China and the Olympic Games: The Greatest National Coming-Out Party in History?

I hadn't realized the full significance of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing:

China, the Olympic Games, and global leadership, by Orville Schell, Project Syndicate: The whole world, it seems, views China as the next great global power. A trip to Beijing does little to dispel that impression. Out of the welter of dust, noise, welders' sparks, flotillas of cement mixers and construction cranes, the setting for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games is taking shape. A visitor feels inconsequential in the chaotic vastness of this epic undertaking.

But looking down on the scene from the half-finished Morgan Center, the luxury apartment complex (where annual rents are $800,000) and seven-star hotel that is arising beside the Olympic site, one is awestruck not only by the project's grandeur, but by its design daring... China's leaders view the Olympics not only as a national celebration, but also as the greatest national coming-out party in history.

Feeling the Promethean energy unleashed in Beijing, it is easy to believe in China's aspirations to restore itself to a position of global wealth and power. ... But, to become a truly "great nation," China must make two great leaps. First, it must become more comfortable playing an active and constructive international role. China is now deeply involved in the world, especially the Third World, because of trade. But it maintains a 19th-century notion of sovereignty - namely, that a country's national territory, its leaders have an absolute right to do whatever they want without outside "interference." This view is not only out of step with international trends, but it also inhibits China from playing a useful role in world crises.

China's leaders fear that if they begin to pronounce on the domestic record of other nations, much less join in sanctions or United Nations peacekeeping missions, they will help establish a precedent that would allow others to intrude on domestic Chinese affairs. But the Chinese government has just had a wake-up call in Sudan, from which China imports 50 percent of its oil. After doing little to pressure Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir into admitting UN peacekeepers to stem the killing in Darfur, China suddenly found the promise of an unsullied Olympics at risk.

The actress Mia Farrow, for example, suggested that the 2008 Olympics might be remembered as "the genocide games." This got the Chinese leadership's attention. In a matter of days, an emissary was dispatched and Bashir relented. It was an important moment in China's evolution from a defensive to an offensive player on the international scene.

China's second challenge concerns its hybrid capitalist-Leninist system of governance, which may not function well enough without democratic feedback and the rule of law. Party leaders may not become sufficiently attuned to the needs of China's people to respond to problems like corruption, environmental degradation, or peasant unrest before crises make them unsolvable.

Although hardly democrats, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao already are expending large of amounts of time and resources on divisive social problems in the countryside, where ... income growth has lagged. Hu and Wen have cancelled national agricultural taxes, made rural schooling free, launched a new rural medical insurance plan, and guaranteed that, since there is still no title for holding private agricultural land, peasants are entitled to renew their long-term leases.

So China may be edging toward a whole new way of interacting with the world and dealing with its people; its curious authoritarian capitalism may be inching toward some new, and possibly viable, model for long-term development. But, as Mao always noted, theory should not be confused with practice, and the sustainability of such a model remains untested. Indeed, no state run by a Communist Party has yet managed to reform itself sufficiently to modernize and develop successfully. In this, China is a both pioneer and a developmental curiosity.

What kind of nation China aspires to be, and where it is ultimately headed, is still something of a conundrum. ... Beneath the surface are many threatening cracks. But to drive past the Olympic Green in Beijing will help make many Chinese believe that perhaps the center will hold in this unprecedented and unusual experiment of nation building.

I wish I had a better sense of how the geopolitics of an emerging China will play out.

Comments

[anne]

"But it maintains a 19th-century notion of sovereignty - namely, that [in] a country's national territory, its leaders have an absolute right to do whatever they want without outside 'interference.' This view is not only out of step with international trends, but it also inhibits China from playing a useful role in world crises."

And, this is different than the notion of sovereignty in America or Britain or France or Japan or India how?

[anne]

"But, to become a truly 'great nation,' China must make two great leaps. First, it must become more comfortable playing an active and constructive international role."

Like, say, what other nations would we have in mind here? Say, like, joining the coalition of the willing. I wonder.

[Mark Thoma]

That statement caught my eye too. I wrote something on it, rewrote it, and rewrote it again, but wasn't happy with it and just left it at being puzzled over the emerging geopolitics.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/europe/26climate.html?ex=1337832000&en=dcefbfb9e83255bf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 26, 2007

U.S. Rebuffs Germany on Greenhouse Gas Cuts
By HELENE COOPER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

WASHINGTON — The United States has rejected Germany's proposal for deep long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, setting the stage for a battle that will pit President Bush against his European allies at next month's meeting of the world's richest countries.

In unusually harsh language, Bush administration negotiators took issue with the German draft of the communiqué for the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, complaining that the proposal "crosses multiple red lines in terms of what we simply cannot agree to." ...

As for a modern conception of sovereignty and playing an active and constructive international role, I suppose this must sort of be what's meant.

[anne]

Mark Thoma:

"I wish I had a better sense of how the geopolitics of an emerging China will play out."

Ah, notice how a carefully constructed question can be self-answering. The question here is willingness to be part of continual diplomatic negotiation. Even through the Cold War depths diplomacy was possible, and increasingly with China diplomacy was effective, while we are no longer in a Cold War with China.

says...

Anne - your geo-politics is lacking - Japan is a vassal colony of the US

Get a grip.

[calmo]

I have to admit that I rechecked the source and author's name as soon as I read that bit"But it maintains a 19th-century notion of sovereignty - namely, that [in] a country's national territory, its leaders have an absolute right to do whatever they want without outside 'interference.' This view is not only out of step with international trends, but it also inhibits China from playing a useful role in world crises." So the problem of Iraq was that it carried that old fashioned notion of sovereignty and not the trendy one of admitting some outside interference? What is Orville thinking with those quotes around "interference"? And that "useful" just begs for "useful for whom"?
I'm also at a loss as to why China's efforts to produce a memorable Olympic Games are cast as the greatest national coming-out party in history. not a "coming of age" party but a "coming-out" of some closet maybe? Is Orville in charge of his pen?
The article suffers from it's own criticism of ChinaWhat kind of nation China aspires to be, and where it is ultimately headed, is still something of a conundrum Orville gives me the vague impression that he is worried about this Communist state that had been the global growth engine for the past decade. The decade of record growth and social transformation does not get much attention from Orville...who is conundrummed by this upstart state that is, in concert with the transnationals, sacking the middle class and working class of America. This "Beneath the surface are many threatening cracks." is not good enough for working out the "conundrum".
Tisn't.

[evagrius]

Perhaps the Chinese will pay attention to Tibet?

[Bruce Wilder]

On a purely economic note, I wonder if the Olympics might also prove to be a bit of a destabilizing macro "shock".

Two people just back from China have spoken to me, independently, in awe about plans to disemploy tens of millions of people for six weeks or more, just to clear the air around Beijing. The scale of China make the numbers seem unbelievable, but I've heard estimates ranging from 12 million to 80 million furloughed.

This is a planned event, obviously, but it would be very tempting for an authoritarian government to screw it up.

[archer]

Per Bruce Wilder's comments, I have heard the "clean up the air" efforts will start 3 months before the Games, but I have no reason to doubt his mass layoff tidbit. And even with that, the air quality is expected to be poor. The predicition in sports circles is that no new world records will be set.

I have the feeling this will wind up like the Berlin '36 Olympics, a showcase that will fall short or somehow backfire. In Berlin, it was Jesse Owens winning the 100m dash and the long jump by impressive margins (his winning long jump was 8 inches beyond the second place effort, when 3rd, 4th, and 5th places were separated by a mere centimeter).

As to the big picture, my Japanese friends remind me that China has not lived up to its potential for 5000 years. But whether China falls short or succeeds, it has become a destabilizing force.

[jonfernquest]

"I wish I had a better sense of how the geopolitics of an emerging China will play out."

Might start with the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea which had a profound effect on national pride and also on Korean public opinion and perceptions of the way the country was viewed abroad, and ultimately on democratic change. Rather miraculously, the military has not played a role in South Korean politics for nearly 20 years!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1988_Summer_Olympics
#Significance_of_the_1988_Olympics_in_South_Korea

[Inst]

Should be for the past 1K years... I faintly recall the Japanese imperialists of the early 20th century lambasted everything after the Song dynasty, which was a great influence on Japan, as trash. I concur; the Song dynasty was on the verge of quasi-Western modernity, complete with Wenzhou Confucians beginning to challenge Confucianism's traditional degredation of commerce. The Song dynasty finally screwed it up when they provided the Mongols with siege technology, enabling the Mongols to wreck China. The ensuing Ming dynasty had horrible corruption and policy problems, what with Zhu Yuan Zhang borking paper currency by issuing excessive amounts of paper currency, designing a government that only worked with ZYZ at the helm, and with his successors destroying Chinese sea trade. While Chinese civilization recovered to some extent, it was constantly burdened by bad government policy. Danwei tells me that the Chinese are getting tired of their Qing dynasty fixation and are moving on to the Ming. When are they going to get to the Tang and the Song? If China becomes a new world power, it should start by being like the Tang then the Song, it should start by being internationalist and strong, and it should continue by being technologically, culturally, and organizationally advanced.

Anne, by the way, you contrasted Chinese and Western approaches to perspective on Brad DeLong. Though I'm undereducated, I'd venture that the Western approach seems better, it's more flexible, whereas the Chinese approach requires multiple objects. Ma'am, please, I am too stupid, what point were you trying to make?

[anne]

Art is illusion, and the point I was making was on how western and eastern painting perspectives developed distinctly and differently over hundreds of years. I was expressly referring to the painting of landscapes and the illusion of perspective in landscape painting in European and Chinese art history. Look to Giotto or Leonardo and ask after how perspective is painted, then look to a Chinese landscape and ask in turn as Cezanne did. Cezanne, was in effect a Chinese landscape painter.

[anne]

"Your geo-politics is lacking - Japan is a vassal colony of the US."

"Your geo-politics is lacking - France is a vassal colony of the US."

"Your geo-politics is lacking - India is a vassal colony of the US."

"Your geo-politics is lacking - Brazil is a vassal colony of the US."

"Your geo-politics is lacking - South Africa is a vassal colony of the US."

Duh.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28kristof.html

May 28, 2007

The Educated Giant
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Taishan, China

With China's trade surplus with the United States soaring, the tendency in the U.S. will be to react with tariffs and other barriers. But instead we should take a page from the Chinese book and respond by boosting education.

One reason China is likely to overtake the U.S. as the world's most important country in this century is that China puts more effort into building human capital than we do.

This area in southern Guangdong Province is my wife's ancestral hometown. Sheryl's grandparents left villages here because they thought they could find better opportunities for their children in "Meiguo" — "Beautiful Country," as the U.S. is called in Chinese. And they did. At Sheryl's family reunions, you feel inadequate without a doctorate.

But that educational gap between China and America is shrinking rapidly. I visited several elementary and middle schools accompanied by two of my children. And in general, the level of math taught even in peasant schools is similar to that in my kids' own excellent schools in the New York area.

My kids' school system doesn't offer foreign languages until the seventh grade. These Chinese peasants begin English studies in either first grade or third grade, depending on the school.

Frankly, my daughter got tired of being dragged around schools and having teachers look patronizingly at her schoolbooks and say, "Oh, we do that two grades younger."

There are, I think, four reasons why Chinese students do so well....

[Peterpaul]

A spurious comparison.

I spent almost six years of my life teaching in Chinese school systems (Hangzhou, Harbin, and Shanghai), in both public and private schools, and at all levels, from beginner to advanced English. Furthermore, I spent three years writing textbooks and tutoring,

There were certainly many bright students, and quite a few dedicated teachers. I think there is something to be said for rote drills. However, I found the system to generally be horrible. There were far too many students per class (50 to 60 is the norm), cheating was common and winked at, and the students pushed to provide answers, without thought, introspection, or serious cognitive skills other than pattern recognition...in short it is a mess.

[calmo]

English training in China as a 2nd language...is a mess?
Ok then.
What about Mandarin (Cantonese?) as a 2nd language? 6 years of emersion in the culture I imagine produced quite a different result.
What I would give for that experience
...prolly a good thrashing from the students.
...but next time around, more languages for me please God.

[Anonymous]

evagrius: Tibet is a touchy issue, and is on par with Taiwan. Any serious Western pressure is likely to result in stonewalling, and possibly even backfire. "Suggesting" changes to Sudan is a much different matter from giving on a matter of sovereignty (19th century, if you will).

archer: I think you're taking the Japanese Sinophobia at face-value, when you should take it with a large grain of salt. In the best case, jonfernquest is right that 2008 will be more like 1988 (Seoul). In the worst case, it's more likely to turn out like 1980 (Moscow) than 1936. One scenario being bandied about is that Taiwan may try to sneak in a declaration of independence under the radara, on the principle that China has too much to lose if it retaliates militarily. This is highly unlikely to stay China's hand, rather the opposite in fact. Also seems somewhat far-fetched, given the current political strength of the KMT in Taiwan.

[Jana]

The only good future for the Chinese people and the international community is for China to be rid of the communist regime.

The only safe way for this happen is for the Chinese people to turn their back peacefully on the communist regime.

Communism is evil and against all of humanity. Communist regime has killed 80 million Chinese people in the last 60 years of it reign. Do not be fooled by economics and a lack of decent info about whats happening in China.

Many mainstream medias have been co-opted. Murdoch for one has done freedom of press a great disservice.

How can you have human rights atrocities such as Live organ harvesting, a genocide of Chinese people and the Olympic games in the same country?

May i remind everyone that there 1.3 billion people in China and only 300 million are benefiting from the economics the rest of Chinese people - 1 billion are starving, no health care, no education and those who can find work do so for 17 cents an hour.

How can anyone support the communist regime or even do business with them? Jacques Rogue has sold out the International Olympic ethics,The UNHRC had to be dismantled because of communist regime interfering and vetoing all bills to help war torn countries ie Sudan and Darfur.

The WHO world health organization has been co-opted by the communist regime and cannot be trusted to alert the world to the un-contained Bird Flu virus in China.

The WTO has been deceived by the communist regime in believing that its economic bubble is real.

At the end of the day we in the west have been co-opted by our greedy natures and seem content to turn a blind eye to all the injustices that the communist regime commits on the Chinese people.
We have lost our ability to know right from wrong.

Please check out The Epoch Times newspaper if you want the real uncensored truth about whats happening in China today. The Epoch Times does not do business with the communist regime and is owned by ethical journalists who can no longer abide western and eastern media who are owned by money moguls.

http://en.epochtimes.com/change_edition.html

Please check out my site too which presents Good stories coming from China as well as the truth about all those suffering under the communist regime .

http://www.atruechineserenaissance.blogspot.com/

I urge everyone to rethink the current unelected rulers of China today. The Communist regime must go. The Chinese people want it and we in the west need to offer support to the Chinese citizens to peacefully quit the CCP.

To date over 22 million Chines people have quit the communist regime.
http://ninecommentaries.com/

http://en.epochtimes.com/211,95,,1.html

http://en.epochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html

[Anonymous]

Ah, a Falungong practitioner. Hint: you can disguise yourself a little better by not linking to a Falungong newspaper. Calling them "ethical businessmen" is a hoot. I suppose the Scientologists are too.

The ironic thing is that Falungong is promoting tolerance of the Communist Party among many overseas Chinese. In the sense of, "Maybe we Chinese are prone to overzeal. Maybe we need a strong, perhaps even tyrannical, power at the top to keep things stable. Better the excesses of the Communist Party than the excesses of another Taiping Rebellion."

China needs a real democracy movement, not this religious cult nonsense.

[Jana]

Dear Anon,

There is no need to disguise or hide ourselves we have nothing to hide unlike yourself who chooses to be anonymous.

Do not link us with any other "religion" as there has been so much propaganda about Falun Gong by the communist regime inciting hatred towards us all around the world;May i also say the communist regime says Christianity is a cult also.

If you listened to that evil propaganda instead of talking to genuine Falun Gong practitioners and then making up your own mind from your direct experience then you would not say such things about Falun Gong.

Chine needs a real democracy , no arguments there.Falun Gong are not interested in taking power for themselves. We just want this genocide against FAlun Gong practitioners to stop immediately and this is every human beings right to save fellow human lives.

Is there anything unrighteous about that?

Sounds to me like you have listened to the communist regime lies about FAlun Gong. Please go talk to a Falun Gong practitioner in your city and form your own opinion. Isn't this being responsible to yourself?

Then we can talk more to help stop this persecution of all good peoples conscience in the east and the west.