These Olympic games are being ruined by scandal, but it’s not China that is doing it, it is us. The games have so far been spectacular, the venues amazing, the opening ceremony fantastic, but I don’t read much about that in the media.
I read what our respective countries “liberal” media think we want to hear: Stories of how the games should not have been given to China, how the Chinese could never beat us, so must therefore be cheating. Apparently we alos want to hear about every small fault that has been discovered in china’s “perfect” games. What is the problem? Lets look at the major stories of the last few days:
Opening Ceremony Faked: One fireworks fly over scene to be exact, despite the ceremony itself being absolutely amazing and inspiring this is what we hear about. We have quickly forgotten what was probably the best live show we will see for decades to come. The fireworks in actual fact were not faked at all, we merely didn’t see the first 20 of the 29 footsteps fireworks and instead got a computer generated version, this was done to ensure that the impact of the sequence was not lost and the helicopter pilots who would have been attempting to film the fireworks by flying over the explosions, were not put in danger.
Opening Ceremony Scandal, Little Girl Lipsyncing: Is this such a crime, has it never before been seen outside of china? The fact that the little girl who appeared in the show was actually an excellent singer in her own right has been ignored, she was origionally included for selection because of her singing abilities and appearance.
Yes she was deemed an inferior singer to the second little girl, Hence the second little girls song was still used. Has anyone bothered to report on how proud the actual singer of the opening song was, how happy her family were and how insistant the director was to let the world know about her? No our media have instead, changed her from a happy and proud performer, supported by a happy family and well respected director, into the ugly girl noone wanted who we should all pity.
The story was origionally a very positive one in china before our media got hold of it, now it has been blocked by the chinese government from the internet, they initially allowed the story to be released because it was a source of pride for the singer and her family and brought further pride to the chinese people, now the story is not about what a good singer the second girl was, it is about how she is not cute enough. Think back to the Sydney olympics: Our little girl singer, Nicky Webster. It is a little known truth that she was not the best child singer of the group auditioned for singing at the Sydney opening ceremony, another girl named coco was, Nicky Webster was chosen because the panel wanted someone who looked more “quinticentially australian”. We did the same thing, but we don’t look at ourselves for flaws. Incidentally, I wonder if Nicky was singing without a backup tape, I imagine its quite hard to sing optimally when suspended from a harness.
Polution and Smog: Are we so unappreciative of what we have in our own countries that we can’t acknowledge the achievement a developing country with much larger resource requirements has achieved in improving Beijing polution for the games? Beijing looks amazing, much much cleaner and with far better facilities than I ever imagined possible.
Yes there is still a lot of pollution but what an achievement they have accomplished in reducing the pollution levels as much as they have. China has also taken long term pollution reduction steps far superior to what most western countries have achieved, certainly from a % reduction point of view. In terms of actual reductions in pollution, they have delivered something that my government (Australia) and many others around the world can not even bring to the planning stages. All this from a developing country with such a huge population producing the majority of the products we use on a day to day basis.
American National Anthem cut short: Seriously, I doubt this was deliberate, I put it to you that mistakes with losing 3 seconds of a national anthem, might be forgivable and that might be a non-malicious human error. Have you seen the chinese crowds cheering madly for the dream team? Would we do the same for their Gymnasts? Evebn before the cheating scandal.
Gymnastics Cheating: Did you watch the events, the chinese gymnasts were the best, and not by a small amount, they did harder routines and did them to perfection. Is it possible that some of the girls are under the age of 16? Yes I guess it’s possible, but it hasn’t been proven, and all of the olympic officials have verified their ages prior to the games. If it is found that they really are underage cry foul then, don’t wait until they beat us and THEN call them cheats, if it was so obvious to the American team why didn’t we hear any of this until they lost? Olympic games are also about sportsmanship, noone is a cheater until there is proof, but I admit, this point is more debatable than the others I don’t have any evidence they are NOT underage, just as noone has evidence they are underage.
Shooting Cheating, China Wins Bronze: Take a moment to think about this logically, is it not possible that an official in a shooting competition, might be human, and might have made a single bad call in one round of a single olympic event. It was for the bronze, my own countryman was disadvantaged by the decision, but mistakes do happen in any competition where human judges are used.
Other issues and thoughts: The chinese people have made many sacrifices for these games, for their own people and for the world. The people are not the government, surely we can be happy for them? What help does our scorn provide them? It certainly doesn’t hurt their government, if anything it makes them stronger as they do not block out anything that supports the idea that the west is trying to make the chinese games look bad. There have been so many sacrifices made by the chinese for these games, many willing, many forced by the government.
I don’t approve of the old traditional houses being cleared out of many parts of Beijing for the olympics, but I can not deny that the China and Beijing we are seeing at these olympics looks amazing, and more importantly, was built on the sacrifices of regular chinese people. Those people deserve to know that it was for something. Not laughed at because of the smog and or bad weather.
The chinese people and military have performed some amazing feats of people power, both in the opening ceremony and in other areas. Think for a moment about the clearing of the olympic sailing area’s of algae after the massive algal blooms, this is a big problem in some areas of Australia too, but we have never succeeded in clearing the algae away, let alone by hand and in such a short time. This is thankless work which goes unrecognised. I know the world will be very quick to complain if the algae reblooms during the olympics. Why do we fail to recognise how hard some people, real people have worked to try to present their country in the best possible light, no matter what it takes and regardless of what needed to be done, they started from one of the most poluted and dirty cities in the world (you can not compare the work it takes to make a highly polluted area pristine to doing the same in a relatively clean area).
The security of these games has also been astounding, it may have been perceived as excessive and has brought some ridicule from western media, especially that journalist who was arrested during the protest coverage, but come on! Did he look like a journalist, he was running with the protesters at the time, a white guy in civillian clothes in a group of white guys in civillian clothes. Noone likes the chinese governments position on freedom of speech, but lets at least report in an unbiased way. They didn’t grab this guy off the street for doing nothing.
Consider this for a moment: The criticism china has received for its city wide security crackdowns are nothing compared to the outcry that would have occured if a major (or minor) terrorist attack took place during the games. Never before has the risk of terror attacks been so real and you have done everything conceivable to protect the athletes, media and spectators.
On the topic of the chinese military, people and government. I am amazed at how much they have achieved with the games in the aftermath of all they have done to help their own people when the earthquake disasters struck. I would suggest more was done that in other recent disasters in much more developed countries. I am amazed that in the face of all the recent disasters in china, the country and it’s people have still been able to produce such a magnificant olympic games.
We are too quick to cry foul, the chinese athletes have been phenomenal so far, while i do not approve of the extreme training programs these athletes have no doubt gone through, I must give them credit for what they have achieved, their sacrifice was perhaps unnecessary, but the individual athletes deserve our respect as they have been through training most of us, even our top athletes, might not be able to imagine.
In Summary, I think the people of China, have every right to be proud of what you have given us and what you they have shown us. I think there is still a long way to go so that the governments of the world can accept the chinese government, but they have shown us they are capable of great things and great change, I hope that in the future the area’s of human rights and freedom of speech will also show as much progress.
Chinas flaws need work, but noone would take advice from someone who follows them around pointing out every minor mistake they made and never saying a positive word. Right now, every eye is turned on Beijing, there has never been so much negativity aimed at such a well executed event. The issues currently being discussed in the world media have been blown out of proportion in my opinion, not taking into account the two sides of the story or the facts on hand.
Give peace a chance, give china a chance, they are trying to show us their best, regardless of our political differences.
Before anyone points it out: I am well aware of the history of chinese attrocities, I would suggest much more than most as I am very interested in Asian history in general having lived in Japan and Korea for a couple of years. I have studied it, I respect where these nations have come from, I am as horrified by the attrocities as anyone. But I also believe that we need to help China move forward, not try to hold them back. Yes the government has done wrong, huge wrongs, so have many other countries, that is not the point, the point is what we do now, you don’t make friends by putting people down. You don’t make progress by trying to point out every mistake. You have to acknowledge the good and the bad. The olympics are a time when we should hope for the future, move beyond the past, and look for the best in each other.