Why does China care about the Olympics?

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

'If table tennis set the stage for China’s international diplomacy, then volleyball rebuilt the nation’s confidence', ran one article in the People's Daily around the time of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Sports has had a long political history in China, Cindy Yu's guest in this week's Chinese Whispers tells her. She is Dr Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri. She has been in and out of China since the 1980s, when she went to Peking University as a student and ended up represented the institution as a track runner.

On this episode, Cindy finds out why exactly China cares about the Olympics just so much. And it certainly does – Susan and Cindy reminisce about 2008, when China spent $100 million on a four-hour long opening ceremony and $7 billion on the whole Games. Working in Beijing that year, Susan saw, firsthand, the excitement that local officials and people put into the preparations ('There were huge programmes to teach English to everybody, especially in Beijing. You know, the old ladies and the taxi drivers'), but also the fear and intensity that came with this – 'all the government officials involved in the effort were just kind of quaking'.

The reason for all this – and the reason why a snub at the imminent Winter Olympics, as numerous countries around the world announce boycotts, will be remembered by China – is because sports has long been political. In the ping pong diplomacy of the 1970s, games played between Chinese and American teams allowed Nixon's America and Mao's China to get closer to each other. In the five women's volleyball team world victories of the 1980s, China was able to find a new source of national pride, as its people tried to recover from the wounds of the Cultural Revolution. In 2008, seven years after accession to the WTO and at a time when a more liberal China could still be imagined, the Summer Olympics provided a chance to show the world what 21st century China was all about. 'It was China's coming out party', Susan says.

To be sure, this Olympics matters less – winter Olympics always do, and after all, China has 'already emerged as a superpower'. But even so, it will have a political dimension – just see how China eagerly invited President Putin last year.

On the episode, they also make a brief digression into the demolitions that happened in Beijing – leading to headlines in the New York Times like 'Olympics Imperil Historic Beijing Neighborhood'. Susan corrects media reports and says that, in fact, in the areas reconstructed for the Games, it was mainly small shops not residences that were destroyed. She befriended one man who was dislocated from his mechanical repair shop there and became a taxi driver because of the Olympics, and Cindy reflects on her memories of a 'demolition era', where China's rapid growth meant the words chaiqian (demolish and relocate) were commonly marked on old buildings across Chinese cities. But tune in to hear how some ingenious Chinese – including members of Cindy's family – welcomed the destruction of their property as it allowed them to game the system of government compensation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:31.3	Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts, and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.
0:42.6	There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge
0:45.4	and some context as well.
0:47.3	How do the Chinese see these issues?
0:50.7	It's less than a month to go until the Winter Olympics being held in Beijing, and a number of countries have announced that they are boycotting these games.
0:59.1	But how much does China really care about the Olympics and if it cares why exactly does it matter?
1:05.2	On this episode, I'll be speaking to Dr Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri, and author of Beijing's
1:11.8	game, were the Olympics mean to China. She is also a former athlete and has even competed in China
1:17.3	representing Peking University during her time as a student there. On the episode, we'll be talking
1:22.3	about everything from what it was like to be in Beijing in 2008 during the Summer Olympics,
1:27.4	the history of sports and diplomacy
1:29.5	in China. And we also end up going on a little digression about demolitions, that destruction of
1:35.3	old buildings, traditional buildings in China, which happened especially before the Olympics
1:40.2	and the politics of that. So I hope you enjoy. So Susan, we are less than a month away
1:47.6	from the beginning of the Winter Olympics in Beijing and quite a few countries have boycotted it.
1:54.1	And some of them are not calling it a boycott, but they're not sending any diplomats or
1:58.5	politicians there. So for example, the US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada,
2:03.5	Lithuania, Kosovo, Estonia, Belgium, Austria and Japan have all said that I'm not going to send
2:08.6	anyone there out of those. The UK and Japan and New Zealand have been quite careful to not call it
2:13.7	a boycott. Do you think China will care about this? I think China will be tracking who
2:20.5	sends diplomats and who doesn't. Yes, I think it is important to China and they'll remember it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.