Opinion
China’s Olympic facade a victory for totalitarianism
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Also by Gerald Cox:
- Options poor in county race (April 6, 2009)
- AIG sparks Congress' ignorance (March 22, 2009)
- Same old strategies won't save republicanism (March 2, 2009)
- Black leaders won't let America's racist heritage go (February 23, 2009)
- ASM constitution will not succeed without students (February 19, 2009)
Sharing tools:
E-mail this article:
Beijing’s Olympic Games have left the world enamored with China. Yet corruption and shame blanketed its venues as thickly as the smog that will soon return to harry its inhabitants and visitors.
For all of the hyperbole and praise, you would think China had stopped providing arms to a genocidal regime in Sudan. You would think China had allowed the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet and assured Tibetans basic human rights. You would think China’s communist leadership had sent a signal to an enthralled and giddy world audience that it had turned a new leaf in its oppressive policies towards its own citizens.
Hardly.
It wasn’t freedom or a decisive blow to the genocidal regime it supports that China delivered. It was an admittedly impressive and incredibly enjoyable Olympic farce. Democracies, take note: An upside of totalitarianism, it appears, is the ability to conduct massive, state-sponsored and protest-free global events. One must simply lie, imprison and deceive, while satisfying an audience with pageantry and opulence.
“These were truly exceptional games,” International Olympic Committee Chairman Jacques Rogge said at the end of the games, games that saw as many promises broken as world records.
Seven years ago, China made sweeping assurances that being granted the Olympic Games would ensure a shift in its attitude toward its place in the world and the human rights of those under its control.
Not so.
Most emblematic of this Olympic farce was the discovery that Lin Miaoke, the pretty nine-year-old girl in the red dress who sang China’s “Ode to the Motherland” during the opening ceremony’s most powerful moment, did not, indeed, sing China’s “Ode to the Motherland” during the opening ceremony’s most powerful moment. Instead, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, safely offscreen and invisible to viewers, sang the ode to a global audience while Lin sang or lip-synched into what has been assumed to be a muted microphone.
Chinese organizers, it was said, eschewed Yang’s reportedly “crooked teeth” and “chubby face” for the prettier though less vocally talented Lin. Yang’s voice would be heard, but it was Lin’s pretty face the world would see.
Try explaining that one to your prom date. “I was deemed too ugly by Olympic organizers to sing in front of a billion people.”
But isn’t this deception, this slight of hand, just like China? While the world is enamored with its meteoric rise to superpower status, China is suppressing the religious freedoms of its citizens and visitors. While the world gapes, eyes transfixed upon an Olympic Games unmatched in grandeur, viewership, money spent and records broken, China quietly and faithfully continues to arm and train a regime that has committed and continues to oversee the 21st century’s first genocide.
While businesses around the globe revel in the cheap labor provided by China’s distended population, China presides over a human rights record in Tibet, especially, that would make the Bush administration blush with shame. While the International Olympic Committee slapped itself on the back for completing what it assumed was its most successful Olympics, China presided over a string of broken promises and lies.
A spectacular Olympic Games covers a host of sins.
China promised unfettered access to the Internet for foreign journalists. Journalists, upon arriving in Beijing to cover the games, were shocked to find their access to web topics pertaining to contentious issues within China subject to the same strict controls they were assured would not be in place. As the IOC watched anxiously to see how China would honor its commitment to improve human rights, China enacted a deadly and violent crackdown in Tibet in the months leading up to the games and engaged in a flurry of visa revocations and dissident relocations within China.
China promised the right to protest, albeit in one of three designated protest zones. Not one of the reported 77 protest applications was approved by Chinese authorities, and not a single protest was undertaken at any of the zones. But two elderly Chinese women were arrested and sentenced to “reeducation through labor” for trying.
Promises, promises.
And don’t get me started on those underage Chinese gymnasts — I have a word limit, after all.
China is proving itself to be a nation dangerously intent on hiding not only what the world thinks of it, but what it thinks of itself. It would seem that behind every “Smiling Angel,” as the Chinese press has dubbed the lip synching Lin, is a crooked-toothed Chinese secret.
Let’s hope that, like Yang, China grows out of its awkward stage.
Preferably into something a lot less inclined to support genocide.
Gerald Cox (gcox@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in economics.
10 Comments | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Top Classified Ads (view all)
Place your classified ad online and have it show up here. Your ad will hit thousands of viewers a day!
DON'T READ ME! Too late. If you're reading this, guess how many other people are reading it. See... advertising in The Badger Herald does work!
IP hash: c090c523
great article Mr. Cox
IP hash: abea120d
Thank you Gerald for the great article. Being an American Chinese I am ashamed and appalled with the human rights abuses the Communist regime commits in China. Your article was great and you are absolutely right.
Thank You,
Edward Yin.
IP hash: abea120d
Thank you Gerald for the great article. Being an American Chinese I am ashamed and appalled with the human rights abuses the Communist regime commits in China. Your article was great and you are absolutely right.
Thank You,
Edward Yin.
IP hash: 7b281bb3
Mind your own business Mr. Cox. A senior majoring in economics title is all you could do comment base on lack of world current afair knowledge. Small mind can’t talk big issue, simply put.
IP hash: 2b0ccddb
Great article!!! I watched and read alot about the olympics and all the stories and things going on over there was very disappointing I love the womens gymnastics and even that was a bust, judging was unfair and like you said the underage gymnasts, cmon!! do they truly think we a that stupid? it was obvious they were underage, it’s unfortunate what a country will do for a gold medal.
IP hash: 3414cf53
You obviously don’t know much Mr. Cox.
But you are young and there’s still time to learn. Maybe some day you’ll understand China better…and vote Republican in the election.
IP hash: fab22132
Thanks for getting the silly words ‘genocidal regime’ in the second para—saves me the trouble of reading the rest.
IP hash: 03a8f754
There’s a lot of sweeping statements and hasty generalizations in your opinion piece. It makes me wonder if you have done any proper reserach into the Chinese regime or just basing your article of random media observations offering biased viewpoints villifying China.
“China quietly and faithfully continues to arm and train a regime that has committed and continues to oversee the 21st century’s first genocide.” - Please, further elaborate on this point if possible. What is indeed the “21st century’s first genocide”?
The moment I read “underaged Chinese gymnasts” you lost all credibility. Such an accusation has only been bandied around, and even the IOC has stood by its pronouncement that they are of age. Why are Americans so intent on claiming that the girls are underaged? Because we lost to them?
Please Mr Cox, stick to something more familiar to you next time, perhaps something economics-related? World affairs, as it seems, is not your forte.
IP hash: b0d819dd
To Natasha:
Darfur: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7503428.stm
IP hash: 52147bf1
To Natasha,
Lithuanian filmmaker Vytautas Landsbergis has left Tibet with documentation that shows more than 20,000 Tibetans are missing since March, 2008.
More than 1,000 Tibetans detained during protests against the Chinese government in March remain unaccounted for, Amnesty International says.
The International Commission of Jurists has asked China to inform the United Nations Human Rights Council about the March uprising in Tibet and surrounding areas. The Commission says China’s violent crackdown, included arbitrary executions, the use of excessive non-lethal force by the security forces and arbitrary detentions.
Like Argentina’s “Desaparecidos,” the “Disappeared,” missing Tibetans give silent evidence to genocide underway within Tibet.