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China news tagged with: Olympics impact (30)

• China Relishes Olympics Legacy

  

  On the one year anniversary of the opening of the Olympics in Beijing, journalists are reflecting on the legacy of the Games for Beijing and for China. From the Christian Science Monitor:

  One year after Beijing hosted the Summer Games, its impact can be seen in the city’s sporting venues, shiny new infrastructure, and improved air quality, notwithstanding the latest smog. As the world watched, China radiated efficiency, sportsmanship, and pluck, on and off the field.

  But any hopes that the Beijing Olympics would spur more political openness, as members of the Olympics movement had claimed, were short-lived. In the run-up, China tightened its grip on domestic criticism and lashed out at the world for “meddling” in Tibet during an ill-fated international torch relay. Since then, there have been more clampdowns.

  Far from easing China into a world of human rights and obligations, the Olympics may have had the opposite effect. Its Communist leaders used the reflected glory to tighten their grip and hammer home a message of unflinching national superiority, says Russell Moses, a political analyst in Beijing.

  “Beijing made it plain. This wasn’t China coming out to the world. This was the world coming round to China,” he says.

  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes, “A year later, Beijing Olympic legacy remains vague” while Xinhua reports that, “China moving ahead with confidence gained during Olympics.”

  » Read more
  • August 9, 2009 9:44 PM

• A Crisis Rooted In Two Chinas

  

  “Milk scare stems from problematic ‘normal’ China, while the ‘abnormal’ China is a show-time success,” Bill Schiller writes in theStar.com:

  Christopher Hughes, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, says he believes Chinese officials “spared no cost” in ensuring foreigners’ food and milk were safe during the Olympics.

  “And the conclusion being drawn by many (Chinese) on the Internet, is that their government cares more about protecting foreigners and their own international image than it does about saving the lives of Chinese babies.”

  Why can’t China guarantee safe milk for its babies?

  There is a complex of reasons, says Hughes: “systemic corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies and the lack of a strong civil society of non-governmental organizations and a free press.”

  The government that we have assumed to be in total control – controlling the media, organized worship, even grey-haired grannies wanting to demonstrate – might not be in as much control as we thought.

  

  Read also: China’s poisoned milk versus Beijing’s clear skies: what’s the score, exactly? by Richard Spencer.

  » Read more
  • September 22, 2008 4:38 PM

• What We Learned

  

  Dr. Fei-Ling Wang published the following essay at the International Herald Tribune:

  The spectacular and successful 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have given the world a lot to think about. It may be still early to fully assess the impact of the event on China and its future, nonetheless, three messages have emerged.

  First, it is hard to overlook the capacity and power of the Chinese state.

  Under an autocratic, increasingly corporatist and aristocratic party, the People’s Republic has shown how much it can spend for a politically important cause, even if it is, after all, just a sporting event that has been thoroughly commercialized in other places all over the world.

  The unparalleled $43 billion price tag is just the known part of the expenses. By comparison, the last Olympic Games held in the U.S., in 1996 in Atlanta, cost only $2 billion. To ensure air quality and crowd control, a good chunk of the Chinese economy and society was shut down for two months.

  » Read more
  • September 18, 2008 11:10 AM

• ‘Post-Olympic Era’ Off to a Rocky Start in China

  

  Now that the glow of the Olympics is wearing off, journalists are taking another look at post-Olympics/Paralympics China and are not so optimistic. From AP:

  China received widespread praise for organizing the games, which formally ended Wednesday with the Paralympics’ closing ceremony.

  Even before then, however, reality reasserted itself with the collapse earlier this month at an illegal mine waste dump that killed at least 259 people and forced the resignation of a provincial governor. Since then, a product safety scandal has roiled the nation, with contaminated milk powder causing the death of three infants and sickening more than 6,200 others.

  Both crises point to underlying systemic weaknesses that the Olympics did little to eliminate, despite a massive effort to clean up Beijing’s polluted air, boost security and ensure smooth logistics.

  See also: After the Olympics, will China crack? from the Guardian.

  » Read more
  • September 17, 2008 11:43 AM

• Chinese Romance in the Air During Beijing Olympics

  

  The Beijing Olympics allowed the Chinese people to present themselves as more romantic to the world, according to Xinhua News Agency:

  Zhang Yimou, the famed film director and the opening ceremony director, said the 2008 Beijing Olympics provided a stage for the world to know better how romantic Chinese were.

  It changed preconceptions of Chinese people by foreigners, and also changed the Chinese people’s own perceptions, the article continues:

  “The Chinese are getting more outgoing, partially because they have growing confidence over themselves and the country,” said Professor Zhang Yiwu of the Chinese Department at the elite Peking University.

  “The Chinese used to prefer to act as someone better than themselves. Now they want to be natural and outgoing. This is a big change,” he said.

  Cameras recorded how the nation behaved in the romantic way during the Olympics, which was quite different from the traditional and stereotyped “inarticulate” Chinese.

  “The Chinese, since ancient times, have never lacked the sense of being romantic … romance has long been blended into the Chinese blood,” director Zhang said.

  » Read more
  • September 16, 2008 9:47 PM

• Were the Olympics Worth It?

  

  “Posted on the Chinese MSN site, an article (that appears to have originated at ifeng.com) discusses whether the Beijing Olympics were worth their unprecedented budget, with opinions from economists and average readers, pro and con. But the article never says what the graph makes clear: over half of those surveyed said the Games just weren’t worth it.” From the Foreign Expert blog:

  THE ARTICLE:

  Is it worth it for China to spend so much money on the Beijing Olympics?

  According to a report, China has spent about $43 billion on the Beijing Olympics; this number makes the Beijing Olympic Games the most expensive Olympic Games in history.

  It depicts China as a country that spends money improvidently and it also starts a debate among people on the success of the price paid. Some proposed on overseas Chinese Internet chat rooms that spending the money on helping the poor would be worthier.

  

  Is it worth it? Online surveys show big differences:
  In a survey in which nearly 70,000 people participated, 36.4 percent of Netizens believe the money has been spent in deserving places, “This investment is not excessive at all,” while 13.3 percent of Netizens think they still need time to see. “The results need some time to be evaluated.”

  » Read more
  • September 3, 2008 10:25 AM

• An Olympic Evaluation

  

  Eric Setzekorn is a graduate student at UC Irvine specializing in military history and is currently finishing an exchange semester with the Beijing University history department. He writes in the China Beat blog:

  For foreigners visiting Beijing, especially first-time visitors to China, the Olympic experience was an almost picture-perfect blend of idealized chinoiserie and ultra-modern convenience. Thousands of blue-shirted college volunteers facilitated the tourist hordes’ need to navigate the transportation grid, enter sporting events, and even find good restaurants. The Olympics served as a way to groom thousands of volunteers to become comfortable dealing with foreigners in a confident and knowledgeable manner and become the point of the spear in business and government in the new “Chinese Century.”

  However, real progress in terms of language fluency and cross-cultural understanding was slight due to the controlled and directed nature of foreigner to volunteer interaction. Much of the problem stems from the draconian visa requirements that essentially restricted access to upper-class Europeans and Americans on package tours. With an average age in their forties, these visitors were understandably viewed as safer and more commercially lucrative than twenty-something backpackers.

  The carefully screened and prepped volunteers who greeted them were selected by rigorous foreign language exams and forced to undergo weeks of full-time training, and so real interaction between visitors and volunteers was stunted by the seldom-deviated-from official guidelines. Any question regarding politics or international relations was either ignored or directed to one of the many volunteers who are party members, easily identified by the small red hammer-and-sickle pins on their shirts.

  » Read more
  • September 3, 2008 10:18 AM

• Cao Jingxing: The Chinese People During The Olympics

  

  Cao Jingxing wirtes in the Hong Kong-based Ming Pao Monthly, translated in the ESWN blog:

  Some people have called 2008 the “Year of the Volunteers” in China.  This is not just about the Olympics, but the Wenchuan earthquake in May also raised the civic awareness of the Chinese people (especially the youth).  It was realized in the the numerous NGO’s which rushed towards the Sichuan earthquake disaster zone.  These came as spontaneous actions by citizens as opposed to existing government operations.  This was a breakthrough within the existing system.

  This may be the most important new issue for the ruling party in China.  The Chinese youth have the most civic awareness.  They can support various government policies (such as hosting the Olympics).  They can also tolerate or even endure certain improprieties of the rulers (such as the various mistakes during the Olympics like the chaos over the ticket sales and the invasiveness of the security procedures).  But they are increasingly less obedient to the orders from the system. They treat disaster relief and the Olympics as their personal projectx and they will take action based upon their own ideas.  This is perhaps the true significance of the Bird’s Nest generation.

  After the 2008 Beijing Olympics lowered its curtains, the Beijing authorities may go back to its traditional and stale practice of singing paeans while refusing to address the flaws, mistakes and corruption.  They may think that they can make superficial statements without any drastic changes to the system.  They may think that the Olympics was successful through the power of the government.  They may deliberately inhibit the inevitable development of a civic society in China.  Now that would be a betrayal of those Chinese folks who genuinely supported China to host the Olympics.

  If the citizens of a society become disappointed with a government, if their support turns into doubt and contempt and if the tolerable becomes the intolerable, a social crisis ensues especially when there are economic troubles.

  It is easy to to perceive the impact of the Beijing Olympics on the world.  The impact on the future changes in China is uncertain.  There will be many big changes in China after August 8.  The suspense is just how China will change.

  » Read more
  • September 2, 2008 9:39 AM

• Ann Kent: China’s Thin Veil of Compliance

  

  From The Canberra Times:

  Why the official paranoia, why the theatre, why the intense security which made life so difficult? The need for security against international terrorism, while legitimate to a degree, was exaggerated to become the official cover for manifestations of extreme xenophobia. To many conservative Chinese leaders, status is more important than goodwill; form more meaningful than substance; the perfect theatrical performance, the technically perfect Games, more important than the individual spectator’s sense of wellbeing and enjoyment. This is particularly a feature of those bodies involved in the Olympics organisation, the Ministry of State Security, the Bureau of Public Security and the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, normally the cosmopolitan, enlightened and diplomatic leader or intermediary in international events, was less in evidence.

  But it was more than just a conflict between organisational cultures. The Chinese Government is struggling to maintain its rule and at the same time guarantee social cohesion without political rights. This is particularly difficult now when leaders perceive a need to balance rising inflation against the requirement to create more jobs. In a country where unemployment is now endemic, inequality a source of rising discontent, and corruption and land seizure are a daily scourge, the Government is engaged in a two-line struggle to maintain popular support. It is allowing its citizens ”freedom of expression” on discrete issues decided by the Government on the basis of their potential to promote a unifying chauvinism.

  In other words, the rights of foreigners before and during the Olympics were abused because it was more important for China’s leadership to send a message to its own citizens: That the international community recognised the legitimacy of its rule over the whole country, including Tibet.That China was now a country with sufficient international status and power to put on the most technically impressive Olympics ever.That, in the process, no foreign or domestic political dissent would be tolerated.

  Dr Kent is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International and Public Law, College of Law, Australian National University and the author of Beyond Compliance: China, International Organisations and Global Security (Stanford University Press, 2007).

  » Read more
  • August 31, 2008 11:39 PM

• Did the Games Improve Rights in China?

  

  The BBC looks at whether the Olympics had the positive impact on the rights situation in China that many observers hoped for:

  The immediate impact was both positive and negative.

  On the plus side, tough restrictions on foreign journalists were lifted in the run-up to and during the Games, giving much greater media access. (Those more liberal rules expire in October and an important question is whether they are renewed.)

  Also, the looming Games made China more sensitive than usual to international criticism. That eagerness for the Games not to be “spoiled” may have contributed to progress in other, more general, areas.

  [...] But there were obvious negatives. The forced evictions which made the Olympic construction possible. The bolstering of security forces throughout the country and especially in Beijing.

  The pressure on dozens of activists, who, according to reports, were forced to leave Beijing for the summer, confined to their homes or even arrested as part of the general suppression of dissent.

  » Read more
  • August 30, 2008 9:58 AM

• Were China’s Glittering Games All Gold?

  

  Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace grades China on its hosting of the Olympics:

  By the time the Olympics ended, Beijing had clearly won the all-around gold. As a Chinese-born academic who was skeptical about the merits of hosting an extravagant sporting event in a country where 400 million people live on less than $2 a day, I’ll grudgingly admit that the Chinese government once again showed that when the Communist Party mobilizes the state’s resources, it can accomplish feats that are unimaginable in democracies. Were the Olympics worth the $43 billion bill? For the party, the answer is yes. The Games have boosted its popularity among the Chinese people, who are proud of their country and the spectacular performance of their athletes — especially their 51 gold medals.

  What the Olympics won’t do is dramatically change China’s political future. The Games strengthened the party’s rule, leaving it under less pressure to reform. Beyond China’s A+ athletic performance, here’s my balance sheet.

  » Read more
  • August 29, 2008 9:08 PM

• A Look Back at Beijing 2008

  

  Two days after the Olympics have closed and Der Spiegel is one of many already looking back on Beijing 2008:

  There were two worlds in Beijing, one on the inside of the stadium and the other sporting facilities. And one on the outside. And there was a sharp divide between the two.

  On the inside, in the so-called Accredited Zones, these Olympic Games were perfect. The images of these perfect games circled the globe, accompanied by postcard pictures of pagodas, terracotta warriors and graceful Chinese girls. Against the story told by this picture book, criticism of the games seemed like little more than sour grapes.

  But on the outside, in the city of Beijing and throughout China, the lives of ordinary people went on. A number of changes in those lives have taken place, to be sure, but they are still lives led under the watchful eyes of the government. In this China, those disagreeable to the government are simply removed, staging a protest remains a criminal offense, public celebrations are frowned upon and all roads make wide detours around restricted zones guarded by soldiers — zones that include Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

  With these record-breaking Olympics now behind us, it is a time of reckoning and a time to look forward.

  » Read more
  • August 26, 2008 3:13 PM

• Chinese Media Dubs Youth ‘Bird’s Nest Generation’

  

  The Olympics is apparently defining the new generation of youth in China. According to this report from AFP, a Chinese newspaper has created the term “Bird’s Nest Generation” to describe young people who came of age while China was preparing for the Games:

  The term – inspired by the nickname of the iconic National Stadium – covers those aged 10 to 29, about a third of China’s 1.3 billion people, who grew up during the nation’s preparations for the Olympics, China Youth Daily said.

  “This term is all about self-confidence, the love of peace, patriotism, openness and friendliness,” the newspaper wrote.

  The label was an apparent attempt to put a more positive spin on a generation often seen as spoiled and sometimes referred to as “little emperors” because of the one-child policy that focuses families’ entire hopes on them.

  » Read more
  • August 26, 2008 2:24 PM

• Orville Schell: China’s Post-Olympic Challenge

  

  From the Business Standard:

  For the last two decades, Chinese leaders have been diligently trying to build a new edifice in order to gain some of that missing respect. This made a successful Olympic Games, when all the world would be watching, an urgent matter.

  But, now that the Games have ended, Chinese leaders cannot quite say, “Mission accomplished.”

  While China’s achievement is worthy of genuine esteem, its efforts to gain a full measure of international respect and real “great power” status will not succeed until it matches its new economic and military power with a certain essential moral force. That, in turn, requires a society and a leadership that seeks to be exemplary in all ways that make human beings more human, including respect for truthfulness, openness, tolerance, and people’s right to disagree with their government.

  I fear that China’s leaders and people will continue to feel a certain gnawing, inchoate sense of deficiency and incompleteness in their quest for global respect until they find the strength to begin addressing the crucial, but elusive, issue of making China an ethical, as well as an economic and military, power. For a country steeped in millennia of Confucianism, the need for ethical leadership should be clear.

  To fully address the question of the moral and ethical base of a new form of Chinese governance, China’s government and its people must be able to look back freely and come to terms with their recent history: the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the events of 1989, Tibet, and other sensitive issues. They must also freely be able to discuss the future and what kind of society they wish to see rise from the ashes of Mao’s revolution.

  » Read more
  • August 26, 2008 2:22 PM

• China Showed the World that It’s Out of Sync

  

  Tion Kwa, an editorial writer at The Straits Times in Singapore, is currently a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in Washington. He writes in the Japan Times:

  What I found particularly disquieting about the opening ceremony in Beijing was the mass sublimation of individuality in the service of the state. The conformity to script and attention to stage direction by a cast of thousands, while awe inspiring, also represents a negation of the creativity of self-expression. Of course, there is choreographed order in Western dance and music as well. But there was something about the Chinese government’s ability to stage-manage so many thousands so precisely that set this show apart from anything undertaken even by Cecil B. DeMille or Las Vegas.

  No one would suggest that Zhang Yimou, the Chinese filmmaker who directed the opening night gala, or the other choreographers and artists involved were simply out to score a point for communism. But while the Chinese authorities wanted the Olympics to showcase a China that is industrializing, modern and prosperous, it unwittingly put on a display that recalled the Mao-era mass parades in Tiananmen Square, albeit with much advanced technology and pyrotechnics.

  It is not easy to think of such a display as being in line with modern norms. The Chinese economy may be more market-oriented today than ever before, but because the Communist Party is still in charge, China remains out of sync with those parts of Asia and the rest of the world where communism has long since come to be viewed as an anachronistic oddity.

  » Read more
  • August 25, 2008 9:43 PM

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