Category: China – 2008 Olympics

Wouldn't it be ever so cool to have a Nuremberg Rally Olympic Opening Ceremony every day?

Hard to collect a cash flow from all those pirated DVDs, I guess.

Oh, the IOC is gonna be THRILLED about this.  Kinda takes the sense of occasion out of a once-in-every-four-year event, don't it?

But they'll probably cave.  Faster than a Szechuan schoolhouse.

UPDATE:  Readers may encounter a registration page for the original story in the Financial Times if they've read more than three FT articles over the past month.  For those not interested in registering, this blog link contains the full article, verbatim.

UPDATE #2:  Just ran across this year-old opinion piece about last year's torch run from an Indian (uh, INDIA-Indian).  Interesting to see it from his perspective:

"World domination" may be a bit much.  But we can see the Chinese Nationalist Party's idea of allowing PRC police to operate on Taiwanese soil is bound to go just SWIMMINGLY.

UPDATE #3:  Chinese black jails.  Coming soon to a Taiwanese town near you?  (Hat tip to That's Impossible:  Politics from Taiwan)

Maybe I'll have time later to respond to David "One party dominance will be a boon for Taiwan" Ting's latest see-no-evil column about the 2008 Genocide Games.  But for now, I'll content myself with addressing just one point he made:

Gosh, and it's also painful to have to point out that China has 1.3 billion people, and Taiwan, only 23 million.  So instead of comparing China's total medal count of 100 to Taiwan's 4, one really ought to compare the per capita medal count. 

Let's crunch the numbers, shall we?

China:  1,325,563,000 people / 100 medals = 13,255,630 people / medal

Taiwan:  23,036,087 people / 4 medals = 5,759,022 people / medal

The numbers plainly show . . . Taiwan kicked China's ass.  That is to say, the country of Taiwan produced more than twice as many Olympic champions on a per capita basis than China did.**

Sorry David, but you're completely wrong if you think Taiwanese should go to China in search of the secrets of Olympic success.  No, for that they should head to tiny, tiny Jamaica, which won an astonishing 54 times more medals than China, after correcting for the difference in population.

Now, Jamaica may not be the central axis of the world like China is, I know.  But the akee, rice, salted fish are nice, and the rum is fine any time of the year.

As the Jamaicans say — there's no substitute for victory, mon.

*  Curiously, Ting's figure does not include golds won by the two Chinese septegenarians in the thrilling 365-day Hard Labor competition.

**  This isn't ENTIRELY true.  After all, some Olympic events are team endeavors.  It's more accurate to say that Taiwan won more than twice as many EVENTS population-wise than China.

Seems as though Lisa Nowak (aka "That Crazy Diaper-Wearing Astronaut Lady") has a bit of a following over there in the Chinese PLA.  From yesterday's Taipei Times:

My sources tell me the soldiers TRIED to make a stink about this. 

But unfortunately, all their concerns were . . . poo-pooed.

UPDATE:  A television commercial featuring the product they were using.

"John Hancock" from the Taipei Times informed his readers yesterday that Olympians are keepin' out of mischief now:

Hmm.  So either human nature itself has changed within the last four years (and just in time for the Genocide Games!) . . . or maybe the athletes are aware the walls have ears.

And possibly eyes as well.

UPDATE:  Am I being paranoid?  Recall this story from April:

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Pray tell, how exactly do the Butchers of Beijing monitor what flags people put up in the privacy of their own rooms?

UPDATE (Sep 8/08):  More on Chinese surveillance here.

First, let’s cut to the video.  (Sound levels may vary from clip to clip, so you may want to lower your volume before clicking on each link.)

Chinese mob assaults Korean-Americans in a hotel lobby for holding a Tibetan flag.  (According to a written account at Chosun.com, 400 angry Chinese chased them into the building, although only 100 of those managed to follow them inside.)

The two Korean-Americans who were attacked speak.  Class acts, them both.

An American or Canadian woman protesting the treatment of North Korean refugees in China gets more than she bargained for when the Chinese mob swarms forward.

A South Korean TV news account.  A third party added some English captions — which don’t pretend to be evenhanded, but do provide some context.

Another Korean TV news account, sans subtitles.  Incredibly, Chinese diplomat Ning Fukui BRAGS about his handiwork in this one for a few seconds in English.

Speaking of Ning Fukui, here’s how the South Korean cops got taken to the cleaners by the good ambassador:

Korean police acknowledged they had not anticipated such big, wild crowds for Sunday’s event, according to Eo Choeng-soo, commissioner general of the National Police Agency.

"We were told by the Chinese ambassador that the Chinese crowd would be about 1,000 to 1,200," Eo said in a press conference yesterday.

[…]

The police estimated about 6,500 Chinese students attended the event.

(Would I lie to you?  China’s ambassador to South Korea, Ning Fukui.  Image from The Seoul Times)

OK, being misled is one thing, but are Korean cops just COMPLETELY stupid?  From The Marmot’s Hole:

Police did, in fact, deploy only 9,300 personnel along the route, much less than the 14,000 cops they deployed during last month’s protests against rising university tuitions. A police official said — sit down for this — that they thought the Chinese embassy would be able to control the Chinese demonstrators, but it didn’t turn out that way. The official added that legal action would be taken against the Chinese they arrested following investigations.

UPDATE: Sorry, I just can’t get over that police official.  We thought the Chinese embassy would be able to control the Chinese demonstrators.

Ever wonder what happens when 6,500 foreign students start a political riot at the behest of their government in the capital of another nation?  Visa restrictions, baby.

Call me sympathetic, but diplomatic immunity kind of precludes this one:  South Korean groups vow to sue Chinese ambassador.

And from the blogs:

A series of photos from the protests in Seoul.

Some background on the new South Korean proposals to tighten the requirements for Chinese student visas following this little display.

So, will the Chinese government issue any apologies for "hurting the feelings of the KOREAN people?"

As I suspected, China’s censorship-by-thug on the streets of Seoul is not proving popular among Koreans.  The Chinese government seems to be coming to grips with the P.R. disaster it has made for itself.  Its diplomats, though not quite in a full kowtow position, are offering either an apology or whatever it is that Asian diplomats offer when national pride prevents one . . .

[…]

President Lee, it should be remembered, has made an issue of restoring the public order that Roh had allowed to erode.  If he lets these goon squads escape real punishment, the Korean street will be furious, and rightfully so.  If the South Korean authorities prosecute, the Chinese street will be furious, and it will probably be lost on many of them that doing the same thing in China would likely earn them a stretch in the laogai or a fatal beating in a local police station.  For a day, Seoul became for politically repressed Chinese youth what Tijuana is for sexually repressed American youth.

Finally, a brief summary of the average Chinese perspective of what transpired:

. . .the Chinese Street’s version:  "It didn’t happen!," and its inbred cousin, "It didn’t happen, and you should thank us for not killing you."  The "all we wanted was to throw you a party!" defense is so unintelligent as to evoke more pity than rage (I had no idea censorship was so costly to critical thinking skills).  Those who can at least perceive the futility of denial turn to argumentum ad hominem:  "you’re agents provocateurs," and inevitably enough, "running dogs" and  "fetid Jews."

i-1

After the earlier post, it’s only fair to mention this as well:

. . . several readers quickly pointed out that the photo appeared to be misleading. Click here to see a photo of the “kicked” guy [in Seoul] holding up a bicycle over his head. . . It appears to be a threatening gesture.  Was he threatening to toss the bicycle at Chinese counter-protesters?  I don’t know.  Some Chinese websites suggest he brought on the violence himself.

I suppose there’s a couple possibilities here.  Either one lone guy (who was eager for a beating) blithely walked into the middle of a group of hostile Chinese with his bicycle in order to threaten them with it . . . or, THEY surrounded HIM, and he got scared somewhere along the way.

(Might help to use Occam’s Razor on this one.)

Far be it for me to tell a guy with a PhD in history about his business, but this is the second column that Dr. Hung has gone on to talk about the 1940 BERLIN Olympics:

On the other hand, China knows full well that the Beijing Olympics won’t be boycotted. The United States did not boycott the Olympics in Berlin in 1940.  [emphasis added]

Of course, the Berlin Games were in 1936, not 1940.  Didn’t mention it the first time because I assumed it was just a typo or a misprint.  But in this second column, Hung tries to tell us America separated sports from politics, and sent athletes to Germany some time during the Battle of Britain:

What China wants is the esteem of the wider world as a peacefully rising power.  Chinese President Hu Jintao is doing what Adolf Hitler did shortly after Nazi Germany invaded Poland.  The world withheld respect to the Nazis, but refrained from linking the Olympics to foreign policy issues just to snub Germany.

Hey, to err is human.  But that got me to thinking:  Where WERE the 1940 Olympic Games supposed to be held?  Wikipedia had the answer:

The anticipated 1940 Summer Olympics, which were to be officially known as Games of the XII Olympiad and originally programmed to be celebrated between September 21 and October 6, 1940 in Tokyo, Empire of Japan, were cancelled due to World War II.  The Games were retracted from Tokyo by the IOC due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. They were awarded to the runner-up Helsinki, Finland, and were scheduled to be celebrated between July 20 to August 4, 1940.  When World War II broke out, the Summer Games were cancelled indefinitely – resuming in London in 1948.  [emphasis added]

Interesting, no?  The International Olympic Committee and the People’s Republic of China all lecture us up and down that the Olympics are "a sporting competition" which "shouldn’t be turned into a political forum." 

Yet in 1937, the IOC, on POLITICAL GROUNDS, found it within itself to WITHDRAW Japan’s right to hold the Games!

(Which makes sense – the Olympics weren’t intended to be merely "a sporting competition," but a celebration of peace as well.  A little hypocritical to pretend you’re celebrating peace when the host country has just started a major war.  Perhaps the IOC should have found the guts to do the same to Moscow back in 1980.)

And so we find that Joe Hung’s incorrect formulation:

The world withheld respect to the Nazis [during the 1940 Games], but refrained from linking the Olympics to foreign policy issues just to snub Germany.

Should actually read:

The world withheld respect to the Imperial Japanese, AND linked the Olympics to foreign policy issues to snub Japan.

Sounds like a precedent there.

From Joe Hung’s Monday column, Don’t try to mix sports and politics:

. . . Beijing could care less about Spielberg’s quitting in protest. As a matter of fact, China has an array of outstanding movie directors who can do the job of the American.

Let’s assume Dr. Hung is using the phrase "could care less" ironically — which is to say, the Chinese government doesn’t care at all.  Maybe that’s true;  let’s go back and check the reaction at the time:

Officially, the Chinese government has not directly criticized Spielberg by name, expressing only ”regret” over his decision.

Yep, sounds pretty mild.  But what about the UNOFFICIAL reaction?  The reaction from Chinese Communist Party media mouthpieces?

There, the response was a bit less indifferent:

A biting front-page editorial Wednesday in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, blasted Spielberg for his decision.

”A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics,” it said.

Over the weekend, the Guangming Daily, also published by the Communist Party, ran an editorial saying Spielberg ”broke his promise to make his contribution to the Beijing Olympics and betrayed the Olympic spirit.”

He ”is not qualified to blame China because he knows nothing about the great efforts the Chinese government has made on Darfur,” it said.

An editorial in the China Youth Daily was equally scathing.

”This renowned film director is famous for his science fiction. But now it seems he lives in a world of science fiction and he can’t distinguish a dream from reality,” it said.

The unofficial reaction is all the more remarkable because Spielberg was NEVER tapped to be a director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the ’08 Olympics.  His role was simply to be an artistic ADVISOR to Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

And yet, for withdrawing from such an apparently minor job, the Communist Party of China saw fit to order their media attack dogs to collectively lambaste Spielberg as a naive promise-breaking know-nothing who lives in his own little fantasy world.

Why say all that, if they’re not in the least bit bitter?