Beijing's New Flame

Currently the London correspondent for NPR, Rob Gifford also covered China for six years and his recently published China Road continues to receive positive reviews. Here, Gifford has allowed China Beat to reprint a piece reflecting on Beijing’s renewed building boom that originally appeared in Condé Nast Traveler.

By Rob Gifford

The essence of Beijing has always been found in its buildings. The city has no major river, no coastline. There are some hills to the west and the north, with the Great Wall stretched across them, but there is none of the geographic razzle-dazzle that created towns like Hong Kong or San Francisco or Sydney or Istanbul. As the historian Arnold Toynbee noted when he visited in the 1930s, Beijing as a city owes little to nature and everything to art.

The art of which Toynbee wrote was contained within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, where the emperor resided at the heart of old Beijing. But the art was also the buildings themselves: beautiful, angular structures that suffused the dusty soil beneath them with an imperial significance, sanctifying an otherwise unremarkable spot on the North China Plain.

The man responsible for creating Beijing was the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, known as Yongle. On his orders, between 1405 and 1421 thousands of workers constructed a new city, a city that would be the new capital not just of China but of the world, and indeed the universe. In traditional thinking, all under heaven belonged to Yongle, and all the world revolved around his domain, a belief made explicit by the country's name for itself: Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom.

There was a reason for the Chinese to believe this, too. At the time, China, though a little past its heyday, was still the world's economic superpower. With no competitors (Europe had yet to rise), China was confident of its moral and financial superiority, and Yongle's capital was appropriately grand, fit for the throne of the Son of Heaven. Built according to ancient rules of geomancy and surrounded by suffocating layers of walls, its design reflected the cosmic symmetry that the emperor sought to keep in balance through his just and harmonious rule.

But such cosmic (and terrestrial) equilibrium is hard to maintain indefinitely. After a final, fatal flowering under the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century, China fell into a death spiral of humiliation and semi-colonization. By the late nineteenth century, Western incursions had transformed it from Alpha Male Middle Kingdom to Sick Man of Asia, struggling on the periphery of the modern world.

Now, though, the wheel is once again turning.

When China's current ruler, President Hu Jintao, declares the Games of the XXIX Olympiad open in August 2008, he will be looking out upon a city that, like the entire country, bears little resemblance to the one Yongle knew. The stadium where he will be standing—modern Beijing's own imperial palace—is one of the most talked-about buildings in Asia. Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have dubbed their creation the Bird's Nest, an allusion to the strands of steel that weave around its frame, but it looks more like a shiny silver spaceship that has landed amid the browns and grays of northern Beijing. Certainly its design is alien to any Chinese architectural tradition. But that's the point: Beijing is being rebuilt along Western lines—not weighed down with the heavy symbolism of Chinese tradition but exploding with the sparks of Western postmodernism. Now it is the Bird's Nest that is suffusing the dusty soil, this time with a twenty-first-century significance.

Adjacent to the Bird's Nest is another example of this new aesthetic—an angular, rectangular structure whose exterior is a honeycomb of blue bubbles. Known as the Water Cube and designed by the Australian firm PTW Architects, it will be the stage for the Olympic swimming and diving events. Farther south, in the Central Business District—not far from Tiananmen Square—looms another monument to the changed Chinese psyche: the new headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV). Dutch maestro Rem Koolhaas's $600 million project has twisted twin towers that seem to leap from the earth, embracing each other in midair. Beside the square itself is the titanium egg that is the National Theater, its smooth lines clashing with the ancient Greece-meets-Soviet Union angles and pillars of Tiananmen. There, eyed warily by the twenty-five-foot portrait of Chairman Mao, a forty-three-foot-high clock counts down the minutes to the Opening Ceremony on August 8.

These new architectural masterpieces are testaments to the rule-flouting individualism that is changing China's cities, symbols of the break the country has made with its past, and celebrations of the country's brave new post-Mao world. They speak of the psychological transformation, not to mention the confusion, in the Chinese mind. And they speak of the eagerness of the Chinese people to leap into a postmodern world, even as huge parts of the country are only just learning what it means to be modern. Nowhere is the metamorphosis more evident than in Beijing, a city of fourteen million that has changed more in fifteen years than it did in the previous five hundred. The capital is still discovering its new identity, and in its quest, walls have become windows as a vertical city rises from the carcass of the old horizontal one.

This rebirth has come at a price. You can still visit the heart of Yongle's spectacular Forbidden City, with its maze of rich red walls and its yellow roof tiles heavy with history, but much of the rest of the city has been destroyed. Many of Beijing's ancient hutongs, or alleyways, some of which date to the fourteenth century, have been demolished, and their sense of community has died with them. The sounds and smells of old Beijing have disappeared. Traditional courtyard houses have been knocked down to make way for unremarkable apartment buildings and office blocks. The cosmic balance has been lost, replaced by a capitalist iconoclasm that has proved as destructive as Communist iconoclasm was in its day. Many people have complained about the destruction of Beijing's heritage, but their complaints have run up against one of Beijing's few remaining walls: the wall of Communist party power.

Who knows if that wall, too, will crumble? For now, though, this and many other questions about the future have been put on hold, suspended in time until after the Olympics. The shiny ziggurats of Beijing issue a welcome as outsiders—both Chinese and foreign—hasten to observe and participate in the transformation. The glass and metal, the curved edges and winking windows, all whisper of something more than just the gentle shock of a new architectural order. They proclaim a new cosmic order: that China is open, that it is looking forward and outward as never before. And they declare that Beijing—the imperial city, the capital city, and now the Olympic city—has once again become the center of the world.

Photo by Matt Merkel-Hess

FAQ #6: Are the Beijing Olympic Games being used as a Propaganda Campaign to Prop up the Communist Party?

“Olympic education” is the IOC’s label for the educational efforts that are supposed to be an integral part of the Olympic Movement as required by Fundamental Principle #1 of the Olympic Charter, which states that Olympism is a philosophy of life that blends sport with culture and education. Since 2005 China has been carrying out the largest-scale “Olympic education” campaign in history. There have been academic and professional conferences, textbooks and courses for public schools and universities, educational television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper essays, websites, and more.

In fall of 2007 I was added to the “experts team” of Beijing City’s Olympic Education Standing Office and so I have seen its workings from the inside. I have attended meetings of the Standing Office, taken part in ceremonies at schools, interviewed teachers and principals, and count the people mentioned below as my friends.

From this perspective I offer the following evidence in support of this answer to the above question: “No.”

1) The initial inspiration for Olympic education came from outside China and is the product of an international network.

In the absence of a well-established legal tradition, and in accord with the effort to implement the “rule of law,” China has treated the Olympic Charter and the Host City Contract as if they were enforceable legal documents. Fundamental Principle #4 of the Olympic Charter advocates “sport…without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” These constitute the core of what the IOC calls “Olympic values.” They have been the starting point for the values taught in China’s Olympic education.

Within the IOC there is a Commission on Culture and Olympic Education. Since 2000 it has been chaired by the IOC member in China, He Zhenliang, whose leadership has given it an influence it did not previously have. His prominence was one of the factors in the attention given to education in China.

Two of the people who have had a big influence on Olympic education in China are Ren Hai of the Beijing Sport University and Donnie Pei (Pei Dongguang) of the Capitol Institute of Physical Education. Ren received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta. Pei received a Master’s Degree from the International Olympic Studies Centre at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and attended the International Olympic Academy (IOA) in Ancient Olympia, Greece. Both of them wrote theses on Olympic history. In 1993 during Beijing’s first bid for the Olympic Games, Ren edited the first college-level textbook for Olympic education, The Olympic Movement 《奥林匹克运动》(revised and re-published in 2005). Both Pei and Ren are active internationally, taking part in international conferences and in the sessions of the International Olympic Academy. They and other scholars collected information on Olympic education programs in previous host nations and invited international scholars to Beijing, utilizing international models in planning Beijing’s programs. I have known Ren Hai since 1994, and am currently affiliated with the Olympic Studies Center of the Beijing Sport University that he directs.

2) The initial impetus for Beijing’s Olympic education programs in the schools came from “the people” (民间), not the government.

At the 2000 Postgraduate Session at the International Olympic Academy, Donnie Pei was inspired by the Dean, Kostas Georgiadis, who led the Olympic education projects for the 2004 Athens Games. After the success of Beijing’s bid in 2001, Pei, who had worked as a p.e. teacher for ten years before going to Canada, began visiting schools in Beijing to try to persuade them to start Olympic activities. He found that most principals and teachers were uninterested because they believed the Olympics were nothing more than sports, but finally on his tenth attempt he ran into p.e. teacher Zhou Chenguang at Yangfangdian Primary School. Zhou was immediately attracted by Pei’s discussion of the Olympics as a way of teaching values because of his own crisis of conscience:

In the 1980s we still understood physical education as the Soviet Union. We required students to line up in straight lines. [For the recess exercises] I was very proud when one thousand children lined up straight. I would put a lot of effort into it. I’d stand on the platform to direct them, jump off and run up to them to straighten them up [motions hands as if adjusting a child’s torso], run back to the platform, and so on. I had put out so much effort. I started to wonder what had I trained them for? They would go out into society and what would they do with what they had learned? Did it have any use? I had produced little soldiers. What had I accomplished? They knew how to be obedient. It was a big machine for producing cabbages. I started to feel as if I had harmed them.

In 2002 Pei and Zhou initiated China’s first Olympic education school activities, a re-enactment of the ancient Greek pentathlon. Pei had gotten this idea from the IOA, where it is an annual tradition created by Ingomar Weiler, a professor in classics at the University of Graz. For Pei, the ancient Greek ideal of all-around education was the remedy for the overemphasis on testing that was plaguing China’s educational system. He says, “Olympic education is a movement, but it’s a moving movement. Humans need to be moved - materialism is not enough. Olympic education emphasizes balance, which is found in the Chinese Way of the Mean as well as in the Greek ideal of harmonious education. China needs this now, as did late 19th/early 20th century Europe in Coubertin’s times after industrialization. The idea has value because of a social need.”

By 2005, Yangfangdian Primary School had already held four installments of its annual “mini Olympic Games,” and each time Zhou Chenguang had faxed multiple invitations to BOCOG with little response from it or other official VIPs. But in that year BOCOG stepped up its operations and started to pay attention to fulfilling the Host City Contract’s stipulations on educational programs, which China took more seriously than host nations usually do. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission, working together with BOCOG, formed the Olympic Education Standing Office. They designated 200 primary and secondary schools in Beijing City and another 356 schools nationwide as “Olympic Education Demonstration Schools,” and Yangfangdian as their “Pioneer.” Principals and teachers from around Beijing were invited to three forums to learn from the experiences at Yangfangdian. By the end of 2007 hundreds more schools had engaged in “hand-in-hand sharing” with the Demonstration Schools, taking the total number of schools that had carried out Olympic activities to 1,100. It is estimated that these programs touched 400 million students nationwide.

The Heart-to-Heart sister school program was organized among 210 schools in Beijing. This program was based on the “One School, One Country” program first initiated at the Nagano Olympics in 1998. Each school established a sister school relationship with one the 205 National Olympic Committees, as well as with 5 National Paralympic Committees.

In addition, a teacher training program reached about 10,000 primary and secondary school teachers in Beijing.

Thus, what began as a “people’s” initiative was picked up by the government. But the intellectuals generally regarded this as a positive development, because without the support of the government there would have been no way to implement their ideas on such a broad scale. As Pei put it,

There is no conflict between them and us. They give us a lot of recognition. We do not take the credit. As scholars we must rely on the government. We cannot be too naïve. We are members of social life, we cannot isolate ourselves. We must have an open mind. The government needs our knowledge. We should not be the “lonely flower admiring itself” (孤芳自赏). If the government understands, then we shut up. “The flames reach higher when people from all around add kindling to them” (周人添柴火焰高). It’s teamwork.

What is most important to Pei is that “In the end my ideas go to the children. This is what I want.”

In 2008, Pei was recognized as a “Model Worker” for Beijing City, the highest form of recognition by the Beijing government.

3) Much of the framework and content of Olympic education came from the non-Communist Parties.

Two of the eight legal non-communist parties, the Democratic League and the Jiusan (September Third) Society played a key role in an unprecedented joint effort between the city government, the Party, university professors, and BOCOG, which produced important planning documents on the guiding thought of Olympic education and its concrete implementation. Between 2001 and 2008 the two political parties organized dozens of activities in Beijing, including academic forums, publications, school activities, poster exhibitions, and more, while their branches in other cities also organized activities. Many of the other political parties also organized activities in Beijing and nationwide.

Pei was not a member of the Communist Party in 2001. Several years later, he joined the September Third Society.

4) The specific content of Olympic Education is almost completely non-political.

Schools were given complete freedom to design their own Olympic education activities, and the resulting variety is amazing. Students formed their own organizing committees (following the organizational chart on BOCOG’s website) or conducted bid competitions like the Olympic bid. They organized mini-Olympic games with a parade of athletes in the opening ceremony featuring students dressed as the different nations of the world. They produced a huge amount of artwork in every conceivable medium, even beans or bottle tops glued to posterboard. They developed innumerable performance types, including the “Olympic angel chorus” at Yangfangdian, which performs a moving rendition of Bach’s “Ode to Joy” or the “Olympic Volunteer’s Song” while wearing angel wings. Students at the Information Management vocational school, most of whose parents are migrant laborers, spent two years of their after-school time producing a computer-generated animated film in which the Fuwa mascots introduce Olympic history.

Teachers I talked to felt that Olympic education was nonpolitical, and thus contrasted with the previous character education campaigns in the national curriculum. As one teacher told me, “After the national leaders have stated the policy, if the only way you can think to implement it is to shout slogans, it becomes irritating after a while.” With Olympic education, they could use concrete activities to teach children fair play, teamwork, mutual respect, selfless service, international friendship, the pursuit of world peace, and many other concepts. And unlike the previous character education, their students enjoyed the projects.

The words “communist” and “socialist” are almost completely absent in Olympic education materials and lectures. In mid-May, I sat through 1-1/2 hours of presentations by teachers at local schools considered to have the best examples of Olympic education, and I did not hear the words “communist” or “socialist” once. Last week I attended a meeting of the Olympic Education Standing Office to plan a book that will summarize and analyze the thousands of activities carried out under its umbrella. The success of the Olympic education effort is not being judged by whether it promoted loyalty to the Party or nation, but by whether it motivated the students and produced creative results. I also attended several of the lectures delivered in the teacher training program and to the volunteers. Like the content of the school programs, these lectures largely impart knowledge about the world outside China.

The most political content I have seen was at a meeting run by the Communist Youth League of the Beijing Forestry University, which was a training lecture for college student participants in the Green Long March project to promote environmental awareness across China. A few speakers almost casually mentioned the support of the party and government for the various volunteer projects organized by the CYL, but that was it.

I do not feel that the Party and government are explicitly claiming responsibility for organizing these games – on the contrary, public statements claim that the games belong to all people, that “everyone can participate” (China has placed particular importance on the Olympic creed that “the most important thing is to participate”). The strongest argument that one could accurately make is that the Games implicitly support the Communist Party. But if one wants to venture into the realm of implicit messages, there many others that contradict this one. I believe the major message in Olympic education is that there is an exciting and colorful world out there, and China is about to join it. And this is in accord with the major goal of Olympic education, which is to produce a next generation of Chinese people who are better prepared to be active citizens in that world than the current adults, who are all too conscious of their limitations.

Conclusion: Beijing’s Olympic Education De-politicizes the Olympics

Actually, I think it is more accurate to conclude that the Olympic Games have been de-politicized in China’s Olympic education efforts. And this, in my opinion, is part of a backlash against the politicized national curriculum. Ren Hai reached this conclusion in a recent essay:

Today’s world lacks an education that focuses on a global horizon and is firmly based on the interests of humankind as a whole. It was precisely this lack that sparked the emergence of Olympic education. Olympic education aims to cultivate qualified citizens of the “global village,” to help them break through the various limitations of their respective societies, to impress the seal of a world citizen on top of the existing identity of a national citizen. (In the forthcoming Olympic Studies Reader).

Enduring social change only occurs when the ideas in people’s heads change. In my opinion, Olympic education is one of the most important dimensions of the Beijing Olympics, one whose effects will be felt for decades to come. But we will never be able to prove them or measure them, and so what is going on in this realm will be unlikely to make headlines, and its place in history may never be recorded.

I once witnessed Donnie Pei become irritated at a reporter asking him questions about political issues surrounding the games. He stood up and passionately told him in English:

The Olympic Games are a congregation, a celebration, a holiday – it’s a festival. If some Westerners take this time to raise political issues, tell them they’re stupid. Even if it’s George Bush – tell him to go to the IOA and receive an Olympic education. Olympism is respect for any culture, any people, any nation. That’s why the Olympic Games survived one hundred years until now. We are promoting love between people. I don’t want to promote hatred, such as the Tibet and Taiwan protesters. We are China. We should understand each other better through the Olympic Games.

Duelling Dreams at the 2008 Beijing Olympics

Jim Leibold originally developed this piece on Chinese and Western viewpoints on the Beijing Olympics for use in his teaching; he's adapted it here for the China Beat audience.

By Jim Leibold

This year is China’s year. On the 8th day of the 8th month at 8pm, it will light the flame of the 29th Olympics Games—bringing not only the world’s athletes to Beijing but also thousands of foreign visitors and millions more through the massive global media contingency that will descend on the capital.

What will the media spotlight capture? The luster of an ancient civilization and emerging superpower as many in China hope; or the darker, seedier corners of an authoritarian yet fragile party-state as many in the West suspect.

According to the Chinese government, the Olympics games have never been about politics and nor should the Beijing Games. The Games are all about sports: the principles of peace, fair play, friendship, honour and glory on the track and in the pool. The Games are about cultivating and spreading the “Olympic Spirit” and “Olympic Culture” throughout China and the wider world.

But in reality the Games have always been about politics. One only has to recall Hitler’s showcase Berlin Olympics of 1936, the tragic deaths at the Munich Olympics in 1972, or the boycotts of the Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles games. And the Beijing Olympics are shaping up to be the mother of all political events: as different global constituencies compete for resources, power and influence (not to mention money) in the main event as the athletes go for gold on the sidelines.

If we hope to understand the significance of the Olympic-size struggle that is playing out on the front pages of our newspapers, online chat-rooms and city streets in the lead up to the Beijing Games, we need to first contextualize (dare I say essentialize) the two contrasting worldviews at play here. I would like to suggest that the ongoing controversy surrounding the Games is a reflection of two competing social imaginaries which go well beyond the swimming pool and the track and are deeply rooted in how China sees its place in the world and how the rest of the world views China.

Competing Worldviews: China
Despite China’s rising economic and political muscle, it still views itself as a victim of the international system. Modern history as it is taught in Chinese classrooms begins with the 1840 Opium War. And the story of how the British government ordered a military attack on the forces of Qing China because one of its officials, Lin Zexue, dared to destroy the British opium supplies that were poisoning its youth and destroying its economy. This was the opening salvo on what the Chinese rightfully remember as the “century of humiliation.”

From Sun Yat-sen to Mao Zedong, Chinese leaders called on their people to “wake up” and throw off their slavish mentality so that they could once again stand up in front of the world. This narrative of national victimhood and the resulting struggle for national dignity is perhaps most clearly symbolized by the apocryphal sign which supposedly forbade dogs and Chinese from entering Huangpu Park in the foreign concessions of late 19th century Shanghai.

Although the sign appears to have never existed (at least as a posted placard), the very idea of its existence circulated widely among turn of the century Chinese nationalists, who used it as a highly emotive example of the humiliation the Chinese were suffering at the hands of the foreign imperialists. Take for example Li Weiqing’s 1907 appeal:

“On the banks of the Huangpu river the foreigners have set up a garden where the green grass is like carpet and the flowers like silks and satins. People from all countries of the world are admitted, even Indians who have lost their country, indeed even the dogs of foreigners are admitted. Only Chinese are not allowed to go there. Foreigners despise us so much, they regard us as more base than slaves, horses and dogs…So it can be seen that in the modern world only power counts. We should exert ourselves to obliterate this disgraceful humiliation.”

For many Chinese living both at home and abroad, this struggle for national dignity continues today, making another imaginary scene—this time from Bruce Lee’s 1972 film Fist of Fury—a source of great inspiration and hope. Set in 1930s Shanghai, where the Chinese faced not only the oppression of the West but also the rising militarism of their fellow Asian neighbours Japan, Bruce Lee fights back on behalf of his nation and people, defeating the Japanese traitors and destroying the symbol of foreign insult:

VIDEO 1: “no dogs and Chinese allowed”:


But didn’t this “century of humiliation” end in 1949 with the Communist revolution? After all Mao had claimed that the Chinese people had finally stood up from the rostrum at Tiananmen Square. Yet, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution left China looking like the “joker in the pack” of the international system. When Mao died in 1976, China was still one of the poorest countries in the world, with an average caloric intake lower than those experienced in the Auschwitz death camp if we are to believe Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.

China has come a long way since 1976. Proud of their country’s achievements over the last three decades, most Chinese look to the 2008 Olympics with a sense of rising confidence. For them, the Olympics is about pride and dignity: the reversal of historical wrongs and the restoration of a once proud and mighty nation. Today’s Chinese youth are extremely patriotic and highly sensitive of any criticism which seems to hark back to the bad old days when their countrymen were viewed as backward, yellow-skin coolies.

Competing Worldviews: The West
Yet, outside China, the world continues to look at the “dragon” with a combination of fear and desire. On the one hand, the West has long looked to Asia with a lust for the exotic and the erotic: the lost and hidden realm of Shangri-la and the fragile submissiveness of the Oriental beauty. In the ancient traditions of the East, and in particular its Tibetan incarnation, the West has long sought an escape from the brutal realities of Western modernity: its wars, its poverty, its social atomization.

This desire for escape was brilliantly captured in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, which told the story of British diplomat Hugh Conway’s discovery of the hidden paradise of Shangri-la deep within the Himalayan mountains of Tibet, where he found love, happiness and, most importantly, meaning. This hugely successful paperback was made into an academy award winning movie in 1937 by leading Hollywood director Frank Capra and then remade into a dreadful, almost comical, musical in 1973 with a memorable Burt Bacharach score. It didn’t seem to matter that the wise High Lama was a Belgium friar named Father Perrault nor that the only Tibetans or Chinese depicted in the film version were played by Western or Japanese actors. For both the book and the films represented a sort of Western fantasy, a postmodern simulacra, where one could sing and dance without the troubles of war, disease or those “dirty Orientals” getting in one’s way:

VIDEO 2: “Lost Horizon 1973 Remake”:


In the final scene from the 1973 remake, Conway has escaped from an Indian hospital in an effort to get back to Shangri-La while American government officials (he’s American in the remake, of course) attempt to bring him back home. Asked if he believes Shangri-la exists, the Indian doctor replies: “Yes. Yes, I believe it. I believe it because I want to believe it.” In other words, there is no need to concern yourself with the reality of China or Tibet when you can create your own version of Shangri-la in the back lots of a Burbank studio.

Yet this desire for the lost wisdom and beauties of the East has been accompanied by an equally strong fear of its “Yellow Hordes” and looming “Yellow Peril.” There is a long history of anti-Chinese racism and migration exclusionism which is deeply rooted in the histories of Australia, America and other Western nation-states.

Like Hilton’s Lost Horizon, the fictional character of another English novelist tapped into this fear of the menacing Oriental: Sax Romer’s evil criminal genius Dr. Fu Manchu. In his first book, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913), Rohmer wrote:

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”

One of Fu’s greatest agents was his daughter, Fah Lo Suee or “Sweet Perfume,” who seduced and then tortured Western man in Rohmer’s 1930 The Daughter of Fu Man Chu. Here the fear of pain mixed with the masochistic tickle of pleasure:

VIDEO 3: “I Am The Daughter of Fu Manchu by Charong Chow”:


In sum, we can best understand the ongoing political drama surrounding the Beijing Olympics as a clash of competing worldviews: for the Chinese, the games are a battle ground for upholding national dignity and the rewriting of past historical crimes; for the West, the games are yet another opportunity for it to project its unrealistic fantasies of fear and desire on the Chinese people.

Now, let me see if I can explain what I mean in further detail by taking a closer look at some of the ways that the Games have been politicized both inside and outside of China. Here my aim is to demonstrate how these two radically different social imaginaries are shaping the language and actions of different actors during China’s Olympic moment.

A Game of Cat and Mouse
Since its initiation during the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics, the torch relay has always been one of the more colorful and symbolic acts of the games, as well as its most overtly political. But the Chinese have taken the relay to a new level: on what was originally dubbed the torch’s 130-day, 137,000-kilometer “journey of harmony.” Not only did they hope to stage the longest relay in Olympic history--with over 20,000 torch bearers carrying the torch to over 20 countries on 5 continents before finally encircling (or rather literally enclosing) the Chinese nation-state, including its highest and lowest points in Mount Everest and the Tarim basin in Xinjiang.

Yet, as all are aware, the torch’s journey around the globe has been anything but harmonious. From the moment it was lit in Athens, the torch has been dogged by controversy. First in London, then Paris and San Francisco, pro-Tibetan independence groups attempted to douse, grab and disrupt the torch while a group of ex-Chinese army strongmen and national police tried to escort it through chaotic city streets. As more than one commentator has pointed out, the entire relay descended into a comic book style farce, with organizers forced to take last minute detours, freeway “jogs,” or laps around a lockdown stadiums or parks to avoid protestors.

For most Westerners, the relay is all about freedom of speech and the right of the individual: the right of athletes and others to criticize the human rights abuses that they claim are occurring in Tibet and elsewhere in China. Take for example, the actions of American environmental advocate Majora Carter, who was selected as one of the torch bearers for the San Francisco leg of the relay. When she attempted to pull out a small Tibetan flag from her sleeve, she was pounced on. In her words:

“The Chinese security and cops were on me like white on rice, it was no joke. They pulled me out of the race, and then San Francisco police officers pushed me back into the crowd on the side of the street.”

As the below video reveals, Carter seemed to be more offended by the denial of her own freedom of speech than anything that was happening in Tibet:

Video 4: “Olympic Torch Bearer Removed For Carrying Tibetan Flag”:


For most Chinese, however, the often comic kafuffle surrounding the relay has been deeply felt, and personally insulting. This sense of anger propelled 27 year-old, disabled fencer Jin Jing into the national spotlight. Dubbed by Chinese netcitizens “the Smiling Angel in Wheelchair,” Jin Jing tenaciously clung to the torch from her wheel chair as several protestors attempted to wrestle it from her hands during the Paris leg of the relay. And as the following YouTube montage reveals, these heroics have transformed her into a national hero:

Video 5: “Jin Jing Chinese National Hero”:


Boycotting the Games
While the Chinese see the Olympics as a sort of coming-out-party and showcase for Chinese national pride, others have used the spotlight to highlight any number of beefs they have against the Chinese state. Many of these groups have adopted a very slick, PR-style approach to their protests, one which makes full use of the multimedia potentials of the internet. Take for example the following:

Video 6: “Olympic Boycott ad”:


In their campaigns, these e-activists have either re-packaged the five cute and cuddy Olympic mascots, the fuwa or “friendlies,” or manipulated the Game’s official motto, “One world, One dream,” and its associated logo. And it seems that there is no shortage of causes that they are fighting for: global warming; religious freedom; labour rights; unfair trade; human rights; press freedom; and even animal cruelty.

The two most vocal groups have been the Dream for Darfur NGO backed by actress Mia Farrow and Students for a Free Tibet headed up by the Canadian-Tibetan activist Lhadon Tethong.

In a 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Mia Farrow dubbed the Beijing games the “Genocide Olympics” due to the Beijing government’s continued support for the Khartoum regime and their ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab tribes in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. While Beijing claimed that it was “an insult to the Olympic spirit to wantonly blame China for the Darfur crisis,” it also dispatched a special envoy to the region to pressure the Sudanese government into agreeing to a UN peacekeepers force. Yet, with only a handful of peacekeepers on the ground due to continued foot-dragging in Khartoum, the group has kept the heat on. In February, it claimed its first major scalp when Steven Spielberg announced that he was resigning from his role as a special adviser to the Game’s opening ceremony, claiming that China must do more to pressure its African ally over the Darfur crisis.

As a global franchise of sorts, Students for a Free Tibet have launched a number of creative “direct action” campaigns across the globe aimed at rising awareness of China’s own “genocide” in Tibet. A year prior to the start of the games, they managed to unfurl a huge banner on the Great Wall of China, reading: “One World; One Dream; Free Tibet 2008.” They have also launched a campaign against the Olympic mascots, in particular the Tibetan antelope Yingying or Yingsel as she is known in Tibet. In June of 2007, they had the following press conference to announce that Yingsel had defected from the Olympic team:

Video 7: “Students for a Free Tibet Press Conference”:


While Yingsel might be in hiding, she isn’t hard to find on the internet: she has her own website and can be found networking on Facebook and Myspace, and now even has her own Pac-Man style game where Chinese cops chase her around a maze as she searches for tsampa and momos in a quest for survival. On YouTube, Yingsel can also be seen taking on Olympic sponsors Coca-Cola:

Video 8: “Yingsel Thinks Coke Is GROSS”:


Selling the Games
Facing a PR crisis of disastrous proportions, the Chinese government hired the New York-based global communications consulting firm Hill and Knowlton to help it wrestle back the message from the activists. Their brief: repackage China as a kinder, gentler state—a “responsible stakeholder” and a modern superpower with a glorious past.

Domestically, Beijing’s charm offensive has focused on cultivating the “Olympic Spirit” among its citizens, as this advertorial demonstrates:

Video 9: “Catch the Olympic Spirit – CCTV Advertorial”:


And it seems to be working, if we are to believe official Chinese government statistics: 95% of Beijing citizen agree with their government’s handling of Olympic preparations, and the government has had little trouble filling the estimated 200,000 volunteer slots needed to guide foreign visitors and athletes around while keeping a watchful eye on any “suspicious behaviour.”

Internationally, Beijing’s charm offensive has focused on re-packaging the ancient Occidental desire for the jewels of the Orient, albeit with a distinct postmodern twist. Dubbed the “Green Games; High-tech Games; and People’s Games,” Beijing has set about reinventing its cityscape: a dozen or so new sports venues include the “Bird’s Nest” and the “Water Cube”; an extended cross-city underground; a massive new airport terminal; a series of new, gleaming office buildings; an egg-shaped national theatre and; even the world’s highest ferris wheel.

To spruce up the city’s environment, the government has reportedly planted of over 10 million trees around the city of Beijing while moving 200 factories outside the city confines. It now boasts that 90% of city buses and 70% of its car run on clean burning LPG. The “Beijing Weather Modification Office” has even promised to produce clear skies for the games through cloud seeding. Yet, with the Games less than a month away, the city is still struggling to meet WHO guidelines for clean air.

But it is not all about high-rises and clean air, the organizers have also attempted to play to the Western desire for the traditional secrets of the Orient – Shangri-la with a distinctly post-Mao face. To some extent, one could argue, that it is about putting forward Chinese culture as a positive and palpable alternative to Hollywood-articulated Western modernity.

And here, the Chinese have brought in the big-guns, such as this promotional video for the games directed by the now world famous film director Zhang Yimou. As artistic director of the Opening Games, we can get a feel here for how Zhang wants to use the games to re-package Chinese culture:

Video 10: “Zhang Yimou Beijing Olympics Advertorial”:


Some critics inside China have argued that this type of stereotypic and sentimental imagery only serves to cheapen the country’s rich cultural heritage. Unmoved, Zhang has claimed that his opening ceremony “will offer ‘Chinese cuisine’ which suits foreigners’ palates.”

All this doesn’t come cheap. It is estimated that the final price tag for staging the games will be somewhere in the range of US$50 billion–over 10 times the cost of the Sydney games and more than 5 times the last games in Athens. But all this money appears to have done little to dampen the growing anxiety about what a rising China might mean for the future of the globe.

That was until the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan province on 12 May, killing nearly 100,000 people and leaving another 5 million homeless. The openness and speed with which the Chinese government responded to this crisis (especially when compared to the foot-dragging of the Burmese authorities) has helped to take some of the bite out of international criticism of China, at least for now. But it’s uncertain whether this goodwill will outlast the Olympic flame.

Cyber Games
Olympic protest movements are nothing new, as I have already pointed out. Yet, in recent years, the battle ground has significantly shifted as new communication technologies have unleashed new platforms and outlets for both activist groups and the state to get their messages out. The tragic outbreak of violent riots in Lhasa on March 14th and in surrounding Tibetan areas and the way in which these events were reported highlights how these new technologies have altered the landscape in which this ancient struggle between fear and desire is being playing out.

Students for a Free Tibet has made extensive use of the Internet and other visual media to get images and information out of Tibet and spread word about what they see as the Communist regime’s brutal response to these Tibetan “protests.” To further their cause, they have created clever, eye-catching animations, such as this video:

Video 11: “Boycott Beijing Olympics”:


But it is also about presenting much more graphic, disturbing and confronting videos, such as this recently released video (warning these images are quite disturbing):

Video 12: “Students for a Free Tibet March 14th Video”:


By distributing and sharing these graphic images on the Internet, Students for a Free Tibet bypass the mainstream Western media (which would never contemplate showing such a video), thus taking their message directly to their target audience: the globally wired and connected youth.

In China, however, such confronting imagery is central to the government’s propaganda on the Tibet riots. The blooded bodies are just different: Chinese rather than Tibetan. Take for example, this documentary which has been repeatedly shown on state-owned CCTV in China:

Video 13: “CCTV 3.14 Doco on Tibet”:


Fed a steady diet of this type of highly emotive imagery, it is not surprising that few Chinese have any sympathy for the Tibetans and their international supporters. Rather, most Chinese believe that these continued attacks on their national dignity go well beyond a few radical fringe elements in the West. They have accused the mainstream Western media of bias in its coverage of the Tibetan riots, and it would appear with some merit (albeit minor when compared to China’s propaganda machine). To highlight their claims, a group of Chinese net-citizens set up the website http://www.anti-cnn.com/, where they have sought to counter the pro-Tibet lobby.

In other words, in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, these clashing worldviews are being played out daily not only on the world’s streets but also increasingly in cyberspace. Spend a bit of time on youtube and you will get a feel for type of video jostling which continues on the Tibet issue.

Games for Sale
Finally, the Olympics are not only about politics and sports but also money: vast sums of it. The selling of the Beijing Games has recast that ancient Oriental desire to consume and possess the “Other” in a new economic light: the craving to hawk one’s wares in the world’s largest marketplace.

In the arena of global capitalism, the Beijing Games are truly big business–a virtual orgy of dollars and brands. And all the world’s leading multinational companies are planning to be there: Adidas, BHP Billiton, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonald's, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa and Volkswagen. Some have committed upwards of $100 million dollars to put their goods and brands before China and the world’s consumers.

To land the sale, they have turned to familiar faces, Chinese stars such as Jackie Chan and Yao Ming who are just as well known in the West as they are in China itself. Take for example the follow Visa commercial:

Video 14: “Jackie Chan Olympic Commercial”:


The opening ceremony is expected to be the first TV sporting event watched live around the world by more than 4 billion people (1 billion of them in China itself) and the games will bring over half a million international tourists to China.

Multinational brands are using the event as an opportunity to build credibility and visibility with the booming Chinese consumer market. And unlike their Western counterparts, it appears that Chinese consumers are extremely brand conscious with one recent survey revealing that 68% of Chinese would be significantly more interested in brands that sponsor the world’s biggest sporting event.

Yet for most Olympic sponsors, the controversy surrounding the Beijing Games has become an Olympic-size headache. Activist groups like Dream for Darfur and Amnesty International have been making it difficult for these companies, calling in some case for a boycott of their products back home.

In November of last year, Dream for Darfur issued a report card on the Olympic sponsors, rating their actions, or rather inaction, on the issue of Darfur and what they claim is the Chinese government’s complicity in the crisis. In the report, 13 of the 19 top corporate sponsors were issued with a failing grade, including Kodak, Microsoft, BHP, and Visa. McDonald’s was the only company to escape with a satisfactory C grade.

Caught in a difficult catch-22 position, these companies risk losing consumers back home if they don’t address the concerns of these activist groups, but if they criticize Beijing, they also risk running foul of the Chinese government and jeopardizing their future in the world’s fastest growing consumer market. Thus far their strategy has been to join the Beijing government in stressing the apolitical nature of the games while highlighting their charitable record on other social issues around the globe.

China’s Olympic Moment
So how will China’s Olympic moment turn out? I think a couple of things are certain:

1) China will win the most gold medals—topping their performance in Athens where they won 32 gold medals to America’s 35;

2) Multinational companies will make heaps of money as they increase their brand profile in China;

3) International activists will stage creative protests and other forms of “direct action” in Beijing during the Game which will be covered cautiously by international media outlets and completely ignored by the Chinese media;

4) The vast majority of Chinese people will continue to vigorously resist any attempts by “outside forces” to ruin China’s coming out party, or at least those attempts that they learn about through China’s great firewall of media censorship.

What remains unclear is just how significant the 2008 Beijing Olympics will be viewed in the history of China’s post-Mao era. Will it mark China’s ascendancy to global superpower status as the CCP hopes: what some academics have referred to as a global “power shift” from West to East? Or will it mark the beginning of the end to a brutal authoritarian yet fragile regime as many of its Western critics hope?

Nazi Germany won nine more gold medals than the USA at the 1936 Berlin Game and the Soviet Union won over 80 gold medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics boycotted by the USA and others, but both regimes collapsed soon thereafter. While Japan and Korea won few medals at the 1968 Tokyo and 1988 Seoul Olympics, these games marked an important turning point in the economic and political development of these two Asia countries.

Which category will the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games fit into: Berlin and Moscow or Tokyo and Seoul? Time will tell.

Jim Leibold teaches at La Trobe University in Australia and recently published Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese.

Olympic Readings

For those keeping up on coverage of the Olympics and China, the new issue of Foreign Policy has a piece by John Hoberman, professor of German Studies at UT-Austin. In FP’s regular “Think Again” feature (which seeks to challenge conventional wisdom), Hoberman argues that the Olympics are political, are not intended to promote human rights, are not (necessarily) a catalyst for change, don’t generate a lot of revenue for the host or sponsors, are not the most controversial Games ever, and that the IOC is even more corrupt than already reported. In an additional piece, “Prime Numbers: Rings of Gold,” Brad Humphreys presents data to show that it isn’t the host countries that are making big money on the Games, but rather sponsors and the IOC itself.

In her regular Olympics FAQs for us at China Beat, Susan Brownell has already debunked or complicated several of these ideas (check out all our Beijing Olympics coverage here). If you’d like to get a second peek at Brownell’s Olympic writing, she has revamped several of her China Beat posts for Japan Focus and The Huffington Post.

If you are having trouble tracking all the Olympic rules, the Wall Street Journal China Blog has put together a primer, including links to the 128-page list (in Chinese) of guidelines for Olympic spectators (just in case those of you making the trip to Beijing needed a little light plane reading). Danwei features a story today on Olympics security (and it’s worth taking a look if only for the picture of the Segway assault squad). CDT has an interview with Chinese journalists about the Olympic Games, Beijing pollution continues to be a central story (such as in yesterday’s report on Marketplace and at Time), and various bloggers, from CLB to Sinosplice, have been detailing the visa crackdown.

In physical fitness-related news, Rebecca MacKinnon has a fabulously-linked post on the early-July fascination with push-ups in China following the Weng’an Riots, and, since the push-up meme was in part a way to circumvent internet censorship of discussions of the riots, you might also find interesting David Bandurski’s piece at FEER on Communist Party web infiltrators.

After the Olympics, What?

By Nicolai Volland

Exactly one month before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games, all attention seems to be focused on those magic sixteen days, from August 8 through August 24. It is surprising, however, how rarely the question is raised: what will happen once the Games are over?

In the run-up to the Summer Games, China has been placed under an undeclared state of emergency. Special regulations and restrictions are effecting almost every of daily life. Taxi drivers and Beijing residents had to brush up their English and study brochures that explained how to stand in line and be courteous to foreigners. On a more serious note, vehicle traffic in the capital will be reduced for the time of the Games, and industrial production is being brought to a standstill across vast regions of Northern China, in order to ensure blue skies over Beijing and reduce the city’s notorious smog.

To heighten security, baggage screening – usually conducted at airports only – has been introduced at the Beijing subway, leading to incredibly long queues, even as the system has to deal with the extra traffic caused by residents unable to move via their treasured cars, and the influx of visitors. Travelers from abroad as well as foreign residents in Beijing had to deal with drastic new visa rules: embassies issue no more multiple entry visas, foreign students and self-employed foreigners can no longer extend their visas and must leave the country, and tourists must now produce return air tickets and hotel reservations to obtain their visas. Backpacking to the Olympics: meiyou. In addition, international academic conferences, cultural festivals, and music performances had to be cancelled for the period surrounding the Olympic Games.

Restrictions on civil rights for Chinese are more worrying. Repression of human rights activists and lawyers has increased while Beijing has issued orders to the provinces to keep any forms of social unrest under control. With an estimated 30,000 foreign journalists due to arrive in the country, the government wants to portray China as stable, prosperous, and above all harmonious. No more incidents like the Weng’an riots, please! To reduce tensions, Beijing has instructed regional authorities to strictly control the flow of petitioners seeking redress in Beijing. Internet and press controls are likely to be stepped up in early August.

But what happens when the Games are over? Chinese and foreigners alike have accepted the heightened degree of control with some grumbling. Security concerns ahead of a mega-event like the Olympic Games are understandable. The common perception of the new measures as temporary in nature, lasting just a few weeks, makes them acceptable. However, will things go back to what they were after the end of the Games? Will the various restrictions end with a big bang – the lifting of the Olympic emergency? Will they be allowed to trickle out slowly, gradually reverting to the status quo ante? Or will the Chinese government adopt a more eclectic approach, trying to keep in place some of the new measures, while allowing others to fade out?

Nothing more than speculation is possible at this moment, but the Olympic Games and the massive amount of preparations for the event are certain to have implications far beyond the end of the Games on August 24. Our attention span should be longer, too, so some speculation will be in order.

The last of the scenarios outlined above is probably the most likely. Factory production cannot be halted indefinitely without an economic toll; neither will vehicle owners accept a longer than necessary ban to use their cars. But the air pollution in the capital is a very real concern, and if the “temporary” measures were to show a significant improvement on air quality, the municipal government might be tempted to consider making some of the traffic restrictions permanent, even if that means angering the newly affluent middle-class.

Visa regulations are a hassle, and are said to be responsible for a drastic drop in foreign visitor arrivals. But admittedly, the hurdles for Chinese citizens trying to obtain visas for the United States or the European Union are still significantly higher than the new Chinese visa rules. Will the government decide it can well live with less backpackers who don’t spend a lot anyway, as well as hard-to-control foreigners running their own small companies? If the current visa regime does not lead to major disruptions for business travelers, the current visa regulations might stay around for a longer time than anticipated.

Finally, the clampdown on dissent and the stricter handling on local forms of resistance (prevention of mass incidents and the flow of petitioners to Beijing) has enhanced the power of the central state, and the CCP will be unlikely to give away easily the increased leverage over local politics. There is little to be gained for the Party-state from easing controls in the area of civil liberties, and the forms of repression we witness currently might, at best, be allowed to fizzle out over a longer period of time. It is likely, however, that the central government will find it desirable to perpetuate at least some of the “emergency” powers gained in the name of a one-time event.

With the Olympic Games approaching, attention nationally and internationally is focusing on the event itself. To watch the long-term implications of the current nationwide mobilization, however, might prove to be at least as interesting as the competitions in the Olympic stadium themselves.

FAQ#4: How Is Beijing Planning to Handle Political Protests during the Olympic Games?

One of the most important issues for the upcoming Beijing Olympics is whether activists will attempt to carry out public protests and demonstrations, and how the Chinese authorities will react if they do. Some Western journalists believe that there will be protest attempts, and if the Chinese reaction is to immediately send in the security forces, this will dominate the front-page coverage of the Games. One journalist acquaintance observed that if this should happen, it is likely that a photo of a policeman manhandling a protester will become the graphic emblem of the Games for years to come, carrying on the tradition of the photo of the student in front of the tank in 1989.

Many non-Chinese have been wondering if the Chinese authorities were so naïve about the outside world that it did not occur to them that there would be protests during the international torch relay, and are wondering if government leaders really think they can prevent protests by foreigners by screening visa applications, stopping likely activists at the border, or sending home Westerners who seem inclined to protest. Although I have no inside information, my impression is that the answer to the first question is: Yes, they really were so naïve that they had not anticipated the protests during the torch relay - this even though Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games (decided in 2001) had probably been the most politically-contested bid ever. The biography of He Zhenliang, China’s senior member of the IOC, recalls that some IOC members received a hundred e-mails per day protesting Beijing’s bid and reportedly received threats of physical harm from groups promoting Tibetan freedom (Liang Lijuan, He Zhenliang and China’s Olympic Dream, 2007: 490). In 2001 Moscow police arrested 21 anti-China protesters, including a Tibetan monk, in the two days leading up to the IOC vote on the 2008 host city. Ironically, when some Beijing bid committee members tried to take a group photo behind a banner in Red Square to commemorate their success, they were accosted by police and threatened with arrest.

One measure of the lack of forethought about dealing with protests is the slowness with which public statements have emerged about how protests will be handled during the Olympic Games. Well after the torch relay uproar, on June 2, the Beijing Olympics Chinese Organizing Committee (BOCOG) released the “Legal Guidelines during the Olympic Games for Foreigners to Enter the Country and for the Period of their Stay in China,” in the form of 57 questions and their answers (in Chinese – translations are my own). Relevant guidelines included the list of answers accompanying question # 8: “Which foreigners are not allowed to enter the country?” Answers #2 and # 6 read: “those considered likely to carry out terrorist, violent, or subversive activities after entering the country,” and “those considered likely to carry out other activities harmful to China’s national security and interests.” Question #48 asked, “During cultural, sporting, and other events with large crowds, which behaviors that disturb the order of the event are forbidden?” Three answers were: “articles that violate the regulations…;” “the display of insulting banners, streamers, and other objects,” and “other behaviors that disturb the order of an event with a large crowd.” The most relevant statement was hidden near the very end as the answer to Question #55: “Can one carry out assemblies, marches, protests?” The answer was, “Holding assemblies, marches, and protests must be applied for at a public security office according to the law. Those who have not received a permit cannot hold an associated activity.” To date no concrete instructions have been released about how foreigners might apply for such a permit. I talked to a journalist who was aware of at least one pro-nationalist Chinese group that had applied for and gotten such permits, and held demonstrations, but it is not clear how often groups apply for them and what usually happens when they do.

Another measure of the lack of preparedness was the fact that the “Manual for Beijing Olympic Volunteers” that was released on May 30 contained no instructions to volunteers about how to handle political protests, even though BOCOG is aware of the display of a Republic of China (Taiwan) banner that took place at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and resulted in the arrest of a spectator, and has published the statements on the backs of the admission tickets that will provide a legal basis for ejecting spectators who engage in political protests (see my previous post). At least, Chapter 6 of the English-language version of the “Manual” that I was able to find on the internet did not contain any such instructions, though there were instructions on crowd control should there be emergencies like terrorist acts (pp. 155-160). The English version is no longer available on BOCOG’s website because of the unhappiness in the West with the condescending language toward the disabled, while the Chinese version currently on BOCOG’s website ends with Chapter 5. There are general statements that “social volunteers” (in the communities) and those helping the spectators are responsible for helping to maintain order. However, from personal experience I can say that instructions to volunteers about how to handle protesters will probably be given orally and not in writing in a document meant for public consumption.

Protests and religious proselytizing in the public spaces surrounding the venues are an Olympic tradition (how Christian evangelists are planning to deal with the Beijing Olympics has been discussed by Monroe Price on a blog posting). While for the Beijing Olympics the IOC is particularly concerned to enforce Rule 51.3 of the Olympic charter - which states "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas" - it claims no authority over spaces outside the venues (but press conferences in press rooms inside the venues will allow political statements, which seems a bit contradictory to some Chinese). In the spaces outside the venues, city and national laws apply.

At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Falungong adherents performed their meditation exercises on an almost daily basis in Syntagma Square, and so far as I know met with no interference and attracted little media attention. But then, demonstrations around Syntagma Square are so common that I have learned that it’s helpful to ask before scheduling a meeting there whether any strikes are planned on that day – my image of Athens approaches that which many Chinese now have of London and Paris. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the equestrian event organizers had a great deal of concern about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which had recently protested equestrian events in very dramatic ways, such as handcuffing themselves to the course obstacles, or in one case grabbing the reins of a competing horse and pulling it to the ground so that it broke its neck and had to be euthanized. As a result, a protest area was assigned to them near the equestrian events, but in the end they did not use it. This back-and-forth seems to have gained little if any public attention; I only know about it because my sister and mother were volunteers at the equestrian events. Even in the US, organizing committees of large sports events typically make requests or at least recommendations that their workers do not speak to the media, and the Atlanta equestrian organizers adapted a number of strategies toward image control in the event that a horse should be injured or die (which did not happen). Probably there have been many potential protests at Olympic Games that were managed behind the scenes and so never reached the public eye.

In most US cities, protesters must apply for a permit to have a demonstration. “Free speech zones” or “protest zones” became common in the U.S. after the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle, in which protests became disorderly and 500 people were arrested. The Democratic and Republican National Conventions utilize the practice. It is not well-known that “free speech zones” were set up at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games in anticipation that large numbers of protesters were going to appear. It was believed that this was the first Olympic Games to institute this practice. A description of the planned zones does not appear in the very lengthy section on security in the Official Report of those Games. Seven “free speech zones” were set up near different venues. The ACLU approved the plan and the organizing committee invited the protesters to the negotiations and brought them into the process. As a result, the protesters calmed down and either they were not used, or if they were slightly used, the media did not pay any attention.

The rules proposed for the Salt Lake City Free Speech Zones were as follows: The zones are available 24 hours a day. A fair and neutral system is designed for applying for a permit, which allows protesters to protest in a designated area near the public events during a designated time. A map of demonstration areas and a schedule of planned demonstrations are made available. Banners and cards encourage lawful, peaceful expression of different view points. Guidelines describing rights and responsibilities are provided to demonstrators and security personnel. Journalists are allowed free access to the protesters. Teams monitor the areas to ensure that public security is maintained. Legal volunteers who are law students monitor the areas to ensure that civil rights are not violated. A procedure for rapid response to claimed violations of First Amendment rights is developed. (See the analysis by Global Policy Forum.)

It is recognized that protest zones enable the government to arrest other protesters outside the zones, or who have not followed the policy, without provoking a big negative reaction from the public. However, because legal experts have concluded that they can be conducted according to the Constitution, the dominant opinion in the U.S. has been favorable.

Knowing that there was international precedent, I started wondering whether it might be feasible to set up protest zones during the Beijing Olympics. I found that when I brought it up with Westerners they generally thought it was a good idea. There is something of a precedent in China – during the 1995 U.N. International Conference on Women, protests took place at the NGO meetings, which were sequestered outside Beijing in Huairou. A Chinese friend who now works for BOCOG still recalls with amusement the nude protests there. I started asking my Chinese colleagues, friends, and people I ran into whether they thought protest zones could be implemented in Beijing. The reactions I got surprised me and made me realize the huge gulf that exists between Western and Chinese views on the topic of protests. For these reactions, see the following FAQ#5: Why Can’t the Chinese Authorities Allow a Little Space for Protests during the Olympics?

FAQ#5: Why Can’t the Chinese Authorities Allow a Little Space for Protests during the Olympics?

Of course, the easy answer to this question is: Because there is almost no freedom of assembly in China and there are big restrictions on freedom of expression. But I have started to realize that this answer is too simple. The people I have been talking to, even well-educated and international people, have a gut reaction to the idea of public protests that is unfavorable.

I have been discussing the issue of protests during the Olympic Games with Chinese colleagues, friends, and acquaintances from academic, government, and corporate backgrounds. The people whose views I summarize here are college-educated (in China), middle-class, internationally-informed (but not educated abroad), and between the ages of 30 and 55. I would guess that their political stance is close to the mainstream (though since Chinese people don’t vote for top leaders, there’s no clear barometer of their political stances like “Republican” or “Democrat”).

Some of them expressed that the protests surrounding the torch relay presented a new view of the West, because they did not fully understand that such protests are common there. My guess is that while they knew about them, perhaps they had never seen so many visual images on TV and in the media. However, it seems to me that the way in which this coverage was handled in China left many people with the false impression that protests like these occur in London and Paris nearly every day, a portrait they regard with distaste. Let me to try to outline the system of beliefs that produces this reaction.

First, there is the cultural background of host-guest relations. There is a highly-refined protocol between a host and a guest in China; this also extends to Chinese conventions for the expression of mutual respect between states, which historically were more highly developed than that of the West. Chinese people see large sporting events as part of the cycle of host-guest reciprocity: when I host a major sport event, I invite you to my home as my guest, and there I put you in the seat of honor, feed you the special foods and give you the special gifts unique to my hometown. The cultural performances in the Olympic opening ceremonies are said to be like the unique foods that you receive as my guest, which are not available in your hometown. In the summer of 2006 He Zhenliang, China’s senior member in the International Olympic Committee, spoke passionately to me about hosts and guests when I interviewed him for an essay that the IOC had invited me to write for their official magazine, The Olympic Review. [Lest readers of my previous post think that the censorship practiced by the Foreign Languages Press is unique to China, I will note that that essay was ultimately cut down to 1/3 of its original length, eliminating, among other things, this entire section, which I did not directly attribute to him. So I published it in the final chapter of my recent book, Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China.]

For Mr. He, the Beijing Games were China’s opportunity to return the hospitality of the other host nations who had previously invited China into their homes, and to welcome the world as a guest to China’s home. He anticipated that there would be negative Western media coverage and he explained to me that Chinese people see this as disrespectful, because it is as if the host invited a guest to his home and the guest responded by criticizing the host. He cited Pierre de Coubertin’s notion of “le respect mutuel,” and stated that journalism that serves the West’s appetite for “curiosities” - highlighting China’s differences with the West rather than its commonalities, its deficiencies rather than its accomplishments - is disrespectful to China and to the Olympic ideals.

In conversations with more average Chinese people I have encountered the same reaction. In the Chinese tradition, host-guest meetings are highly ritualized and ceremonial, and are not supposed to be occasions for straightforward debate. Or, put another way, the Olympic Games are an occasion when the guest should respect the “face” of the host. The image of protests taking place outside the Bird’s Nest Stadium, where a splendid ceremony of international friendship is supposed to be taking place, would be “ugly” or “not good to look at” (不好看)。Everyone recognizes that this means they are engaging in “appearance-ism” (形式主义), which is said to be a key feature of Chinese society (sometimes jokingly, sometimes with some bitterness). The proverb that “family shame should not be made public” （家丑不可外扬）is often quoted to express it. As one of my colleagues put it: It’s like when there is a wedding in the family. Actually, the members of the family do not get along with each other. But they put on a show for outsiders during the wedding. I noted that Americans have similar feelings, but she countered by stating that Chinese people have particularly strong feelings about this. As a result, if someone chooses to disrupt the proceedings, it is an indicator that the internal conflicts are so great that the collective is threatened. And in China this is a thought that seems to evoke fear.

Needless to say, this is the context within which protests by Chinese Tibetans during the Olympic Games would be judged. Perhaps this is one reason that the Dalai Lama, who should understand Chinese culture well enough to know this, has recently come out with strong statements against the disruption of the Olympic Games through protests.

An acquaintance who has a degree in international relations further observed that in China the custom is to first invite the guest to your home to allow him/her to “understand” you and build trust, and only later to try to talk through differences. “Mutual understanding” （互相理解） facilitates the later negotiations. To try to work out all differences ahead of time would be ridiculous. I probably don’t need to add that this particular custom is one that many Westerners are forced to learn in dealing with Chinese partners – but having been forced to learn it, they find that it is actually a better way of forming human relations. It is also probably a more accurate description of what is happening through the Beijing Olympic Games - they are more accurately perceived as the starting point for a closer relationship between China and the outside world than a nuptial ceremony marking a permanent intimate bond.

A related factor is the negative Chinese attitude toward criticism. On this point, cultural differences with the West are difficult to pinpoint because there are many frames in which Chinese people seem freer with criticism than Westerners. For example, a friend who runs into you on the sidewalk will say, “Your expression is bad,” or “Have you put on weight?” The Xinhua sport reporter Qu Beilin has written a series of essays in the past year trying to help Chinese people understand Westerners because, having covered the 1993 and 2001 IOC Sessions that voted on Beijing’s Olympic bids, he had an urgent intuition that China did not understand the West and it had better try to do so before the Beijing Games. In his essays, a recurring theme is that the reason Chinese people don’t understand what Westerners really think about them is that Westerners are too polite to criticize you to your face. Nevertheless, Chinese people generally seem to feel that “critics” are negatively regarded in China. Yi Jiandong, whose blog I translated in one of my earlier posts, said that the tagline on his blogsite, “Yi Jiandong’s space: an independent critical voice, realizing the value of constructive action, growing along with the Olympics,” had largely received negative reactions because readers do not understand how a critical voice can be socially constructive. He noted that his student evaluations often judge him harshly for the critical views that he presents in his classes, because they consider it arrogant to put oneself morally above others and criticize them. He observed that a common attitude toward criticism is that it “undermines the collective.”

People in official leadership positions very often do not grasp the concept that criticism can have a constructive function, either, and that is why they do not appreciate the watchdog function that a free media could play if it were free to criticize them. Even less so do they appreciate that Western media criticism of China could have a constructive function. I feel that in evaluating their viewpoints it is important to keep in mind that the current cohort of leadership in China which is 50-60 years old came of age during the Cultural Revolution, when they were exposed to practices of extreme criticism which were very destructive. A constructive response to criticism is based on mutual trust. As a teacher, I have noticed that most of my students must learn to engage with and respond to criticism rather than to get angry and retreat, which seems to be the human knee-jerk reaction. There is a generation of people in power in China right now in whom a healthy approach to criticism may never have been cultivated.

There is also a pragmatic reason that my Chinese acquaintances do not think that “protest zones” are feasible. They all subscribe to what I might call the “powder-keg” theory of Chinese society. They feel that because of growing inequities Chinese society is unstable, and that one public protest could ignite another and another, and soon the whole country would be protesting and everything would collapse. That in the West it might be common for one group to hold public protests while everyone else just walks by on their way to work is hard to comprehend. They state that the problem of “surrounding onlookers” （围观）is common in China. If there were a protest zone outside the Bird’s Nest Stadium, soon a crowd would gather. Before you know it, you’d have a riot.

I have to admit that I have some sympathy to this view. In the 1980s I was trapped three different times in Chinese crowds that were on the verge of losing control, and it was a scary experience. But crowds seem much better-behaved these days, and anyway no security forces were present on those occasions. Westerners see protest zones as a way of ensuring that demonstrations are controlled and do not lead to widespread rioting, but my Chinese respondents did not hold this view, and across the board felt that they would spark rioting rather than control it. They also do not subscribe to the Western theory that allowing a space for protest can defuse a conflict by “letting off steam.” One colleague argued that the custom of protesting is different in China, and that Chinese only protest when they have been pushed to the point of no return. Therefore it is not possible for protests to perform the function of “venting” （发泄） on a limited scale. My acquaintances stated that the social problems facing China today are too complex to be solved immediately and that is why it would be better to keep the lid on protests for the near future. They felt that continued rapid economic development is the only hope for the resolution of these problems.

Several of the people I talked to said that the only way “protest zones” could be implemented would be if they were located in an isolated area away from the events, as was the case for the 1995 NGO meetings in Huairou. I noted with interest June 9 reports stating that, starting in July, the Beijing government had decided to relocate provincial residents coming to Beijing to petition government offices into the World Park in Fengtai, a 6.7-hectare amusement park with reduced-scale displays of 50 countries. “Beijing news revealed that how to handle the petitioners from various places venting their dissatisfaction had all along been a difficult key problem for the security of the Beijing Olympics.” The report further stated that “this measure imitates the model of England’s ‘Hyde Park’; in the ‘World Park,’ petitioners can carry out speeches, protests and demonstrations, demonstrating that the authorities are “people-oriented” (以人为本) and respect human rights, and at the same time avoiding disturbing the conduct of the Olympic Games.” The petitioners would be given food and drink inside the park. I might mention that when I raised the question of protest with The China Beat’s co-organizer Jeff Wasserstrom, an expert on Chinese protests, he mentioned Hyde Park’s “Speaker’s Corner” as a possible alternative to the Salt Lake City model. I’m not qualified to assess whether this actually demonstrates any progress in human rights: one of my Chinese colleagues did feel it was good that petitioners had been given their own space, while Western journalists think that it is an attempt to “disappear” them.

What interests me is the rather unusual choice of location. It evokes the amusing idea that any foreigners who apply for permission to protest during the Olympic Games might be given a time and space at the World Park, perhaps even in front of their own country’s exhibit, where they would be just another exotic performance. This somewhat reflects the spirit in which my Chinese friend recalls the protest demonstrations at the NGO meeting site in Huairou during the 1995 UN Women’s Conference. Based on my discussions, I feel that this is one of the few places where protests by foreigners could be acceptable to those in charge of Beijing’s Olympic security as well as to the average middle-class Chinese person. Conversely, if the authorities allowed a space for unruly protests near the main sports events, public opinion would probably be against it.

I would like to make clear that what I have tried to do here is to outline common Chinese attitudes about public protests during the Beijing Olympics. These ideas are not my own and I am not saying that they are accurate from a social-scientific perspective – but that is another question. And I have not analyzed the real power differences and political structure that are another important part of the picture – people in leadership positions don’t have to accept media criticism because their job security depends almost entirely on the leaders above them who appointed them and not on public transparency. However, it seems to me that this political structure is at least partly supported by a cultural context that is not supportive of public protests such as are common in the West.