From Olympia to Impasse
The tension between China and (mostly) Western public opinion on the eve of the Beijing Olympics is the result of incompetence, hypocrisy, and legitimate but potentially counterproductive indignation. As soon as the international community “bestowed” the Olympics on China, the West demonstrated how little consideration it actually gives to human rights and democracy.
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PARIS – “Do not mix sports and politics!” That defiant cry from China’s rulers to the threat of a boycott of this summer’s Beijing Olympic Games does not stand the test of reality. Sport and politics have always been closely linked.
Obvious examples abound. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were dominated as much by Nazi propaganda as by the athletic events. During the Cold War, “ping pong diplomacy” helped revive official relations between China and the United States. In 1990, Germany fielded a single Olympic team before the country reunified.
To claim that politics and sports can be any more separated in today’s media age than they were in the past is especially naïve. The Olympics were awarded to Beijing for a mixture of economic and political reasons, and China wanted the Games for the same reasons. The current tension between China and (mostly) Western public opinion on the eve of the Beijing Olympics is the result of incompetence, hypocrisy, and legitimate but potentially counterproductive indignation.
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