Friday, August 6th, 2021
China’s politicization of the Olympics
Mao shines on the podium
By Marcel Grzanna
China condemns the politicization of Olympia. State media also rail against Americans or praise their athletes when they publicly pay homage to Mao Zedong. Participants from Hong Kong and Taiwan are verbally abused. Anger can also be directed against your own athletes.
As the Great Helmsman, to which he was once chosen, China’s late founder of the state Mao Zedong might have preferred an award ceremony for the Chinese rowing eight. But that’s how the two track bike sprinters Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi hijacked his face after their gold triumph. For the medal ceremony, the two athletes each had a sticker affixed to their chests showing Mao’s likeness – small but clearly recognizable up close.
The stickers sparked controversy because, as a political symbol, they could have been punished by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for violating Article 50 of the Olympic Charter. The IOC requested a statement from the Chinese team and finally decided against sanctioning. The Chinese team management had promised that such an incident would not happen again.
Perhaps the track cyclists felt encouraged to take action because US shot putter Raven Saunders got away with it after crossing her arms over her head at the awards ceremony. She later said that she meant the gesture to support “the oppressed”. A dilemma for the IOC, which had to show the same indulgence in paying homage to a brutal dictator like Mao, who with his politics had on the conscience of millions of people, as in supporting a social movement that is largely symbolized against inequality in the World is perceived.
Controversy over a competition photo
In any case, in the People’s Republic the gesture was welcomed, although the government repeats like no other in the world like a prayer wheel that it strictly rejects the politicization of sport. She did that back in 2008 when she herself hosted the Summer Games. The news portal Cankao Xiaoxi, for example, praised the campaign as a success. The portal is linked to the state news agency Xinhua and is primarily aimed at officials of the Communist Party. In view of the tight corset that state media in China are forced into, it is almost impossible for the contradiction to one’s own maxim to slip through inadvertently.
It almost seems as if the principle of non-politicization should apply to everyone else rather than to the People’s Republic of China. Last week, the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka railed against a photo by Reuters news agency that showed a Chinese weightlifter at the moment of great exertion and a contorted face. The diplomats recognized malicious intent, probably to deliberately make China’s athletes look unfavorable when they have won so many medals – a politically motivated broadside against a Western medium that, like many others, has been criticized by the Chinese for its coverage of the People’s Republic of China.
The state-run Chinese daily Global Times could not resist a political swipe at the US when it interpreted the US defeat against France in basketball last week as a symbol of the development of the global balance of power. It was time for the Americans to wake up from their dream of invincibility, was the appeal. “Perhaps the United States can still claim that their professional league represents the highest level of basketball. But they should be aware that the world is catching up quickly and the gap will be closing faster than they can imagine,” it was said.
“My Country, Taiwan”
From a purely sporting point of view, the Chinese would not need such tips at all, if you look at the medal table of the Tokyo Games. The country is at the forefront with the most gold medals won. Since 2008, China has regularly and successfully competed with the Americans for the top spot.
However, not all are on the verge of victory. Chinese analysts have their say in state media, stressing that medals are not everything. Instead, it is about hope for the future and the unity of the world. But sport has always been a stage for world powers to test the strength of their systems. Both in times of the Cold War, when the USA and the Soviet Union fought relentlessly, as well as today.
How sensitively political statements are received at the Olympic Games in China if they run counter to the national interests of the country is shown by the angry insults against the Taiwanese badminton doubles Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin. In the final, the Taiwanese had played against a Chinese double and won. At the award ceremony, the Taiwanese national flag did not fly, nor did the national anthem sound. Instead, Taiwanese athletes have to be content with a neutral flag and anthem – a compromise between the IOC and Beijing. Olympic champion Lee then dedicated the gold medal to “my country, Taiwan.” Chinese nationalists railed against the athletes for their patriotism.
“Shouldn’t you boycott Nike?”
The Hong Kong badminton player Angus Ng Ka-long, who wore a black T-shirt to the competition instead of the official jersey of the Hong Kong team, also had to justify himself. This bears the logo of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), a symbol for the city’s affiliation to the People’s Republic of China. He only had his name printed on Ng’s top. The time was too short to also add the HKSAR logo, he explained. Black clothing was popular as a sign of unity among protesters during the mass protests in Hong Kong against China’s growing influence. Accordingly, the Chinese nationalists demanded angrily that someone like Ng should not be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games.
In individual cases, however, the anger can also be directed against the athletes of their own country, as the table tennis mixed Liu Shiwen and Xu Xin discovered after their final defeat against arch rivals Japan. They would have let the nation down, was the tenor in parts of the social media. The losing badminton players who lost to Taiwanese doubles were also the targets of anger. That may not necessarily reflect the attitude of a majority. But the very existence of such statements shows that patriotism comes before sportsmanship.
The shooter Wang Luyao, who missed the final with the air pistol, even had to put up with the question in some comments: “Did we send you to the Olympic Games to make you weak?” Wrote a user on the BBC, according to the BBC Weibo social platform. Her teammate Yang Qian, who won the first gold in the shooting for China in Tokyo, was accused of a photo showing her shoes from the US sporting goods manufacturer Nike despite her victory. Nike had announced that it would no longer use cotton from Xinjiang because of allegations of forced labor against its producers. “As a Chinese athlete, shouldn’t you go ahead and boycott Nike?” Yang then deleted the photo.
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