In the Case of the Beijing Olympic Games, China Falls Short of Even the Bronze Medal

The timing of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is crucial for China because of significant political issues at play, issues that the spirit of the Games mask, and ones that the international community cannot ignore. China is an unsportsmanlike player--from its poor labor standards to its economic and often political support of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan to the organ harvesting rampant throughout the country to its failure to meet Kyoto environmental standards to the forced sterilization of its populace. In a true Olympic competition, China would be disqualified.

The "Olympic Dream," to most, connotes something that transcends money or power--the universality of the human spirit. Practically, this translates into the world's greatest athletes coming together in one city for what is usually a once in a lifetime chance to show that they are the world's best. But, for the host country, the "Olympic Dream" means something different. Beneath the ideals of sportsmanship and universal personhood is a political narrative, one of power, prestige and the right to be recognized as an equal world power.

Just as every other host nation before it, China will use the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as a platform to showcase itself to the world--not for the higher calling of the athletes and the "Dream," but for the opportunity to carve out a political presence for itself as a modern, powerful nation that truly embodies the Games' carefully chosen slogan of "One World, One Dream."

While China is busy presenting an ideal of itself to the world next summer, governments and activists have been hard at work to dispel these illusions and ensure the presentation of the other side of this nation of human rights, labor and environmental abuses. In response, the Chinese government pulls the Olympic card--peace, friendship and universal camaraderie--striving to veil its own political motivations.

There are times when geo-political realities require governments as well as activists to use every resource at their disposal to bring attention to issues that run in such deep opposition to the values that the Games supposedly represent, and the Olympics is clearly one of those resources. In some of the most significant points in twentieth century history, governments have used the Olympics as political tools. Hitler drew upon the 1936 Berlin Games to showcase the vitality and prosperity of Germany and to hide from the world his ensuing war and Holocaust. Once Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 during the height of the Cold War, President Jimmy Carter saw sending the US team to the Moscow Games the following year as a political hypocrisy, forcing a boycott.

International governments and activists have not only the moral calling but the responsibility to bring attention to China's destructive behavior. Next summer, as the debutante Chinese government presents itself to the world, we risk never exposing a balanced, truthful narrative.

Let us lay to rest the argument that we should dispel politics from the Olympics. Politics underlie host governments' motivations, with China nothing less than the norm. Most Americans agree. A 2007 Zogby poll, published in the September 23, 2007 edition of The New York Times Magazine, suggested that 59 percent of Americans supported human rights organizations using the Olympics as an opportunity to protest China's human rights policies, as opposed to 32 percent who opposed the idea.

China has proven resolute in its unresponsiveness to many of these human rights and environmental claims. If it has responded, it has done so in the form of lip service, showing a deep complicity in a set of power relations that have led to the continued disempowerment of millions of people, whether within the Republic itself or abroad.

If we allow the international community simply to accept the Beijing Games as the Chinese present it, we will concede a great, undeserving misperception. For, the true realization of "One World, One Dream" means the promotion of the human condition--whether Chinese, Burmese, Sudanese, or American. And, in this event, China falls short of even the bronze medal.

Comments

[guillermodeaguas]

While I do agree with the author that China is home to a great deal of human rights abuses, boycotting the Olympics would be an ineffectual form of protest. Boycotting the Olympics while simultaneously investing in factories and other business in China sends a mixed message to the world. 59 percent of people would support using a boycott of the Olympics as a method to protest human rights abuses. However, it would be hard to believe that the same amount of people would be willing to boycott direct foreign investment into the country. The desire of individual Americans to buy cheap goods and the desire of American corporations to maximize shareholder returns would outweigh their qualms about Chinese human rights abuses. Without showing the world that Americans would be willing to make a sacrifice, any sort of protest over Chinese human rights abuses would ring hollow.

In response to Mad Dog's post, pointing out the failings of the United States does not make China less guilty of human rights abuses. The reference to Jim Crow America could be applied to any nation of the same time period. Also, the label of the United States as a country "whose greed is famous" could be applied to China as well. The economic development in China has not been an equitable process, benefiting city-dwelling citizens at the expense of the majority of the population living in the countryside.

[pidgen43]

Here is more information on China's economic ties with the Darfur genocide: http://sudandivestment.org/docs/petrochina_cnpc_sudan.pdf. This is a really important link to make, as China and the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation is doing the same thing in Burma now too.

[flatus]

I love that China is planning to to shutdown their pollution mills before and during the Olympics. At least, attendees will be able to see the playing field. God bless 'em.

[TXfemmom]

My son has worked in China, and he seriously doubts that the Chinese will pull off any kind of semblance of an organized, functioning Olympics. He attended a major event in Shanghai, while working there, and that was just a year ago, and the thing was a horrible mess. It was a major racing event, and he said they did not have proper toilet facilities, as in practically none, the food facilities could handle perhaps ten percent of the demand, sources of water and drinks were massively deficient, and the government was really keen that the thing go off well.

Perhaps, their blunders at The Olympics, including their pollution problems, will finally jolt the world into understanding what China is.