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| XXVI Modern Olympic Games |
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 The Iceberg of Chinese powerIn the past few days, an import company from Serbia has been advertising on the TV a line of Chinese construction machines with the promise that these machines are the very same as the ones used to create the architectural wonders of the Beijing Olympic Games. By Vladan Alimpijević, Photo: Fonet Such adverts mark a massive upheaval in the world’s perception of China. Ever since their economic reforms began, goods of Chinese origin have been synonymous with cheapness and low quality. The words “made in China” evoke images of counterfeit goods, regardless of whether or not the production company in question actually holds an impressive portfolio of recognised international brands. The 26th Olympic Games are helping to change this perception. Nothing that the organizers of these Games have shown the world so far could be considered cheap or low quality. Ever since the decision in Sydney that Beijing would host the next Olympics, it was clear that it would be the most controlled project in Chinese history, a project to be given absolute priority. The separation of sports from politics was viewed as the main task for the ruling communist party. In organizing the games, China recognised a chance to show the world just how powerful and organised it can be. Beijing was the place for the country to declare that it was a serious candidate for becoming a super power in a political, economic and even sporting sense of the word. 
It could be said that the Financial Times commentator who said that similar ambitions with regards to organizing Olympic Games were seen in Germany in 1936, Japan in 1964 and even Korea in 1988, was pretty tasteless. But after Hitler’s Olympic Games it was quite clear which direction Germany was taking. After the games in Tokyo, the world stopped joking about Japanese electronics. Sony, JVC and Panasonic were no longer considered inferior to Siemens or Philips. However, there’s a big difference between these examples and the current Games in China: in the West, the nationalist-socialist Germany, South Korea and Japan were all viewed as friends, or at least allies. China may be a desirable partner for the West, but it’s certainly not a friend. China’s enormous economic success, based on the introduction of the free market and globalisation, led to the West becoming even more fearful. In terms of the average Chinese citizen, the envy felt towards the high living standard in the West is now increasingly being replaced by a state policy of contempt towards the Americanised world.As much as the Chinese system of a free economy and its results resemble that of the US, they are two distinct systems. This competition is being played out almost symbolically at the 2008 Games, with both sides anxious to win as many medals as possible. China wants everything to run smoothly and without incident so that the world will see that the Chinese have a dream as well as the Americans. To illustrate this, let us just mention a Chinese backstroke swimmer who, due to unintentional consumption of an additive in his pork, was banned for life from competing at the games by the National Anti-Doping Commission. This is a much harsher penalty than the one laid out by the international rules. Winning in sports, just like in the economy, needs to be ’clean’. Chinese media are speculating that the poor results by the US athletes and some of them giving up on competing are just the result of a rigorous anti-doping control. In addition to money and know-how, China has invested a lot of emotion into the Olympic Games. This was obvious at the spectacular opening ceremony. In front of over 80 heads of state and governments and athletes, the “Bird’s Nest” - the Olympic stadium built to the highest aesthetic and technological standards - shone in all its glory. Even a critic of the government's human rights record Ai Weiwei, the designer of the Bird's Nest stadium, wrote an article in The Guardian on his hopes for a new era of openness in the country: "For the past 30 years we have dismantled barriers, opened doors and windows, been dazzled by sunshine and felt the wind of profound change. In the Olympics, we expect to witness new heights of effort and hope, speed and strength, that will inspire China to lift the pace of reform, to be more determined, more courageous and more at peace with ourselves." After a build-up like that, reality is bound to kick in, hard. It would have been difficult not to feel proud of being Chinese during the 16 days of the Olympics. The Games were just the top of the iceberg of Chinese power. China has shown that the country’s political system, completely unfounded in theory, and to use the Communist language, “utterly revisionist”, is really functioning. This image is exactly what Chinese political leaders want us to see. It is difficult to imagine how the enormity of power in a country still full of poor people, and how it will affect the rest of the world. Maybe African countries could serve as guidelines with tens of billions worth of Chinese investments. We should remind ourselves that IBM computers haven’t suffered in terms of quality or profit now that they are called Lenova, and are produced under the Chinese flag. This new Chinese expansion, on a scale not seen since the 15th century when Chinese ships made it to Arabian and African shores, has found its symbol – the Olympic Games. 
Since March this year, it seemed that the staging of the Games was in clear jeopardy. Travelling around the world, the Olympic flame was met with storm of protests coming from people supporting the Tibetan quest for an independent state. Human rights activists pointed to the number of people in China being persecuted, and that the figure was much higher than simply the number of Tibetans or Muslims in the north east of the country. Various environmental organizations said that the Olympic Games would just increase the pollution of an already polluted environment. Politically speaking, such protests have been met with approval from many states. Russia, Canada and the USA know what it’s like to boycott the Games so the number of demands to boycott the ones in Beijing steadily grew. Of course such events also mean big business for companies around the world, and the so-called “boomerang effect” would effect those others proposing the boycott too, if to a somewhat smaller extent. Beijing remained firm, and to get the Games made specific commitments with regard to human rights and freedom of speech to the International Olympic Committee. Like the quality of the air the athletes are going compete in, Beijing has come up short on the standards it set for itself. The IOC wasn’t that successful in enforcing the contract that was signed by Beijing, with the grey, humid smog that hung over the city yesterday providing a useful metaphor for the whole debate. The authorities said that the air quality was fairly good but, like the human rights issue, it is all a question of where you start from. The air is better than it has been, but nowhere near as clean as Beijing promised. In the sporting sense, even if the Chinese were not the most successful nation when it came to the total number of medals, the most important thing would be whether or not they had won more golds than their biggest competitors, the Americans. There were only two true stars at the Games: the phenomenal US swimmer, Michael Phelps, the winner of 8 gold medals, and Jamaican Usain Bolt who set a new world record of 19.30 seconds in the Men's 200m final to take the gold medal in this event. Bolt is the first man to win the 100m and 200m in the same Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984. 
If the world is set to change after these Olympics, there can be no doubt that China will too, in a political sense. At no other time in history have so many foreigners and so many Chinese citizens been thrown together for such a long time. China may not have kept all of its promises concerning the Games, but did make a good show of goodwill and responsibility. This is something that the state will have to carry forward from here, and not just with regard to human rights and the environment. China will now have to find a balance between the state and its citizens, between the private and the public. In the world of the WTO, IMF and the UN, the rift between rich and poor has grown to affect whole countries and not just groups of individuals. China needs to prove that its system of government and economics are effective enough to do something to close this gap. They need to show that their system can provide for and satisfy their own people, or the rest of the world will soon not be able to help noticing.So much reform, construction and endeavour as has been seen would not have been possible in any Western democracies. Relocating hundreds of thousands of people and bringing in so many construction workers to attempt such a complete transformation and training athletes to world standard in hitherto unheard of sports is a testament to China’s system of government. The $50 billion investment in the Olympics appears to have paid off, and in a way, the Games themselves almost took a back seat to the real spectacle. Čavić vs. Phelps Serbian swimmer Milorad Čavić was closest to beating the best athlete of the Beijing Olmypic Games. In the 100m butterfly, Čavić was leading the whole time, but Phelps won by less than one hundredth of a second. Serbia lodged a complaint to the judges’ decision, but dropped it in the end. The US swimmer was a clear winner in every of other seven races. Generation Gap The youngest competitors seemed to be the biggest stumbling block and the subject of many discussions at the Games. Due to age limitations, there were suspicions that certain athletes, primarily the Chinese female gymnasts, had forged their birth certificates and that some of them were not even thirteen years old. At the same time, the athletes who were well into their 50s won the biggest number of medals at the Olympics so far. A Country Divided A total of 10,500 athletes took part in competing in 302 events in 28 sports, one event more than scheduled for the 2004 games.[2] The 2008 Beijing Olympics will also mark the third time that Olympic events will have been held in the territories of two different National Olympic Committees (NOCs), as the equestrian events are being held in Hong Kong. China proud The Western press has been awash in coverage of all the negative aspects of China’s Games. There’s horrendous pollution in Beijing, which has forced entire teams to train off-shore in South Korea or Japan and wear masks for much of their stay. China’s continuing ethnic unrest exploded again last week in the western province of Xinjiang in an attack by a group of Uighurs, an ethnic minority, on a Chinese police post. And the heavy hand of the regime, which is still blocking many Internet sites during the Games, has cracked down on dissidents. But nearly all of the media have been unanimous on one positive point: Average Chinese citizens are immensely proud of these Olympics. Thousands of Chinese, “many without event tickets, flock to Beijing to bask in national pride,” read the subhead to a recent Washington Post story. “Even the cynical succumb to a moment of real national pride,” read a New York Times headline. Indeed, many Chinese are proud of being able to stage such an important event. |