WINTER OLMPICS IN CHINA.....AN "OLYMPIC PAUSE" ....LIKE BERLIN 1936?
(Xi was in charge of the 2008 Games when 'human-rightsy' gestures still possible)
‘Genocide Games,’ Again
By JAY NORDLINGER
February 3, 2022
On the latest Beijing Olympics
In September 1993, the International Olympic Committee made its announcement about 2000: The Summer Games would be held in Sydney. The Chinese government had wanted those Games. And it almost got them. Sydney beat out Beijing by a hair. It was a little too soon — too soon after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which the Chinese authorities carried out in June 1989.
They pulled out all the stops, in trying to secure those 2000 Games. They poured billions into “Olympic construction.” They launched a campaign for public hygiene: “Mobilize the Masses for a Fly-Free City!” They also stopped monitoring foreign journalists so closely — and even released a couple of political prisoners.
In short, they instituted some version of the “Olympic Pause.” This was the name given to the Nazis’ relaxation of control in the mid 1930s. Germany had been awarded the Olympic Games for 1936 — both the Winter Games and the Summer Games — in 1931, two years before the Nazis rose to power.
By the way, the story we often tell ourselves is that the Olympics were an embarrassment to Hitler. Jesse Owens, the black American trackster, came to Berlin and won four gold medals. So much for the Nazis’ “master race”! It’s a nice story, and there’s some truth to it. But, on the whole, the Games were a boon to Hitler, serving to normalize his state.
William Shirer, the journalist, later wrote the following: “Hitler, we who covered the Games had to concede, turned the Olympics into a dazzling propaganda success for his barbarian regime.” Duff Hart-Davis, in his book Hitler’s Games, tells us that the Nazis put across the illusion of “a perfectly normal place, in which life went on as pleasantly as in any other European country.”
In any event, the Chinese government fell just short, in getting the 2000 Games. The U.S. Congress had passed a resolution against the holding of the Olympics in Beijing. So had the European Parliament. These moves irked the IOC. Its then-president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, grumbled that Western countries were happy to trade with China but not give them the Games.
A good point, you might admit.
Beijing was determined not to be denied the 2008 Games. It was their due, Chinese officials said. “The Olympic Games belong to the whole world,” said one of them. “The fact that the Games have not yet been held in China is a failure of the Olympic movement.” Pressed on the question of human rights, the official huffed, “There is no excuse for denying the dreams of 1.3 billion people.”
But the Chinese government also dangled carrots — human-rightsy ones. The Games “are an opportunity to foster democracy, improve human rights, and integrate China with the rest of the world,” said another official. “By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights.”
That would prove chimerical, needless to say.
The IOC made its announcement in July 2001: The Games would at last go to Beijing. The population, by and large, rejoiced. The Chinese people had Olympic fever. As the government was campaigning for the ’08 Games, thousands of parents named their babies “Aoyun,” for “Olympics.”
National pride is a natural feeling, and often a salutary one. In 2018, I interviewed Fang Zheng, an athlete. He was 17 years old in 1984, when the Summer Games were held in Los Angeles. Before then, China was largely absent from the Olympics. When the national team went to L.A., “we felt that China was finally part of the world,” said Fang Zheng. He and the whole nation were glued to the television. Their women’s volleyball team beat the United States to win the gold medal. That was huge.
Five years later, Fang Zheng was among the protesters in Tiananmen Square. A tank ran over him, severing his legs. Three years later, he won two gold medals at the All-China Disabled Athletic Games. He is a very tough man, physically and mentally. He now lives in the United States, working in the Chinese democracy movement.
In the run-up to the 2008 Games, Hu Jintao, the Communist Party boss at the time, spoke of the “national image.” This was of supreme importance. China must not look bad — by some definition of “bad” — in the eyes of the world. The mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, said, “We have to have a good Olympics. Otherwise, not only will our generation lose face, but so will our ancestors.”
The ’08 Games would be China’s “coming-out party,” everyone agreed: the moment when China took its rightful place upon the vast world stage. But there were stumbles on the way to the party.
Beijing was the principal backer of the Sudanese dictatorship, which was committing genocide in the Darfur region of that country. In America, the actress Mia Farrow called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. She dubbed them the “Genocide Games.” She put particular pressure on Steven Spielberg, the great director, who was advising Beijing on the theatrical elements of the Olympics. “Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games?” she asked. (Riefenstahl made the infamous film Olympia, about 1936.) Spielberg withdrew, citing Sudan.
There was also Tibet — on which Beijing was cracking down, viciously. Protesters dogged the steps of runners in the Olympic-torch relay, in various countries. This infuriated the Chinese regime, which thought the national image was being tarnished — not by the broken bones in Tibet but by the protests.
Through any avenue they could, Chinese dissidents and democrats tried to send the world a message: The authorities were bent on presenting a false image of China to the world. They were Potemkinizing a brutal, murderous police state. In response, the authorities imprisoned or “disappeared” a number of these critics. Among them were Hu Jia, Yang Chunlin, Gao Zhisheng, and Wang Dejia.
Go back to 1993 for a minute, when Beijing was trying to win the 2000 Games. Nine days before the IOC made its announcement, the regime released Wei Jingsheng, one of China’s most prominent political prisoners. This was a last-minute gambit. Wei Jingsheng went into exile, in America. On the eve of the ’08 Olympics, I asked him some questions.
One was, “Can any good, for Chinese democracy, come out of these Games?” He answered, “If the Chinese Communist Party has a successful Olympics, then it proves that it is in control, both inside China and internationally. It means that the CCP’s life is extended for 20 more years — which means that Chinese democratization is delayed for 20 more years.”
The ’08 Olympics opened on August 8 — 8/8/08. Eight is considered a lucky number by the Chinese. The opening ceremony was held in the new National Stadium, dubbed the “Bird’s Nest.” It was designed by Ai Weiwei, among others. Ai Weiwei has been in exile since 2015, in Europe. He has repeatedly called the Bird’s Nest — and the ’08 Olympics at large — a “fake smile.”
Xi Jinping cut his teeth on those Olympics, so to speak. He was the CCP official put in charge of them in the final months of preparation. In 2012, he rose to party boss. In 2018, he was named president-for-life. Xi Jinping is presiding over the most oppressive period in China since the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and ended with Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.
In July 2015, the International Olympic Committee awarded the ’22 Winter Games to Beijing. This time, there was no pretense about relaxation or democratization or integration (with the world). There is not even a need for an Olympic Pause. The Chinese Communist Party, at this stage, is beyond that.
A report in the New York Times, published on January 22, 2022, put it well: “Very few people today harbor illusions, unlike in 2008, that the privilege of hosting the event will moderate the country’s authoritarian policies. China then sought to meet the world’s terms. Now the world must accept China’s.”
As on the road to ’08, there have been stumbles on the road to ’22. “Genocide Games”? The Chinese government is now committing genocide in its own country: against the Uyghur people, in Xinjiang Province (or East Turkestan, as the Uyghurs themselves call the region). Also, the government has squelched Hong Kong as a free city.
Then there is the case of Peng Shuai. She is the tennis player who accused a retired Communist big, Zhang Gaoli, of sexually assaulting her. She has since been kept mainly out of view by the party.
People around the world have grumbled over these things. We might grumble, too, about new political prisoners. As in ’08, the authorities have been arresting dissidents and democrats — two of whom are Yang Maodong and Xie Yang. Yet most of us simply go on about our business.
Speaking of business: Elon Musk has just opened his first Tesla store and showroom in Xinjiang Province. I think of William F. Buckley Jr., who liked to quote Willi Schlamm, who said, “The problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists.”
In a Washington Post column, published on December 28, Charles Lane suggested that individuals boycott the Beijing Winter Games — by not tuning in. By not watching them on television. Thereby we might teach corporations “a lesson in the costs of collaboration with the Chinese regime.”
There are a thousand more things to say, and maybe I could say a couple of them. In 2014, Ethan Gutmann published his book The Slaughter, which is about organ harvesting and other atrocities in China. In my review, I wrote,
His findings, his book, must be ignored, if life is to go on — if business with China is to continue as usual. We have a psychological need to see China as a normal country (and maybe a material need too, given commercial relations). We take vacations in China, as we do in France or Argentina. We send our young people to study in Beijing, as we send them to Dublin or Florence. We work in Shanghai, as we work in London or Tokyo.
Yes. It is my personal belief that the Olympic Games should not be held in a police state. Any of them. Lots of countries are not police states. Pick one of them.
In 2003, I moderated a session on sports at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This was a dinner, with remarks and discussion. Many prominent figures from the sports world were in attendance. In the course of the evening, I asked, “Does anyone think the Olympic Games should not be held in police states?” Probably a fair number did, but only one person raised her hand — the wife of one of the main participants. If I remember correctly, and I believe I do, she was the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
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JAY NORDLINGER is a senior editor of National Review |
