWN, an interview in Du Daozheng of Yanhuang Chunqiu and a beautiful example on how China's media are changing. No clue how to summarize that in 250 words.

Beijing needs a few language teachers

The Beijing Olympics are around the corner, but there is still a lot of Chinglish that is close to hilarious. Paul French made this picture in a Beijing hotel and that was picked up by Danwei.

Hu Jintao beats Bush in Time top-100

Liu Qi next to IOC-president Rogge

Time magazine published its list of the top-100 most influential people and again I had to struggle through a list of people I have often never heard off. (Here is the list, here the link to Time.)

US president Bush has lost his position, while his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao still goes strong. Beijing Party Secretary Liu Qi made it and that seems closely connected to his efforts to get the Beijing Olympics in 2008 in place. Liu doubles also as the chairman of the Beijing Olympic Committee.
Of course Time had also to include one of the modern Chinese power brokers with weblogger Zeng Jinya, the wife of dissident Hu Jia, to keep the list nicely balanced.