What the Smog Can’t Hide
What the Smog Can’t Hide
Friday night’s 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was a beautiful spectacle, but do not be deceived into believing it was anything more than that: a spectacle. For all the lavish laser shows, ornate costumes and musical performances exhibited by 15,000 performers, there is a not-so-pretty side to China. Remember Lin Miaoke, the pigtailed 9-year-old girl with a big smile who sang “Ode to the Motherland”? Chinese authorities have admitted that her voice was dubbed and that she was lipsynching. The actual voice belongs to Yang Peiyi, 7, pictured left, who was deemed not physically attractive enough, a case of “national interest,” says Chen Qigang, general music designer of the opening ceremonies. Thus, the switch. Wow, way to kill a young girl’s self-esteem.
Let the Sunshine In: Let’s not forget the horrendous smog that the runners have to deal with. Yes, the Olympic contenders want to get acclimated to the harsh weather conditions as soon as possible, but why should they suffer through the humid, stifling air? This has health hazard written all over it. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has openly expressed concern over the very poor air quality that may have “deleterious” effects to athletes and spectators. It doesn’t seem worth dying for.
The Young and the…Malnourished? Reportedly, three of the Chinese female gymnasts competing in the Beijing Olympics are under 16 years of age.
Two points worth noting: The world is turning a blind eye to Olympic rules violations (gymnasts must be at least 16 years old), and China is keeping its female gymnasts on a rigorous diet (AKA possibly starving them).
1) Ethics and regulations chucked out the window.
“For better or worse, these are the shrug-and-don’t-tell Olympics, undoubtedly because it would be considered impolitic to embarrass the Chinese after they went to such great expense to throw the world this lavish party.”
2) Human rights violation?
“Are the Chinese underage, or — like other gymnasts from other countries through the years — strategically undernourished, which strikes me as worse than forging a few documents, in the grand scheme of things.” (Source: both from New York Times)
It wouldn’t surprise me if these Chinese female gymnasts are being malnourished as part of a strategy to increase China’s chances of winning the gold. The Chinese are a hard-working people, and they will do anything to win, which means truly adhering to the Machiavellian principle, “the ends justify the means” – even if that translates into starving young people.
I dare you to open your mouth: It’s no secret that protesters in China are being hush-hushed and chased out. In addition, Chinese officials screen all the information collected by American reporters before it is disseminated to the U.S.
More disturbing facts: The Chinese government launched a massive campaign to relocate the mentally disabled and the homeless. The Chinese government is also responsible for the destruction of villages and the forcible removal of people from their homes, hoping to hide the extreme poverty many are subjected to (Sources: ABC news, SBS Korean news agency).
MADE IN CHINA: Whatever your thoughts about China’s religious/political freedom (or lack thereof), one thing’s for sure: China’s influence as a powerful nation is going to carry a lot of weight in relations with other nations. It already does. China is single-handedly the largest mass producer and exporter of goods to the United States. Whether we like it or not, they manufacture and create most of the gadgets, toys and everyday utensils that we use, clothing we wear and food we consume. The other day my mom was grocery shopping and came across the top of a bottle of apple juice labeled “Made in China.” She couldn’t believe it. China is truly dominating the world…one apple juice at a time.
Eyes Wide Open: None of this is new. It’s just that now China is under more scrutiny because it happens to be the host of the Olympics. Hopefully the fact that their actions are exposed and in full view of the public will lead to positive changes.
On a lighter note, Korea’s Park Tae-Hwan’s impressive swim in the men’s 400-meter freestyle Sunday nabbed him the gold, establishing a record for Asia and breaking Australia’s dominance in the event. China beat out everyone (including 2004 Olympics reigning champs, the Japanese) in the men’s gymnastics team final Monday. I’ll toast to that!
Last 5 posts by sarah
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hey dude, i must refute various points. i think you’re focusing to narrowly on china as the aggressor in these cases, and not looking at the global environment that has caused all these things to go on. for example, why is china over polluted? because their manufacturing industry is the engine which drives their economy. why must they work so hard to push their economy forward? if they don’t, they have all their resources stripped by the united states. so what is the answer? pollute the environment while producing…wait for it…goods to be shipped to america.
so to say china is dominating the world is crazy. are chinese factory workers getting rich off making our products? a very select few people - including gov officials - are making millions - and being paid by American billionaires. So to recap, American billionaires are turning some Chinese into millionaires. hardly seems like domination.
you know all those things that say “MADE IN CHINA” - those are what’s polluting the environment. but why blame china? european nations also have the manufacturing done in china, but their appetite for new products is less rampant than ours in the states, thus they have better regulations, and bar certain chemicals from being used in their manufacture. US companies do not do this, so those same chinese factories that make safe environmentally responsible products for europe, make hazardous environmentally unfriendly products for the US. Because US companies told them to.
moving on:
The Chinese are a hard-working people, and they will do anything to win
America’s hero Lance Armstrong used steroids and gave himself cancer. yeah he beat it, after he gave it to himself. we Americans choose to ignore that part of it.
Jason Giambi admitted to using human growth hormone and is still in Yankee pinstripes. This is the team that won’t allow players to have sideburns.
It’s no secret that protesters in China are being hush-hushed and chased out.
True, same as always, but it would be useful for us to know which protesters we’re talking about. CIA-backed or grassroots chinese? the ones who get the press in the states are the CIA-backed ones.
we in the states are quick to judge, but just as the chinese government keeps information from their citizens, the US government does the same to us. what we don’t learn so readily is that all these things that we criticize china for are against american interests, that’s why the media tells us so much about those things. they are so readily available for us to criticize. american gov and media put them in our face to make us really worry about chinese dominance, because we are only used to american dominance.
when it comes to calling out the US government for supporting a world environment in which countries must now actively work against other countries and their own peoples interests, our media is silent. it’s not as obvious as china censoring coverage of the olympics, but it’s much worse because it is de facto censorship of reporting about political issues which affect not only daily life but our standing in a global society.
I was going to reply to this post, but Giles said almost everything I was thinking, but in a much more articulate fashion.
I wanted to address the point about the two singers, but that seems like such a minor point. Why is the media so bothered by that fact? The Chinese are only doing what they were taught to do by the propaganda and brainwashing geniuses of the United States. It is not like tools like Photoshop or Avid or pitch adjusting equipment haven’t ever been used to “enhance” live events in the United States. So get over it.
And yeah, clearly the media is awfully biased against China, no? Funny how the US created and made China the way they are and then criticize them for doing what we wanted them to do. Maybe it is fear. In the end, the truly rich and powerful win and stay that way.
Reading this piece makes me feel like I’m living 1984.
Thanks for the perspective. I didn’t mean to sound like I was lambasting China for everything but it seems that appears to be the tone of the piece. The U.S. is certainly not immune to corruption, nor other nations besides China. I guess I was just hoping for more from China. Maybe I should just sit back and watch the games for what they are. Games.
no i think you’re right to be critical, and the olympics are much more than just games i think.
but i do think what china has been criticized for is all the easy stuff, all the stuff that we can draw a direct connection “if china didn’t succeed in ____, it would directly benefit the united states” by negatively affecting the chinese economy, which would negatively affect its standing in the global community, and thus give the US less competition for driving the world’s direction and pace of growth and change.
like one convenient example is the “greening ” of america, whereby people have this attitude like “if i use curly lightbulbs and carpool once a week and recycle plastic, then i’m doing my part. china is a worse offender than the US, so they need to catch up with our level of ‘green-ness’”
but that’s BS because the reason china is tearing through asia’s natural resources and pumping pollution out their factories is to make all the stuff we buy in the states, which we buy to replace all the old stuff we threw away.
the coverage of china is all about blaming china for X,Y, and Z, when in my mind, the US is the only - literally the ONLY - entity in the world with the power to influence environmental practices. now this extends beyond “green” stuff, but in every corner of this global community, the US holds the most sway.
but we here in the states don’t want to see it that way. we are comfortable being dominant in the world, which is why when our economy gets worse, we go “oh no!” but when china’s economy falls, we say “yay!” or the former soviet economy collapses, we say “ha ha, told ya!”
and that’s why when our government uses military force to protect their own economic interests (middle east occupation), we barely care. china uses economic ties to corrupt african governments (for example, sudan) to protect their economic interests, and it becomes an issue of humanitarianism. let’s call what it is what it is. state governments always act in their own self-interest, not in the interest of their people. ideally neither government would do either of those things, but the discourse around them is different, even though motivation is the same.
Thanks for the discussion…
what troubles me about an entry like this is that it’s not uniquely different from what the major media outlets have to say about China and the games.
i also wonder whether people reading it also understand that what the writer describes here doesn’t only apply to the Chinese gov, but to the nature of the games in general. (see: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/8/this_is_the_olympics_the_west)
it will be interesting to see how the media here & abroad view chicago & imperial america if it gets the 2016 olympic bid: http://www.chicago2016.org/news/pages/splash.html.
papa t:
wholly agreed.
further:
1980, united states + 61 other nations boycotts moscow olympics in protest of soviet invasion of afghanistan. 1984, olympics in los angeles, united states overthrew grenada government in 1983. how many of those 62 countries boycotted in 1984? (answer: 0)
2008: US media gives time to free tibet protesters with tacit or outright approval. 2000: sydney hosts the olympics and i heard not a single word about separatist movements in papua-new guinea. In 2002, salt lake city hosted the winter games, and no mention of the US occupation of hawaii, guam, american samoa, saipan, and puerto rico, not to mention of course okinawa, the philippines, south korea, guantanamo, and the list goes on and on…
The good thing that this entry has provoked is a discussion. So that we can think about how Imperial United States has and continues to dominate.
Every time I think about Hawaii and its transformation into America’s tropical playground, I think about those indigenous people who were kicked off their land. I shiver when I think about the School of the Americas aka WHINSEC.
So, how does one boycott the United States? How does one move forward in positive change while living within the system? What to do?
agreed eugene. i have done so much reading and research about china and the olympics recently, and have had nowhere to put what i’ve learned together into cohesive statements.
i could do it on espn.com or cnn.com, but they 1. censor comments (not just china yall! it’s happened to me at both sites!) and 2. aren’t safe virtual spaces where i think readers willa ctually read what i say.
so thanks all for being a part of this break down here.
one more thing… on the silencing of protesters:
let’s see how much the protesters of the DNC will get away with, especially with this recent ruling: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0619904520080807
in the end, when it comes to protecting the state’s interests all else - i mean, every so-called right, falls to the sidelines.
and oh, last thing -
giles, drink a tsingtao, eat some chinese spareribs and sit back & ponder: what would Mao think?
there’s a viet saying that refers to “free” market economics (so-called market socialism in VN & China): when you open the door, fresh air comes in, but dust and bugs too!
-papa lao tzu
Let me just say first that I appreciate the level of spirited discussion here and it’s absolutely necessary in trying to unravel a mystery as large as a country the size of China…a mystery like a chinese box? sorry I couldn’t resist..
Albeit as someone that has studied the history on and off, kept current through the NY Times, NPR reports, documentaries, relatives and other means, I have to say that simply being there will blow all those perspectives well…into perspective. After taking two trips in the past 2 years and being on the ground in China, talking to locals of different social strata, and just seeing how the people live there, not just the sheer amount of people there, made me realize just how completely insignificant my opinion was. That to me was just how priviliged of an American I was to try to tell the gov. that communism/capitalism is wrong. Hell, it’s like trying to change your parents, try doing it with a country of 1.2 billion people.
We’re often trained to focus on the minutae, to take apart what is wrong with a specific situation. The second step to analysis that only some people take is “how did we get here?” and that opens up a lot of doors. The big bad issue of China is a neverending number of doors of how did we get here’s, so what do we focus on? Frankly, all I could do when I was there in China was ask myself a set of questions, “Is this person I’m speaking with–regardless if they’re a relative or a stranger — happy? Do they have what they need? What can I do to make sure that this person has what they need or make them happy? That last question is where I got hung up the most.
That’s an insightful comment Leonard. Maybe the first step is simply understanding. Sounds like understanding the situation is a long journey through many doors as you say.
Did you ever figure out the answer to some of those questions? In particular, the question “Is this person happy?” seems like a very difficult one to answer. People have difficulty answering that question for themselves sometimes. Moreover, just because someone is happy doesn’t mean the situation they are in is justified. Is being happy and ignorant okay even if an individual is being oppressed?
yes.
Then I wish I were ignorant. Then I’d always be happy. Always.
!&(!&%^@*–dammit, my response got deleted.
anyway, what i was gonna say it, let’s keep things in perspective. speak out about injustices where you see them. people getting kicked out of their homes to build Olympic buildings is an injustice. but the lip-synching scandal is just that–a gossipy scandal, not an injustice. besides affecting the girl and her family, how does it affect the mass Chinese population? it’s news that makes headlines, but something that is not all that important in the larger scheme of things.
btw, the Olympics are just totally absurd to me.
Is oppression ok? That’s a great question depending on ho w you feel and how a person construes that one is being opressed? The constructs of power itself often cause the will of one group to override the will of another, it’s the classic dilemma. Right and wrong is always relative. Consensus is the most difficult conclusion. Thus the China example: for a massive country to move forward, will you be able to please everyone and ensure the will of everyone is served? I’m not condoning the actions of the government. I agree with Momo. If you took the case of Beijingers removed from their homes, there was plenty of downsides that resulted: historic districts being paved over, people not being compensated moved from their family homes, and then on the flip, more jobs created for people of the outer provinces, a symbol of national pride and hope for the future (this is undeniable, whether you think the Olympics are a joke or not). All for the greater good? Could they have done this better? Of course. Are those in power thinking about how they could have? Who knows. It’s up to you to question them and offer solutions.
yeah leonard, that’s more what i meant with my somewhat facetious short answer.
when you’re talking about 1+ million being relocated and compensated a mere fraction of the actual monetary worth of their home, not to mention the emotional worth, then there’s definitely something very wrong with that system.
but will the rest of the 1+ BILLION people in china care? how much do they even know? does that make them oppressed, happy, and ignorant? who knows? would they be happier if they knew everything and gov propaganda permeated less? probably not, but they would be better off, because knowing more about your world is always better than not. but so then what, are we to “expose” the truth to them all, while we here in the states wallow in the exact same type of government propaganda that blinds and influences us to believe and disbelieve various rumors and facts? who will “expose” the truth to us?
and again i revisit this point as momo’s point touched on it: all the things that china is being criticized for in the US media are the things that negatively affect US interests or perceived interests or - as is the case with the singing girls - problematic and maybe a bit sad, but hardly an international issue that affects the rights of people.
as i’ve trolled the Internets for months, i’ve come across stories of a type i’d love to hear more about (awkward sentence structure?) - for example environmental activists who drive all over the country to document wildlife dead from pollution, or communist party officials whose loved ones or even themselves are dying of cancer caused by pollution when their party officially denies it’s happening, or housing activists who deplore the pace of growth in chinese cities as it leaves millions homeless.
but we don’t hear about them because those struggles don’t benefit the US. if china actually did start employing more environmentally acceptable standards in the manufacturing industry, US companies would have to pay more in production costs and that wouldn’t benefit the US - thus there’s no actual pressure from the US on China to clean up in that regard. and if there’s no pressure on them, there’s no pressure on us, natch. everybody (or at least both corrupt governments and their cronies) wins.
are we free and the chinese oppressed? hardly. not only that, we are so deep in the matrix that we work to elect imperialists and think we’re making progress. all we are doing is moving to a different part of the matrix.
Yes, that was a “Giles Li facetious response.”
But, when I say oppressed, I was not just talking about “them.” I was talking about individuals in the United States or so-called first-world countries. You ask the question, are we free? Maybe in a relative sense, we might be more free. But the belief that we are more free allows us to remain comfortable and oblivious to the real transgressions not only in China, but in other parts of the world and in this country. Let’s talk about the singing girls, cause that’s so much more palatable.
I think this is your point.
We know oppression exists, but if I’m ignorant of it, then I would be happier. I don’t want to know about the pollutants, I don’t want to know about the United States forcible or covertly shaping governments in the name of democracy that are really just to expand the US’ imperialist and capitalist interests. I don’t want to know about the deportations of U.S. citizens out of this country. Cause that might mean I’ll be more happy.
I don’t think I’m advocating for ignorance though. All I am saying is that I can see how folks can easily fall into that way of thinking. It is hard to fight the empire when they control all the resources and means of production.
Yes there are a ton of stories that are under reported. There are even forms of press in China that rail against the establishment that the Communist Government has a hard time controlling.
I think the internet will and has already changed China in it’s openness. Although people make a big deal about certain sites being restricted or blocked, the internet is a place were people will always continue to find a way to put what the want out there. The flip side…sometimes it’s the truth, sometimes it’s misinformation, and most times it’s porn.