DEBATE SUMMARY
Proposition: “It was a mistake to award the Olympics to Beijing.”
Final vote count: Pro 33% / Con 67%
The Moderator’s winning announcement: The final result comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the debate and the weight of opinion from participants from China in particular. The “Cons” have it by 67% to 33%.
SPEAKER STATEMENTS FOR OPENING PERIOD
May 27th to May 29th 2008
The Proposition’s Opening Statement
It was a mistake to award this summer’s Olympics to Beijing.First, the city is not technically ready to host the event. Second, the Games are making the political system more repressive.
China is worse off for staging the extravaganza.
First and foremost, the Games are a sporting contest, and so the most important consideration is whether all the athletic competitions can be held. Yet no one can be sure the air in Beijing will be clean enough. The amount of smoke and dust in the city’s atmosphere on some days is 12 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organisation. Breathing in Beijing, says a respiratory expert, David Martin, is “like feeding an athlete poison”.
To protect competitors from bad air, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Jacques Rogge, last October said endurance events may be postponed. Yet in light of rigid scheduling for the Games and the unpredictability of pollution patterns, postponement is tantamount to cancellation.
Yet even if every match, race and competition is in fact held as scheduled, Beijing is still an unacceptable location. Last month, Mr Rogge acknowledged pollution may adversely affect performances of “some” athletes, an implicit admission that the air will affect the outcome of Olympic competitions. Actually, that is already happening. In March, for instance, Haile Gebrselassie, the world’s record-holder in the marathon and the gold-medal favourite in Beijing for this event, announced that he will almost certainly not compete in that race and opt for a shorter distance to prevent long-term injury to his lungs. In short, the IOC should not have chosen a city where athletes’ tolerance for particulates is a major factor in determining medals.
Why is Mr Gebrselassie and others so concerned? In one preliminary biking competition in Beijing recently all but eight of 47 cyclists dropped out midway due to the air. Colby Pearce, an Olympic hopeful in track cycling, developed bronchitis from competing there in 2007. “When you are coughing up black mucus, you have to stop for a second and say: ‘OK, I get it,’” he said. “This is a really, really bad problem we’re looking at.”
Since then, Beijing, which promises a “Green Olympics”, has been producing statistics showing that its air quality has been constantly improving. Yet in January and February of this year various reports revealed that officials, in order to obtain better readings, had moved their monitoring stations farther from the city’s centre and had also changed their measuring methodology. Gilbert Van Kerckhove, a consultant to the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee, admitted pollution is worse than official statistics show, a charge also heard from Chinese analysts. Beijing’s air, unfortunately, has been continually deteriorating, largely because 1,100 cars are added to the capital’s roads every day.
With such growth, it is unlikely that the air in Beijing will be clean enough for the Games. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a report last October stating that Beijing’s persistent smog will not be cleaned up in time for the Olympics. “Improvements in air quality cannot be achieved in a short period of time,” said a UNEP official, Eric Falt. Chinese officials, however, will try to lower pollution by temporarily shutting down industry and prohibiting automobile usage.
These coercive tactics will not work, and they bring us to the second reason why it was a mistake to award the Games to Beijing. Unfortunately, the Chinese government has become increasingly repressive during the past half decade, and it appears that this trend is partly related to the Communist Party’s obsession with staging a perfect Olympics.
There is, of course, no question that Chinese society has become freer since July 2001, when the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing. Yet this positive change would have occurred even if China had lost its bid to host the Olympics. This change is, after all, almost entirely due to the country’s reform of its domestic economy and the economy’s integration into international commerce.
Yet as society in general has progressed, the political system has gone in the opposite direction. Today, for instance, there is even less official tolerance for political speech in China then there was at the end of the 1980s. Why? One of the most important reasons is that the Communist Party has ruled out political liberalisation in the sensitive period before the Games. To avoid any embarrassment during the Olympics, the Communist Party has implemented a series of increasingly tougher crackdowns affecting everyone from newspaper editors to the writers of karaoke songs.
In order to put on the Olympics, the Party has resorted to old-time dictatorial tactics. It is, in addition to shutting down factories, relocating about 1.48 million people, many of them forcibly, to make way for Olympic venues and Olympics-related infrastructure; dividing the city into five districts and, without getting the permission of owners, painting each one a uniform colour; and decreeing dress codes for female cab-drivers (for example no big earrings). They have been systematically jailing citizens who question the hosting of the Games, severely restricting visas to foreigners, and withdrawing permission for academic conferences and other long-planned events to ensure complete control over society. In short, Chinese officials are employing mass mobilisation campaigns and reimposing strict social controls. As The Washington Post editorialised, the Olympics are becoming “a showcase for violent repression”.
The Olympics, many hoped, would further open up China and make the government more humane. Unfortunately, they are having the opposite effect. In short, the Communist Party is failing to meet its Olympic promises, especially when they would undermine its perceived core interests. It is true that the party has issued many fine pronouncements in the run-up to the Games, but it is largely refusing to carry through on them. We should not be surprised, because China’s one-party state has seen the event as a means to strengthen its rule over a dynamic people.
So, the Beijing Olympics are not good for the world’s athletes, and they are even worse for the Chinese people.
The Opposition’s Opening Statement
The Olympic Games mean different things to different people. To the athletes they represent the culmination of years of ambition and hard work.
To keen followers of sport, they are an opportunity to see competition at its highest level. The Games are a fascinating application of lofty human ideals to some, a curious series of obscure athletic events to others. They elicit joy, agony and even their fair share of yawns and shrugs.
But to the people and government of the host country, the Olympics are a grand political celebration, a unique opportunity to showcase that country’s majesty, might and means. Small wonder hosting an Olympic Games is so frequently buoyed by a wave of nationalism that begins with the bidding process and crests as the Games are held.
This is certainly true in China. Chinese citizens-some 1.3 billion of them-have been looking forward to the Beijing Olympic Games with a nationalistic fervour bordering on frenzy. These Games are, for many Chinese, symbolic of China’s return to global prominence. The Middle Kingdom, consigned to history’s scrapheap by the West so many years ago, is back and bellowing as one of the key global players in the 21st century. Small wonder modern Chinese citizens have been in the mood to stomp their feet and pound their chests and celebrate with the loudest and most spectacular party (communist, of course) possible.
And why not? True, feeding nationalist impulses is not always the best of ideas. But because theirs is an autocratic government should Chinese be denied an opportunity to demonstrate their national pride? China has come a long, long way economically, culturally and socially in the last 30 years since it began its policy of opening up to the outside world. The average Chinese citizen has a much better, hopeful and, yes, freer life in 2008 than he or she did in 1978. Is it wrong for them to want to celebrate these gains?
It is dangerous, certainly, to laud China’s progress when China’s autocratic regime has not yet even delivered a half-full glass to its populace. But it is hard to argue that in 30 years the water-level in that glass has not risen and is not yet rising still.
In the past several months the world has witnessed with anguish the protest scenes in Tibet, brutally suppressed, and the tragedy and heroism of the Sichuan earthquake. The two contrasting events not only have cast a pall on China’s national Olympic celebration, they demonstrate the maddening paradox of modern China.
To an international audience, China’s ethnic Tibetan population, all 6 million of them, and their charismatic exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, are an inherently sympathetic bunch. Among ethnic Chinese, however, Tibetans are almost universally perceived as riotous ingrates; the Dalai Lama as a treacherous and wily foe. The uprising in Lhasa this March inspired the worst in Chinese political response: brutality and censorship by the Chinese government, brooding and self-victimisation by the Chinese people. In China, criticism of Beijing’s actions in Tibet is non-existent. Foreign criticism inspires lectures by Chinese officials; outright threats from the Chinese mob.
Reactions to the earthquake in Sichuan, on the other hand, seem to show modern China at its best: breaking through bureaucratic tangles to rush aid and material to affected communities, inspiring unheard-of volunteerism and charity by the Chinese people. Throughout it all, media coverage of the quake has been nearly unchecked, including coverage by the Chinese press criticising failures of the government’s efforts to either prevent or manage the destruction and death that has ensued. The contrast with the Burmese junta’s management of the cyclone Nargis disaster is stark, yes. But so too is the contrast with the Chinese government’s own management of a similar tragic quake 32 years ago, an inept effort seemingly focused more on disinformation than on disaster relief. Yes, China has come a long way.
With the smoke still clearing over Lhasa one doubts, if the International Olympic Committee were asked to vote again this spring, that it would find in favour of Beijing’s Olympic bid even with the sobering scenes from Sichuan to temper the international mood. But would denying Beijing’s Olympic bid in the first place have prevented the recent suppression in Tibet? Would frustrating the national desire of 1.3 billion Chinese for an Olympic celebration have yielded greater freedoms for them (or other ethnicities in China)? Would declining to award the Olympic Games based on a finding that Beijing’s human rights record is wanting (which it is, of course) produce a Beijing with a better attitude towards human rights? Well, no, because we have already seen that it would not.
In 1993 Beijing, a scant four years removed from the 1989 catastrophe in Tiananmen Square, applied for and lost a bid for the 2000 Olympics that went to Sydney. The widely cited reason for turning down the bid, launched with similar nationalist zeal, was Beijing’s poor human rights record. Although Beijing promised to improve its human rights record in the years following, signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights among other matters, few credible observers can point to tangible improvement in the lives of Chinese dissidents or average citizens as a result of the failed 2000 Olympic bid.
So, is a political litmus test the sine qua non of a successful bid? I fear if Olympic Games were only awarded to governments without sin, no votes could ever be cast for a successful bidder.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of democrats, autocrats and every shade between. Not all populations are lucky enough to choose who leads them. The 2008 Olympic Games are an event that will showcase China’s prideful re-emergence. But China’s political progress is a process, not an event. No one in China or elsewhere should believe 2008 marks the end of that process. But allowing Chinese citizens a milestone along the way may not be the end of the world.
The Moderator’s Opening Statement
Welcome to the latest in our series of online debates. The proposition before us is nothing if not topical: China and the imminent Olympic Games in Beijing are constantly in the news.
They stir controversy and strong views. Our debate will, of course, be vigorous but remain strictly good-natured.
Our two protagonists set the tone in their opening statements. Gordon Chang, the author of “The Coming Collapse of China”, makes two main arguments in favour of the idea that it was a mistake to award the Olympics to Beijing. From a sports perspective, he argues, the city’s pollution makes it unfit to host the games. And politically, far from easing up as the games approach, as many hoped would happen, China’s leaders have on the contrary cracked down.
Charles Freeman, a China expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, argues that the bar for awarding the Olympics should not be set unrealistically high. Yes, the games stir national pride. But what is wrong with that? With or without the games China might behave badly (as in Tibet) or admirably (as in the response to the Sichuan earthquake). The country’s political development will be a long process, and it would not have been speeded up by denying the Olympics to Beijing.
One clear consequence of awarding the games to Beijing is a period of intense scrutiny of China. Already, well before the opening ceremony, the world is watching. Soon, visitors and journalists will flood in.
What will the impact be? Did the Olympics in any way restrain China’s crackdown in Tibet or encourage openness in response to the Sichuan quake? The answers are not simple, as I suspect the debate will show.
There will also, if past debates are a guide, be some argument about the wording of the proposition itself. If it was a mistake to award the games to Beijing, then for whom or what? For athletes, for the Olympic movement, for China’s behaviour abroad or its politics at home? All these perspectives seem perfectly valid, yet they might throw up different answers. It will be interesting to see which aspect gives rise to most discussion.
And so, to paraphrase the Olympics’ opening words: let the debate begin.
SPEAKER STATEMENTS FOR REBUTTAL PERIOD
May 30th to June 4th 2008
The Proposition’s Rebuttal Statement
Charles Freeman argues that no government is without sin and that there should be no political litmus test for hosting the Games.
He ends up by suggesting that allowing the Chinese people a milestone to mark their progress may not cause the end of the world. Even if one accepts these arguments, they do not support the notion that awarding the Games to Beijing was the correct decision in July 2001.
As an initial matter, the Olympics are not about “the hurt feelings of 1.3 billion people”, as Mr Freeman puts it. They are a sporting event, and he does not address the threshold issue of whether a city is able, from a technical viewpoint, to host the Games. Beijing, unfortunately, is not now able to do so. Its polluted air is bound to harm competitors and is already affecting the outcome of events in ways that are unfair. The other cities in the running in 2001-including finalists Toronto, Paris and Istanbul-were better able to stage the Games.
No more need be said to prove that it was a mistake to award the Games to Beijing but, for the sake of argument, let us look at the political issues that Mr Freeman highlights. In the strictest sense, he is correct when he writes that there is no political litmus test for host cities. Yet some governments offend common sensibilities to such an extent as to make them unsuitable hosts. Mr Freeman admits this when he writes, “With the smoke still clearing over Lhasa one doubts, if the International Olympic Committee were asked to vote again this spring, that it would find in favour of Beijing’s Olympic bid even with the sobering scenes from Sichuan to temper the international mood.”
Why was the award to Beijing a mistake, as Mr Freeman himself suggests? There are many reasons, but perhaps the most important of them is that the Communist Party has disappointed the hopes of many around the world-especially the Chinese people themselves-that the Olympics would moderate its actions. Unfortunately, since 2001 the Chinese political system has become more repressive in important ways. Worse, there is evidence that the award of the Games is in part responsible for causing this regressive trend. Mr Freeman essentially acknowledges the Olympic award has not prevented the crackdown in Tibet or improved human rights in China. As an aside, he credits Beijing with its handling of the Sichuan quake but fails to note that the government has, regrettably but predictably, reimposed strict media controls and reverted to its tactics of jailing critics of its actions.
As a result of Beijing’s unsavoury behaviour, protests followed the Olympic torch as soon as it was lit in Greece in late March, and they have followed the torch relay throughout most of its six-continent tour, even inside China itself. The International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, admitted in April that demonstrations against the torch posed “a crisis” for the Olympic movement.
Yet he should not have been surprised by the controversy and the protests. There have been many different grievances aired during the torch relay, but the outpouring of sentiment across nations and continents occurred because, at a fundamental level, people round the world believe the Chinese Communist Party stands against their shared aspirations and hopes. Consequently, the association of the Olympics with China has tarnished the Games. And the unacceptable conduct of the Chinese government since July 2001 was predictable then. The tragedies that have befallen the country-both before and since that time-are largely the result of its intransigent one-party state. Big or small, China’s problems are ultimately traceable back to the faults inherent in its political system.
If the Games could not have had a beneficial impact on the behaviour of the one-party state, then what was the point of permitting Chinese leaders to host them? Like it or not, the right to stage the Olympics is seen as conferring legitimization on the host. It was simply wrong in 2001 to bestow such an honour on a government that was so unrepentantly authoritarian. Mr Freeman notes that every government sins. Yet this is not an argument for giving the Games to one of the worst sinners.
Mr Freeman is certainly correct when he argues that holding the Games in China will not cause the world to end and that China’s government is more responsible than Burma’s. But these truisms set the bar at an extremely low level. Are these really the standards that the International Olympic Committee should apply for awarding the right to host the world’s most important communal event?
The Opposition’s Rebuttal Statement
The Olympic Games are not a carrot given by one government to another to reward good behaviour.
They are rewarded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), following guidelines set down in the Olympic charter. Although clearly the court of international public opinion plays a role in influencing the IOC’s decision in choosing a host city, there is little in the charter that could be mistaken for a licence to practise cultural or political paternalism.
Ultimately, if awarding the Games to Beijing was in error, it can only be because the IOC failed to fulfil its mission, and not that Western public opinion has turned sour on the decision. The mission of the IOC, as set forth in the Olympic charter, is as much about the importance of fairness and the universal values of sport. The transformative role of the Games on society gets less play, although environmentalism gets a specific nod, as does promoting “a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities and host countries.” On that score, it is hard to find the IOC at fault in choosing Beijing.
True, the pollution in Beijing is extreme. But environmental challenges during the Olympics have been near the norm for much of the past 50 years. The 1956 Tokyo Olympics took place just as that city was beginning to recognise the extent of its industrial effluent challenges. Mexico City’s toxic air in 1968 and Los Angeles’ smog in 1984 are the stuff of legend. Seoul seized on the 1988 Games to begin to tackle its pollution problems. Athens was no Sydney.
Haile Gebrselassie’s decision not to run the marathon in Beijing is dramatic, but there are other things at work here. A member of one country’s Olympic medical teams has said privately that his athletes are treating Beijing’s pollution as an opportunity to gain a competitive edge. “These are competitors,” he said. “They’re looking at every angle. They’re trying to figure out how to use the pollution to beat the competition.” There are certainly Olympic teams that do not have the resources to effectively train for Beijing’s conditions. Unfortunately, a lack of training resources is not unique to pollution acclimatization.
Beijing’s air quality is maddening because it can change every day. Local auto emissions are a new problem, but Beijing has done much to control local pollution in the decade since it started thinking about the Olympics. Steel mills have been shuttered, coal-fired stoves banned. But Beijing’s pollution is not just a local affair.
Beijing sits in the basin of an inverted “U” of surrounding mountains. The prevailing winds can drive the pollution of three (and sometimes more) heavily industrialised provinces to Beijing’s south straight into the inverted “U”, trapping the smog in the city.
This is not a simple case of nonfeasance. Its environmental ambitions for the Games are real, but success at improving the city’s air quality has eluded Beijing. Ambition, perhaps, should be made of sterner stuff. In order to ensure truly blue skies in Beijing, the Chinese government would need to shut down economic activity in an area nearly the size of western Europe. Such a short-term solution might cheer some athletes and tourists in August, but it will not solve China’s environmental woes. Meanwhile, a long-term solution is becoming a political imperative for Beijing.
Environmental crises have been a prime mover behind countless local protests that have alarmed the stability-obsessed central government in recent years. The leadership in Beijing has in response enacted tough new environmental restrictions, made environmental protection a key criterion for promotion of local officials and, yes, used the symbolism of the Olympics to galvanise change. While some progress has resulted, it is modest at best. That says more about the limitations on Beijing’s authoritarianism than it does about its commitment to improve environmental quality in China, whether or not in the Olympic context.
China’s economic miracle is due to Beijing’s removal of itself from the daily lives of its citizens and cession of much authority to localities. Now that Beijing wants to reassert control to address the challenges resulting from runaway growth (including environmental degradation), it is finding the going tough. Heaven is high, the mountains are far away, goes the old saying. What does the emperor have to do with me? Beijing has issued an ultimatum to clean up the environment. Far away from Beijing, local communities and the industries that support them have not blinked.
The Olympics can only help to change that dynamic. The focus and the attention that the environment is receiving in the Olympic context are driving environmental awareness in communities throughout China. In the long term, having the Olympics in Beijing is more likely than not to be a force for political change in ways that benefit all of us.
As for the increasing activism of China’s security forces and other signs of repression in the lead-up to the Games, Beijing’s paranoia about disruptions at the Games is comment-worthy. But signs of intolerance are matched by those of tolerance: China’s cadre of foreign reporters has had an unprecedented run of access to Chinese society in the last year (with a notable hiccup in March). Some of the intolerance is remarkable because it is visible to the outside world-quite a change from times past.
Beijing is furiously self-conscious of its image as it heads into the Games, and is not above harshly demanding cosmetic changes in the city and dress requirements for its service workers. The city and its rulers are motivated by a vision of a clean, orderly and regimented Beijing that is removed from the city’s gritty reality. But such a vision of uniformed cabbies and colour-coded districts could as easily have been imagined by Walt Disney as by George Orwell.
It is a remarkable statement, bordering on oxymoron, that Chinese society is becoming freer while its government is becoming more repressive. Even if it were true, the IOC can clearly fill its mission, however limited or imperfect by some standards, by holding the Games in Beijing.
The Moderator’s Rebuttal Statement
The debate is producing strong views, as might be expected. A few participants have expressed themselves a little too strongly, so a gentle reminder of our debating rules is in order.
We invite those on the floor to participate by addressing points only to the moderator, and we ask everyone to “observe the spirit of the Oxford debate”. So please keep comments respectful and to the point.
That said, we are seeing a vigorous discussion on both sides. Two main issues are coming to the fore.
First, there is the matter of the basis upon which the decision to grant the games to a particular city is made. Charles Freeman notes in his rebuttal that it is the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which decides. There is, he says, little in the IOC’s charter that “could be mistaken for a licence to practise cultural or political paternalism”.
From the floor there has been a lively discussion on what drives the decision: is it the interest of sports, or money, or politics-and is it right to apply “Western” or “imperialist” values to a host city’s credentials? I rather like the suggestion of cgdoherty (who calls us “twits” for raising the topic) for finessing the whole issue: “We should pick Olympic sites out of a hat and then just all go there and make it happen.”
The second, and deeper, debate is around the influence that the games are having and will leave on China. Here views are decidedly mixed. Gordon Chang stresses in his rebuttal that hopes that the Olympics would exert a moderating influence on the Chinese Communist Party have been disappointed. Worse, he reckons the games themselves have played a part in strengthening repression. From the floor, this view has some support: nom de plume, for one, claims that the games have led China to crack down even harder, “notably against domestic journalists who have dared to speak out against the oppressive regime”.
But others disagree. For example, jenming argues that China’s transparency has “greatly increased at least partly due to the coming ‘foreign eyes’”. On this view, China’s behaviour does not have to be perfect for the Olympics to have a benign impact; what matters is that the country moves towards greater openness.
What do you think? Clearly, to judge from the comments so far, this is a matter of great interest within China, but also to its neighbours and around the world. It is perhaps the most global of our debates so far. Please do join it.
SPEAKER STATEMENTS FOR CLOSING PERIOD
June 5th to June 6th 2008
The Proposition’s Closing Statement
The Olympics are the world’s premier sporting contest. It would be a mistake to award them to any city if the world’s finest athletes cannot compete or if they have to assume undue risks in order to take part.
By now, we know that there is a substantial risk that the air in Beijing will be unacceptable for endurance competitions. It has already caused one world-record holder to drop out of his event, and more competitors may do so.
Charles Freeman, to his credit, admits the pollution in the Chinese capital is “extreme”. Yet he never gets around to showing why adverse environmental considerations do not disqualify Beijing. He says, in the city’s defence, that other Olympics have been plagued by bad air. That is true as a general statement, but no previous host has come close to presenting athletes with conditions that are as noxious as Beijing’s. There is one overriding reality: the Chinese capital is not ready to stage the games.
Mr Freeman, in his rebuttal, says that athletes are trying to use the pollution to gain an advantage. As a result, winners in the endurance contests will effectively be picked on the strategy they adopt to acclimatise to the air. Because the Olympics have never been held in such severe conditions, no one really knows what will work best. In fact, there is a disagreement over tactics: some teams are going to China early and others are staying away until the last moment. So should we hold the games in a city where the outcome of athletic events will depend on which country’s doctors happen to pick the best “angle”?
Mr Freeman, in response, explains that the air quality in Beijing is changeable, that the city is ringed by mountains that trap smog from at least three neighbouring provinces, that the use of coal is an old problem, that vehicle emissions are a new one, that the government has closed down industry in the vicinity of the competitions, that Chinese authorities are trying to do something about air quality, and that the Olympics are stirring protests and environmental activism in China. All these points are true-and all of them are completely irrelevant. After reading Mr Freeman’s arguments, we have a better understanding of the challenges the leaders of the Chinese central government and the organisers of the games face, but this does not relieve them of their responsibility to stage the Olympics in acceptable conditions. In fact, Mr Freeman in his rebuttal admits that “success at improving the city’s air quality has eluded Beijing”. I could rest my case here.
Yet let me add this: the primary purpose of the Olympics is not to clean China’s environment, to promote understanding of Chinese geography or to create sympathy for the leaders of an autocratic state. It is to hold athletic competitions. Mr Freeman explains the reasons for grey, thick and foul air, but he does not show why Olympic athletes should be forced to breathe it.
Unfortunately, the air quality in Beijing is not getting any better. At the end of last month, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau sounded a warning that the air was “hazardous” at level five, the worst category. With just about two months to go, the games are in jeopardy. This reason, by itself, is proof that the award of the Olympics to China was a mistake.
Because he cannot address the only argument that counts, Mr Freeman wants us to look at other factors instead. In short, these additional considerations also show that the award to Beijing was in error. It is true that the International Olympic Committee does not always award the games to democracies. China is not disqualified as a host because its government has, almost from the time of the award to Beijing in 2001, imposed a crackdown on human rights or because the Communist Party is using this sporting extravaganza to justify its increasingly repressive rule. The welfare of the Chinese people is technically not a concern of officials who award Olympic events.
Even so, it is wrong for Mr Freeman then to suggest that Beijing should be the host because the games have or will promote “a positive legacy” for that city or China. So far, events show the opposite, as has been detailed in this debate. From what has in fact occurred, the legacy of the Chinese Olympics, at least for the foreseeable future, will be a negative one for the people of the great nation of China. And it is both dismissive and wrong to liken Chinese repression to a Walt Disney fantasy, as Mr Freeman does.
From no perspective was Beijing the right decision. As Mr Freeman suggests in his opening statement, the IOC would not pick the Chinese capital if it were to vote now. Why? Because the award of the games to China was a mistake to begin with.
The Opposition’s Closing Statement
Despite the emotional charge that the question now debated clearly carries, the issue we address is ultimately very narrow.The IOC’s mission is to use the spirit of athletic competition to bring people together in peace.
Did it fulfil that mission in July 2001, in awarding the games to Beijing?
Yes, it did. And then some.
Despite the rhetoric of some observers, an IOC vote to award an Olympic host city or country is not a referendum on that country’s government. The Olympic movement focuses solely on the power of sport to bring people together across boundaries and political ideologies. Given that focus, the host city that would best bring people together across cultural or political divides should be awarded the Olympic games. A Paris, Toronto or even Istanbul games would be pleasant, uncontroversial and no doubt successful events. But as far as providing an opportunity to bridge a wide cultural divide, these cities cannot begin to compete with Beijing.
China has been opening for 30 years. Welcoming China into the outside world and building bridges with its people has been the policy of most countries for the past three decades. And that policy has achieved remarkable successes. Today, modern Chinese live in a vastly more open and globalised society than they could have imagined in the 1970s. That openness, that freedom, for today’s Chinese, has come precisely through activities and events like the Olympic games.
Think about it. One-quarter of the world’s population is better off because of opportunities like the Olympic games. Engagement works. But as is obvious from this debate, more engagement is needed still.
So hold the games in Beijing in spite of, because of or irrespective of China’s government. They will be a boon for the Chinese people, just as other experiences have been on China’s journey towards greater openness. Bringing Chinese closer still to the outside world serves the interests of peace, and thus everyone else.
That the games are also proving useful for Beijing to manage its intractable national environmental problem should also cheer the most sceptical IOC member. Without the games, it is uncertain that Beijing would have the opportunity to galvanise public opinion throughout China to clean up its environmental act. We are all on the same planet here, athlete and non-athlete alike. The impact of that focus on improving the environment is ultimately much more important to China’s population, and frankly the world’s 6 billion people, than to the handful of athletes who will be seriously challenged by the air quality during their respective events.
That there are strong views about China on either side of this debate should not surprise anyone; indeed it is proof of the breadth of the divide, and further evidence of the IOC’s wisdom in wanting to bridge that divide. Foreigners who observe China can sometimes act like the proverbial blind men who attempt to describe an elephant. One feels its trunk and describes a snake, one feels its tusk and describes a spear and so on. But just as an elephant is not just tusk, trunk or tail, China is similarly too complex to describe in one-dimensional terms. Some with strong pro views in this debate have painted pictures of China with too broad a brushstroke. China is too multifaceted to be captured by reference only to Tibet policy, or the thuggish behaviour of the Public Security Bureau, or the current environmental crisis. This is caricature, not commentary.
But the blind nationalism represented by some on the con side of the debate does a disservice to the complexity of modern China as well. The social, cultural and moral changes in China in the last 30 years are profound, but perhaps most profound is the emergence of a genuine debate within China about China’s future. This debate, taking place within government, academia and among the general public, is increasingly open and transparent, and it hints at liberal, corrective social and political changes in China yet to come. Patriotism is a good thing. But a country that recognises its imperfections and seeks to improve them is a country of which one truly can be proud.
The Olympic games in Beijing will be a spectacular, lavish affair. Chinese athletes will win their share of medals, and the Chinese people will rightly cheer their champions and celebrate their own successes. Visitors from other countries will learn much from their experiences in China, as will their athletes. The eyes of the world will be turned to China for a brief but solid look in mid-August 2008. They will see much to inspire them, much that gives them pause and even some things that alarm them. One hopes that, even if only for a moment, they will remove their blinders long enough to see China as the whole complex entity that it is. One hopes also that the perspective of the games will be useful for China and its government to further spur openness and progress.
Under any circumstances, the games will bring Chinese and foreigners together across a divide that clearly still needs bridging. The games will be another step for China towards greater connection with the outside world, and vice versa. The IOC can be proud.
Thanks to Economist.com for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I would also like to thank Mr Gordon Chang for his courteousness and insightful views on the subject, and to our other special participants. Much appreciation as well to those who took the time to comment: your views are enriching. Finally, our moderator has been sensational. Hats off!
The Moderator’s Closing Statement
This debate has struggled-in the end successfully, I think-to overcome a number of barriers. It has certainly triumphed over geography: this has been a truly global discussion.
At times it has been an effort to maintain the basic civility that is the prerequisite for a constructive debate (my thanks to those of you who helped to keep things on track). It has also powered on despite objections from some people that this was not an appropriate choice of subject.
Perhaps I should have made it clear from the outset, to those unaccustomed to this type of debate, that the proposition does not imply that The Economist itself is “pro” or “con”. The choice of this subject simply shows that we think it is an interesting topic for the airing of arguments. The intense participation from the floor is the proof.
Four years ago we might have held a vigorous debate on whether or not it was a mistake to award the Olympic games to Athens (at the time there was much speculation over whether the city would be ready in time, and could afford such a big event, though as it turned out the actual games went very well). In four years’ time, who knows, we might have a similar debate on whether awarding the games to London was a mistake: in advance of the decision, The Economist argued in favour of Paris’s rival bid.
But this is Beijing’s year, and this has been a chance to hear views on the impact of the games on China and the world. In his closing statement Gordon Chang again stresses the environmental problems that, he argues, make Beijing unfit to hold the games, as well as the negative impact he believes the Olympics are having on the country. Charles Freeman, in contrast, insists that the games are a boon to China’s openness and suggests that the strong views expressed in this debate are themselves proof of the depth of the divide to be bridged and thus the wisdom of the decision to award the games to Beijing.
Certainly the debate has served to underscore the range and complexity of the issues surrounding the Olympics, which today (just as in ancient Greece) are far more than just a sporting event. So far the voting is running about two-to-one against the proposition. Let us see whether that remains so through the closing stages, which I once again remind all participants should remain courteous and to the point.
FEATURED GUESTS’ COMMENTS
Alfred Senn
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not “make a mistake in awarding the Games to Beijing”.
Authoritarian regimes have usually done well in playing the game of Olympic politics. Members of the IOC criticised the opening ceremonies in Los Angeles, and they certainly objected to the open commercial competition in Atlanta. They welcome hosts who will show them respect, spend money freely and maintain the proper order.
The Games officially go to a city, but everyone knows that they in fact go to a country. China, like Japan in 1964 and South Korea in 1988, wanted to assert its place in the world. Beijing and China fit the IOC’s mould perfectly, especially when we remember that China lost its first bid by a narrow and controversial margin. When the Chinese bid a second time, the IOC had to show them a little favour.
Arguments both pro and con may endow the Games with a quasi-religious character, speaking of sacred traditions. The Games’ founder, Pierre de Coubertin, envisioned a religion of the athlete, a faith seeking perfection of the body. Juan Antonio Samaranch backed away from his assertion that the Games were “more important” than the Catholic Church and then declared that the Games were “more universal than any religion”. The Games were sacred in ancient Greece, but modern allusions to the myths of ancient Greece have no real substance. Remember: in the ancient games men competed naked and women were not allowed to watch. There were, moreover, no team sports and of course no television.
The Games do have a distinctive mystique, but at this point they are in fact reality television. Money is the name of the game-television money, corporate money-and also ratings. The demonstrations against the torch relay have probably intensified interest in the Games. If the Games go ahead as scheduled-in 1906 Rome surrendered the 1908 Games after Mt Vesuvius erupted-the television ratings will surely be high. The IOC will be pleased; NBC will be pleased.
With that we come to the cameras. Beijing may well have erred in its structuring of the so-called torch relay. The Olympic flame travelled directly from Greece to Beijing. The subsequent torch relay, replete with People’s Guard, constituted advertising, setting specific times and places for live television coverage. “Oh, my heart, what more could you desire!” Demonstrators calling attention to Darfur and Tibet obviously had to welcome the opportunity to appear in front of cameras. They could not have bought that kind of television exposure.
In the past, we have seen many arguments that the IOC made mistakes. In the 1980s alone commentators successively called Moscow, Los Angeles and Seoul mistakes. However, the IOC owns the Games, and it makes its own judgments on the results. The IOC will probably conclude that the Beijing Games provided spectacular television viewing, and it will consider the Games a success. On the other hand, with the help of complaining journalists, we will have learned a great deal about China.
Dr. Yang Jianli
China is the world’s most populous country, the fourth largest economy, and the second largest consumer of energy and natural resources. In our highly integrated and interdependent global community, engagement with China is an imperative for the 21st Century.
As far back as the 1970’s, the U.S. Administration of Richard Nixon realized this imperative when it made its historic outreach to Beijing. Some thirty years later, His Holiness, The Dalai Lama of Tibet, whose people are among the most persecuted by the Chinese government, echoed this same imperative in a letter to me dated May 8, 2008:“China today is an emerging world power. The international community has acted wisely by making efforts to bring her into the mainstream of the world economy.”
Based on this imperative, one can-and I submit should-state that the awarding of the 2008 Olympics to China is consistent with the necessary goal of integrating China into the global community.
The recognition and status that the world bestows on an Olympic host opens the door for dialogue, where the denial of such a status does not. Furthermore, the status of Olympic host comes with responsibilities for meeting standards of behavior regarding human, civil, and political rights, some of which are clearly stated in the Olympic charter, others which are implied as fundamental to a member of the world community. Failure to meet these responsibilities gives the world community the opportunity, and even the obligation, to engage the Chinese government in a constructive dialogue regarding their failures.
Therefore, the issue before the world community must evolve from whether it was a mistake to award the Olympics to China-which today is a static and moot discussion-to developing strategies during the pre-Olympic focus on China to affect change through constructive dialogue and negotiations. Now is the perfect time to send the Chinese government a message regarding its poor human rights record.
We must clearly communicate specific minimal standards, which if not met will result in specific actions regarding the levels to which the world communities will participate in the Olympic activities. Several nations have already taken steps in this direction by announcing that they would not attend the opening ceremonies. And even an individual-director Steven Spielberg-made a protest statement against China’s Darfur culpability when he publicly withdrew from his position as Creative Director of the Olympics.
I submit that such conditional actions are the most constructive way to influence China’s improvement of its human rights record. I further submit that the world community should unite around a specific set of conditions, which if not met, would result in reduced levels of participation determined by the individual governments.
The four conditions that I propose are:
- The Chinese Government must grant full and unrestricted access of the press during the Olympic Games.
- The Chinese Government must remove the firewall that blocks the flow of information across the Internet.
- The Chinese Government must declare the right of return to all Chinese dissidents who are now blacklisted from returning to China because of their participation in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
- The Chinese Government must free all political prisoners, specifically those still in prison since, and as a result of, the 1989 demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.
These four conditions are specific, reasonable, achievable, and consistent with international standards and the spirit of the Olympics. China’s execution of these conditions would be a demonstrable movement towards improving its human rights situation.
It is important to realize that the world community presently holds the upper hand with respect to China’s integration with the world community. China both desires and requires international recognition and acceptance to continue its rapid economic expansion. Without this economic growth, the Chinese government will lose legitimacy and standing with its own citizens. The Chinese government’s relentless drive for economic growth demands that China continue to engage, and continue to do business with the world, even in the face of constant pressure on the human rights issue. We must not lose this small window of opportunity to engage and promote change.
Such action by the world community will send a clear message that the Chinese government will take very seriously. Moreover, such engagement with specific actions tied to specific consequences will establish a quid pro quo framework for future constructive engagement with China, as we welcome it to its rightful place at the table of the international community.
Daoud Hari
I would first like to extend, on my own behalf and on behalf of my family and the friends of my former village, our sorrow and our hope for peace to the people of China who are suffering so terribly from the recent earthquakes. May that horror soon be over and may healing come to those families.
It is important to keep our thinking extremely clear when we face grave political situations, particularly where thousands of people are dying right now in Darfur. It is very easy but very wrong to respond to a great wrong by bringing suffering to people who are relatively innocent. This is, for example, why it is of course very wrong to hurt people in a marketplace or in an airplane or a city office building in order to put pressure on a government. Great leaders like Gandhi and King teach us that, in pursuing justice, we must never push the pain of change upon others; we must accept it ourselves instead.
The Olympics is forcing one of the world’s most rigid systems to change. The appointment of the communist party’s rising star Xi Jinping as the Olympics “czar” this past spring is very un-Chinese. Widely acknowledged as the future leader of China, Xi will have to internalise all that is at stake for China in these games and contend squarely with the Catch-22 of political change. China will be a different country after the games – whether the Chinese Community Party likes it or not.
This is true even in the present instance, like Darfur. It is easy to think that the athletes of the world should suffer and the people of China, so proud of their Olympic games, should suffer to make a change for Darfur, when perhaps we do not wish to suffer in the least ourselves.
What I am suggesting, and certainly what the great moral leaders of peace have taught us, is that it would be wiser for us to take some of that pain upon ourselves. For citizens of democracies, such self-sacrifice might simply be the modest cost in time of a telephone call or a stamp on a letter to a few elected leaders, with simple messages voicing concern about the situation in Darfur and the hope these leaders will work to stop the killing and the removal of people from their native lands. If millions of people will only suffer this little trouble themselves, far more can be accomplished than making athletes suffer instead.
If people think that this is not enough, then they might decide to take “time out for Darfur” in their purchases of goods made in China and let the Chinese embassy in their country know what they are doing and that they are doing so to encourage China to find a way to peace in Darfur instead of selling weapons to the genocidal regime there. Yes, this might very unfortunately make people in Chinese factories suffer somewhat, but it will make us, as consumers who enjoy inexpensive Chinese goods, suffer the most, as it should be. And this, too, will be more effective than keeping locked in their homes the world’s athletes, who are best used as ambassadors of peace and person-to-person friendship.
Our leaders should not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and tourists and journalists should stay at home as well.
I saw with my own eyes the weapons and munitions made in China left behind by the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed, that were used to kill my brother and so many, many others. China also sells many weapons to other African countries in conflict. People who demand an end to such things must demand action first of themselves against their own comfort. That is the best rule in these things.
Victor Cha
It was not a mistake to award the Olympics to China, and President Bush should attend the games.
If I were still advising the White House on Asia, I would argue that to boycott the games or the opening ceremony would achieve nothing but a symbolic snub of the Chinese. It amounts to a checkmark in the box labelled, “Have you done your share to protest the Olympics?” On the other hand, if Bush attends the games (for which the Chinese would be eternally grateful), and then has private meetings with Hu in which he presses the case on Tibet, Burma or Africa, that would be infinitely more productive in terms of trying to produce changes in Chinese behavior.What often gets missed in all the noise about boycotts is the process of political change that is being spurred on by the Olympics. Beijing’s leaders have bitten off more than they can chew. They face an inescapable Catch-22 when it comes to their cherished Olympics. They seek the Olympic limelight to showcase China’s greatness, but they must pay the price for that limelight in terms of intense pressures for political change. To ignore these pressures would embarrass China and spoil their big coming out party.
And so China is changing. In Sudan, Hu stated in 2004 that Chinese aid to Khartoum is “free of political conditionality.” His trade ministry official was more blunt, “We import from every oil source we can.” But since then, Hu has pressed for Sudan’s acceptance of a UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the country to stop the bloodshed, and in March 2007, quietly removed Sudan from Beijing’s preferred trade status list, effectively taking away incentives for Chinese companies doing business in Sudan. Chinese envoys have made uncharacteristic stops at refugee camps, and then contributed the first non-African forces to the UN PKO effort. In Burma, the Chinese have quietly hardened their stance toward the military junta after the September 2007 crackdown against peaceful monk demonstrations. Beijing cut arms sales to the regime and played an instrumental role in getting UN representation on the ground.
Beijing did not step up on either issue until after NGOs, entertainers, politicians, and athletes linked Sudan and Burma to something the Chinese held very dear to their own prestige. Pre-game pressures affected political change in a way that years of diplomacy could not.
Moreover, pre-Olympic changes in Beijing’s foreign policy will not melt away once the Olympic spotlight dims. This is because every adjustment made by China is met with higher expectations from the world for Beijing to do more. So even after Beijing committed PKO troops to Sudan, Steven Spielberg still resigned as artistic director, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu still demanded Beijing take more steps. This is the slippery slope of change that Beijing has now embarked upon with these games.
Critics are right that Beijing has shown no flexibility on domestic human rights, but the last thing that these dissidents want is for the world to skip the games. On the contrary, they want the world to witness their plight.
That’s why i got inspired to write an article on this great festival before celebrating it.
