As a rule, I tend to be able to set aside the debates or controversies surrounding a significant sporting event and simply enjoy. Last July, however, it was common to hear me saying “We should not be participating in the Olympics this year.” Give the Chinese tyrants a world-wide platform to strut their stuff and portray a golden image of culture, beauty, and opportunity? Are you kidding? But I know how naive can be the instinctively black and white opinions of youth, so I would appreciate your opinion.
We are approaching the one year anniversary of the 2008 Summer Olympics. A little time for reflection. Last August the attention of the world focused on Beijing, China for this greatest spectacle in sports. The Olympics (as the global coverage declares ad nauseam) symbolize the coming together of nations and are intended to celebrate equal opportunity for every people of every nation and race. A sprinter who grew up in poverty-stricken Jamaica can blow away competitors from nations all over the earth. The goal is that the only discriminator be talent, and athletic ability. (How cool is it that the fastest man in the world was born with the name “Bolt”?)
So what’s my problem? The simple reality that this host nation represented the exact opposite of these principles.
China is an oppressive, communist dictatorship. The laundry list of offenses is readily available. Who can forget the young, idealistic student standing defiantly in front of tanks in Tiananman Square? Nobody knows where he is today. We could unpack truck-loads of Chinese offenses against human rights and how they use their 1.3 Billion people as cogs in a brutal machine. Estimates of people making under a $1 per day range between 100,000,000 and 350,000,000. People who can’t afford to feed their families watched as sports complexes were built costing a total of 50-60 Billion dollars.
The People’s Republic cleans up well though. As eyes from all over the world fixed upon them, they unveiled what many believe was the most spectacular opening ceremony in recorded history. What a show! The program was a stunning event portraying a culture filled with history, art, and beauty. Much of it true. Missing was the abundant legacy and lasting reality of oppression, violence, and corruption.
So it’s been a year – and this all may seem like old news – but with the benefit of hindsight, where do your opinions fall? Was this a good idea or a bad one.
I know many who care about people, freedom, and justice viewed all of this as a tragic gift of world-endorsed Chinese propaganda.
Others of equal credibility and thoughtfulness have suggested that giving China the Olympics exposed many in China to tastes of information and glimpses of free cultures that could plant seeds of change. Information and exposure to free people, after all, has often been the beginning of an antidote to unaccountable tyranny. Certainly a similar dilemma confronted free nations at the 1938 Olympics in Munich, Germany. In that case the extraordinary accomplishments of African-American Jesse Owens (and others) offered a defiant and breathtaking refutation of Arian ideology – all while a pale, bristling Adolph Hitler looked on. A triumph for justice and a loud argument in the case for basic human equality.
I am revisiting this topic because I want to hear your opinions. Please comment and give your thoughts on this issue. Was it a good idea to give China the privilege of hosting the 2008 Olympics? In 20 years or 50 years, how will we measure the effect of this event on the people of China and the state of the free world? Feel free to respond with a simple “yes” or “no”. Definitely, also feel free to give your thoughts (brief or extensive). I want to open up a discussion here. Express yourself.
Uhhh, if memory serves me correctly that student was actually a midle aged man on his way home with groceries. That act of defiance was his only participation and was run over by the tank… unfortunately. It does however stand as one of the most vivid images in my mind. I did not agree with the Olympics being in China. I don’t think I ever will. However we as an American society continue to feed their financial capabilities by purchasing their products. I challenge you to go to the store and find a product that was NOT made in China. Try it I dare you… (especially in the “uber-american” Walmart.) Oh… by the way China is the primary country that is currently purchasing our (America’s) new financial loan debts (that would be this so-called stimulus program our current president is enacting). Just some FYI.
China has traded one oppressive regime for another, for millenia, and they have the recorded history to prove it.
The Chinese were printing newspapers centuries before Gutenberg, (consider typesetting Chinese) until an emperor declared “TMI”.
Communism, as huge a failure as it is, is a big step up from the previous regime, that ended with the Japanese, raping killing, and eating the Chinese.
I have asked my Chinese friends, for years, why the most Capitalist culture in the world,(The Chinese, unabashedly worship the money god; his image is plastered on the kitchen walls of most Chinese restaurants.) could submit so wilingly to communism, they shrug.
Communism is not important to them, being Chinese is. Communism is their next step toward freedom, believe it or not, a slightly less ugly chapter in a fascinatingly, brutal, political history.
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The only reported identification of “Tank Man” was as a 19 year old student – though his identity has never been confirmed.
Thankfully, he was not run over by the tank, though the mixed bag of reports that followed up the story range from him being executed weeks later to him still living today in secrecy.
One thing is certain. China may not cross too many American’s minds on a daily basis, but that nation will become a dominating not a diminishing news story in the years and decades to come.
We build expensive stadiums too here in America and have people who are hungry…just saying.
I’m not saying it’s on as dramatic a scale, but regardless I think one can argue that America, and other countries, have similar problems. I wouldn’t say America is the ultimate beacon of democracy and human equality, either.
Not to be a negative nancy or anything XD.