The London Games have sparked debates in China about everything from
the country’s obsession with winning to its victim mentality. Melinda
Liu and Paul Mooney on the lessons learned.
Gabby Douglas’s mother declared bankruptcy. Ryan Lochte’s family faces
foreclosure on their home. Years of spending huge sums, with little
outside assistance, to prepare their kids to become Olympic heroes
leaves many U.S. families on the brink of financial disaster.
The Bird's Nest, for example, has no clearly defined purpose after the Games -- and no roof to protect it during the city's frigid winters and hot, rainy summers.
As a great Los Angeles area resident, I appreciate how the LA Games broke even. From a prestige view point China did an amazing job of hosting the Olympics and showing the world how advanced they are. And a lot of infrastructure was built, but at a cost of $42 Billion Dollars.
A co-worker at the trade show from China asked me what made the most impression at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. So, I answered with what came to mind first. Milli Vanilli at the Beijing Olympics about the older girl who lip synced a song sung by a younger girl. And since she lives in China, she did not know about this (it's been censored) and said they just used pre-recorded music. I disagreed, and I showed her using my iPhone a picture of the two girls and an article Beijing Olympics: Faking scandal over girl who 'sang' in opening. And after some translation from another co-worker, she left to walk around the tradeshow. Not the type of conversation I really wanted to have.
When she got back I mentioned how I found the most spectacular part to be the person running around the ceiling, but the entire opening ceremony was amazing. Which was the answer she was looking for! She replied she really liked the drumming.
She thought the London opening ceremony may be very good, and I commented it won't match the Beijing opening ceremony, There will not be anything like it again. I need to watch what I say, because my answers can get a lot deeper than people expect, especially about subjects I have thought about a bit and done some analysis, like the Beijing Olympics. Part of the conversation also got into how much the Beijing Olympics cost, and I commented it's a good question if that was a good use of the money since there are so many other pressing issues in China (Sichuan earthquake, environmental, schooling, etc.), but I said that the world definitely saw how far China has advanced with the Olympics as a nation in wealth and technology.
My last post for a while on the Olympics, I thought yesterday was but this article came up. What Next for China?
There are two schools of thought.
1 - The Olympics were so positive for China recognizing that China is now a major world power economically and this was evident to the major world leaders who attended, as well as the Chinese people. This helps sustain the legitimacy of the ruling communist party and their policies. With this the Chinese government will open up more since they feel less threatened.
2 - The Olympics were so successful because of the huge amount of state control from the huge police presence to keeping out potentially pesky foreigners to China's Gold Medal results to the amazing images shown world wide and to the Chinese people. This will actually result in keeping the increased tighter control of the media in order to move China forward economically.
I am not sure. China has a lot of challenges in the years ahead, and the Olympics are done and can no longer be used as a justification. I wonder if China's government is going to look for some other justification to use in making decisions.
Will they help the self confidence of China overall, and reduce the worrisome extreme nationalism that pops up from time to time? Christian Monitor seems to think so. Using this measurement it seems a success. Only cost was $40 Billion.
For those who watched the opening ceremonies that was just amazing, the goose stepping soldiers were a low point. My Grandmother who I was sitting next to and built Liberty Ships during the war did not like the image at all. A few negatives also came to light, such as the lip syncing.
I am glad that China is getting a chance to show off to the world how far it has come in the world. And they have done an amazing job with world class sporting facilities, an amazing opening ceremony, and Chinese athletes winning a huge amount of Gold Medals.
Some areas that I feel are hurting China's reputation that were avoidable:
I am curious if the HUGE amount of publicity for the Olympics in Beijing is causing a spike in Learning Chinese, and that the interest in Learning Chinese will go down after the Olympics is over.
I have seen an increased interest in Learning Chinese at my site, but this may be due to other reasons than the Olympics. Or perhaps it's this wonderful blog - or may be something else that makes up for my blog :-)
Unfortunately, some official (politburo) decided that the 7 year old, Yang Peiyi, who really sang for a lip syncing 9 year old had teeth that were too crooked, so she was pulled at the last moment. And now the Chinese government is using the great firewall of China to remove all mention of this faux pa from the Chinese Internet, blogs, and web pages. Shades of Milli Vanilli.
Quote that justified this...
"We have a responsibility to face the audience of the whole country, and to be open with this explanation. We should all understand it is like this: it is a question of the national interest. It is a question of the image of our national music, our national culture. Especially at the entrance of our national flag, this is an extremely important, an extremely serious matter."—Chen Qigang, musical designer
I am glad President Bush made it to the Olympics, and also opened a bigger embassy in China for the US. This will have a lasting impact to improve US China relations.
Some of the actions the last couple of days were interesting.
President Bush in China makes speech in Thailand in areas China needs to improve. Arrives in Beijing and aides and reporters on jet were delayed 3 hours. Another speech in Beijing much nicer. Grand opening of new embassy. Great appearance at the Olympics, all smiles.
My opinion, the speech in Thailand was to give political cover for having a pleasant trip in Beijing, and the 3 hours delay was China's quiet way of saying they did not appreciate the speech right before the Olympics.
In the future, children will have to know foreign languages to be competitive in the job market, and “Chinese should be at the top of the list to learn
Sometimes when you try to hard you can actually fail because of that. I have that feeling that China is trying so hard to have the perfect Olympics, that has resulted in negative publicity.
Sometimes the best action is not to react, and just let people vent/protest. But by bringing attention to a protect, such as Mr. Cheek the head of Team Darfur and former Olympian, by taking away his visa, they have instantly given him a huge amount of free publicity. It's like with children, by giving attention to certain behavior, you are actually rewarding it.
And don't even get me started on the bugging of taxis and installing spy gear in hotels. Is it really necessary? I can understand the need to avoid another Munich, but the cost is showing a negative image of China.
Sad - Scuffles at Olympic Ticket Sales between some Hong Kong Reporters covering it and police after problems with an out of control crowd trying to get olympic tickets stampeded, and there was a video of the fight.
During the Olympics business is not as usual, and video cameras in cell phones are changing all the rules...
Olympic rings transform China from the SF Chronicle. For better and worse, China is changing because of the Olympics. The question will the positives last? I hope the negatives don't.
An interesting quote:
"Competition and the desire to defeat one's peers would have been repugnant in classical China," Johnson said. "So the Olympics are profoundly un-Chinese."
But we are not in classical China, and I would argue since the 1949 revolution there has been many changes in the culture & society in Mainland China.
Olympic visitors' data is at risk - basically your PDA, laptop, and cell phone are at risk if anyone in China is interested in you. Viruses, bugs, etc. can all happen. A business executive found a couple of attempts on his PDA. A US government official may have had his laptop copied.
Of course coming back through US customs, your PDA, Laptop, and Cell Phone can be looked at and the data copied by US customs.
China's Odyssey from the WSJ. Interesting article about Chinese Nationalism, history of the Olympics, and recent events. The article makes a lot of good points, but I don't agree with it 100%.
A quote from the article that is food for thought and would be a great prompt for a class:
Chinese nationalism -- with its belief in the Darwinian struggle of nations -- is rather anachronistic, and so are the Olympic Games.
My belief - It would be nice if this belief belonged to another time (anachronistic), but truthfully most countries don't believe this and certainly don't act that way.
The comments about nationalism in the article are good. The author has a web site www.ianburuma.com/ and studied Chinese Literature.
