Posted by RAK on August 3, 2008, 2:16 am, in reply to "Olympics poll"
Money makes the world go 'round....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080801.oly-brunt02/BNStory/Science
Power & might: Why the Olympics need China
August 2, 2008 at 12:04 AM EDT
There's no arguing that the International Olympic Committee is about
to get exactly what it bargained for.
The coming Summer Games in Beijing will be flawlessly staged, the
facilities will be spectacular, the logistical arrangements impeccable
and no pesky dissenters will say a peep about how much it all cost.
Corporate sponsors, who are the economic lifeblood of the Olympic
business, will be delighted at the opportunity to get a foothold in
the huge, hard-charging market, and once the competitions begin, most
of the journalistic grumbling about restricted access or blocked
websites will be overridden by the happy realization that the buses
show up on time.
China, excluded from the Games during the Mao years, and through most
of its modern history a modest player in the world of international
sports, will continue its transformation into one of the planet's
great athletic powers – perhaps the greatest, if the Olympic medal
count is a true measure. Pride in those achievements will be part of a
potent mix along with nationalism and a lingering sense of historic
grievance.
These Games are going to matter to the Chinese on multiple levels to
a degree that few Olympics have. And there's nothing the IOC likes
better than superpowers who express themselves through sport.
But what about the other stuff? Pollution, human rights, Tibet, Darfur
broken promises, suspicions of doping et cetera, et cetera?
It is, and always was, beside the point.
When the IOC opted against awarding the Games to Beijing the first
time – the vote for the Olympics of 2000 took place in 1993 – there
was considerable political pressure to do so. Both the U.S. Congress
and the European Parliament opined in resolutions that China, because
of its woeful human-rights record, should be excluded.
But with IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch firmly behind Beijing's
bid, most everyone believed the fix was in (as it usually is in IOC
matters). The announcement of the final ballot, with Sydney pipping
Beijing by two votes, was a shocker, at least until later revelations
that the result wasn't the product of a sudden wave of conscience, but
of good old-fashioned vote buying.
(What may also have played in the minds of some voters was the fact
that during the world track and field championships earlier that year,
previously unknown Chinese female distance racers all but lapped the
field, posting extraordinary winning times that their coaches credited
to the consumption of turtle blood. Even in a sport that had
occasionally turned a blind eye to doping, that might have seemed a
bit much.)
By the time the Games of 2008 were in play, the commercial wisdom of
Samaranch's original endorsement was even more self-evident. The IOC
needed China. In the 20th century, the Olympic “movement” had evolved
from a quirky expression of ideals rooted in the virtue of athletic
amateurism into a slick commercial package driven by the twin engines
of television and propaganda.
Networks and advertisers were anxious to be associated with the
appealing, idealistic, fresh-faced young people in competition (a
contrast to the increasingly mercenary image of athletes in
professional sports), and governments understood that there were few
better vehicles for selling the merits of an economic system, a
political philosophy or merely the winning qualities of the folks in
charge. Even as the notion of “amateurism” became blurred by the
appearance of pros (and eventually big-league pros) in the Games,
those remained the defining principles of the Olympic business.
But with the end of the Cold War came the end of the great East-West
sports propaganda war that kept both the Americans and Soviets fully
engaged. The costs of staging the Olympics had soared, and the IOC
desperately required another wealthy, motivated buyer. China arrived
on the scene at just the right time, with the Soviet empire crumbling
and signs that the Games were off the boil as an attraction in the
United States.
In addition to its desire to showcase its culture and growing economic
power on the world stage, China possessed an asset of which the IOC
dared not speak openly: as an authoritarian regime, unencumbered by
the messy business of democracy, it could suppress any anti-Olympic
sentiments, pay the bills by whatever means necessary and put on a
lavish show.
After the bare-bones mess of the Atlanta Games in 1996, and the
Olympics in 2004 that nearly bankrupted Greece, after meeting active
public resistance in bidding cities (including Toronto, which was one
of those that lost out to Beijing), going to China would be on the
practical front no muss, no fuss.
What remained was the thorny question of China's internal politics,
which hadn't changed much for the better since Beijing's rejection in
1993. The IOC was left to fall back on an essential conceit of the
“movement,” which is that the mere presence of the Games in a country
makes things better, that they automatically spread tolerance,
openness, goodwill and liberalization.
The organization would conveniently point to Mexico in 1968 and Seoul
in 1988 as examples of nasty authoritarian regimes that were shooting
or gassing protesters in the streets before the Games arrived and were
softened and eventually broken soon after the flame was extinguished.
Conveniently overlooked were the Berlin Games of 1936 and the Moscow
Games of 1980, neither of which brought much sunshine along with them,
or even the Atlanta Olympics of 1996, when embarrassingly poor
neighbourhoods were slapped with a fresh coat of paint and homeless
people were conveniently made to leave town, neither of which prompted
any great rethink of the system's inequities.
The folly of believing that playing host to these Olympics will make
China revisit its policies in Tibet or Darfur or change its attitude
toward the Falun Gong has been exposed now. The confrontation this
week over restricting journalists' access to websites doesn't suggest
any new openness; it's a blatant breach of China's agreement with the
IOC, understanding that at this late date there's no turning back.
Pre-Olympic protests, most notably during the torch relay, as filtered
to the Chinese public, have stirred nationalist, anti-Western
sentiment. And there's the larger question of arrogance, of believing
that an ancient, complex culture might be turned on its head by a
three-week athletic circus and a few thousand curious reporters.
But for the IOC and its sponsors, this was never about changing the
world. It was about firming up the commercial foundation for the 21st
century. China is going to put on an overwhelming spectacular, win a
boatload of medals, welcome the rest of the world, on its own terms,
and also kick a little sand in their face. In the IOC's dreams, the
Americans and the Russians and everyone else will then decide to rise
to the challenge, to reclaim past glories, to pump more money into the
system and to put on even bigger, better shows.
And the five rings go round and round.
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