Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines

CHINA: Olympic Glory Seen As More Than Sports

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Aug 6 2008 (IPS) - One hundred years ago Chinese athletes had neither money nor government support to compete in the Olympics. An invitation by the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to Qing dynasty rulers to send a national team of athletes went unanswered.

And when news of the drama of the 1908 London Olympics marathon reached even the faraway Middle Kingdom, a Chinese magazine asked in anguish: “When will China be able to host its own Olympics?”

On Friday, Chinese communist rulers will bask in the glory of having delivered on their nation’s century-old dream. When Olympic teams parade under the fiery-red glow of fireworks on Beijing Games opening night, the Chinese team would be the biggest among all nations and perhaps the most ambitious of all.

“To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist party central,” sports minister Liu Peng said when he announced members of the team this month. “We have to fulfil our historic responsibility”.

Top Chinese leaders have exhorted their athletes to “win glory and respect” for the motherland. The team of 639 athletes – the largest in the country’s history – is relied on to bring not only Olympic gold to the nation but also bolster the government’s image abroad and at home.

Worried about problems of economic balance, social harmony and deteriorating environment, Chinese leaders see winning gold as a tremendous opportunity to shore up their political legitimacy at home. And they see sports victories as yet another demonstration to the outside world of the arrival of a new superpower.

Among sports officials and the public alike there is a belief that China has to win the gold count in medals not only because it hosts the games but to make up for the time it lost in the last century when it was embroiled in civil wars and radical political campaigns.

“We have had a much later start in Olympic sports than other big nations,” muses Huang Zhi, a heating engineer and avid sports fan. “Imagine what we could have done if we were given the same opportunities as the United States. But even so, we have modernised faster than many nations and we can gain in sports faster than them too”.

According to Susan Brownell, an American athlete and author of “Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China”, the story of the Olympic games and China is “a narrative of China’s relationship with the outside world”. “They are collective redemption for the national suffering of the past century,” she says.

China established a Soviet-style sports machine in the 1950s but the following decades were lost for national athletes as the country languished in diplomatic isolation. China won its first gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and since 2000 Olympics games in Sydney has accelerated its run for gold.

After 2000 Chinese sports authorities unveiled Project 119 (named after the number of golds offered in medal-rich sports like track and field, swimming and rowing), aimed at boosting the country’s medal haul. Money, manpower and talent were invested into the pursuit of nationalist glory.

In Athens, four years ago, China finished with 32 golds – second only to the U.S., in what became the country’s best medal haul in its Olympic history. This time around with Beijing playing the host, expectations are even higher and an audience of 1.3 billion wants to see China go one better and top the medal count.

“We do have a target: that is to rank among the top in the medals table,” Zhang Haifeng, spokesman for the Chinese Olympic team, said at a press conference. “We managed that with 32 gold medals in Athens and we hope to do better in Beijing”.

“We must not be complacent and take nothing for granted until gold medals fill our bags,” sports minister Liu Peng added.

There has been no let up among the sports icons filling China’s Olympic team like NBA center Yao Ming, hurdler champion Liu Xiang and diving star Guo Jingjing. Liu Xiang, who in 2004 became a household name after winning China’s first-ever Olympic gold in men’s athletics, sounded confident.

“All I have to do on the Olympic track is to beat myself,” he said at the press conference at the launch of China’s delegation to the games.

But there have been also leaked commentaries of pain and overstress by Chinese athletes that have come to reveal the duress of the country’s sports system. Female marathon runner Zhou Chunxiu who claimed the London Marathon title last year admitted in a recent interview that she has “never felt such pressure before”. “Hosting the Olympic games has put a lot of pressure on all of us,” she said in an interview.

Compelled by a state athletic system, which emphasises personal sacrifice in the name of national glory, some athletes have been made to compete with serious injuries.

Celebrated diver Hu Jia for instance, who detached a retina after winning a gold medal in the 2004 Sydney Olympics and continued training even after he injured the other one, was left out of the current Olympic team. Chinese sports commentators have speculated he was deemed too old and was replaced by a younger athlete.

There has been open criticism at home of China’s drive to score political points through sporting triumphs. Environmental activist and author Dai Qing was among those who dared suggest that hosting the Olympics amounted to a mere public relations exercise for China.

“All the billions the state spent on preparing and hosting the games should have been spent on providing more sports facilities and opportunities for ordinary people,” she says. “China is a developing country after all and only a fraction of its population participates in any sports”.