Changing China
Giant on the move
China hits home run
China’s upset 4-1 win over Taiwan in the first round of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month was a small but important step for a team that battles for recognition and funding.
Although trounced by Japan and South Korea in earlier matches, the politically tinged match renewed China’s bragging rights over the self-ruled island, which Beijing declares as its own territory and has vowed to bring back to mainland rule, by force if necessary.
The loss was a bitter pill for Taiwan to swallow, which was also beaten by China at the Olympic Games, and has a far deeper baseball following stemming from U.S. aid and soft power flowing into the island in the decades after the Chinese civil war (1945-1949).
“We have to accept it, and the fact that China have made great steps in baseball,” said Taiwan coach Yeh Chih-Shien.
It was also a surprise for me, having already consigned Chinese baseball to the waste-heap of history, after it emerged in January that a local developer had started to dismantle Beijing’s Olympic baseball venue with a view to replacing it with a shopping mall.
The win over Taiwan aside, China finished eighth out of eight at the Olympic Games.
Baseball, like softball, has been trimmed from the Olympic line-up and won’t be played at the 2012 London Games. It will have to fight for inclusion at the 2016 Games against other hopeful sports, including squash, rugby, golf and karate.
Follow that, London!
Sebastian Coe says London is undaunted at having to follow Beijing when it hosts the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2012.
“It’s a massive responsibility,” the chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games told a news conference on the eve of the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.
“We don’t find it daunting. I can only relate it to when I was sitting in a stadium when I was still a competitor watching an outstanding performance in my own event,” added the twice Olympic champion middle distance runner.
“I didn’t feel cowed by it, I went out and wanted to emulate it or even better it… Beijing has delivered a spectacular Games and we will also deliver a spectacular Games.”
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PHOTO: Brazil’s Lucas Prado (R) celebrates with his guide after they won the men’s 100M T11 final at the Bird’s Nest, during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Sept 9, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray
I am certain the Brits will offer a fantastic event, the same as the Chinese have.It is sad to see even a sports article being used as a nation bashing arena. We as a global economy need to pull together, recognize the differences we all have and move forward towards ending poverty and acheiving global prosperity.
Snapshot Beijing, 7: Bolt breaks the unbreakable world record
My abiding memory from these Games will be watching Usain Bolt give everything he had to break a world record most of us had thought unbreakable.
Michael Johnson’s time of 19.32 in the 200 metres had never been seriously challenged before the Jamaican sprinter, a headline writer’s dream, decided it was finally time to get down to some serious work.
Bolt had won the 100 metres, and broken the world record, with ridiculous ease on the Saturday to set the Games alight. He was running so well that he had time to ease up well before the line and still record a commanding win.
Wednesday was different. Again, he had the race won well before the line, thanks to a brilliant bend, but there was no question of him slacking off as he hurtled down the straight. I could see him grimacing with pain as he neared the finish line before looking over to check the time.
The clock stopped on 19.31 but times are often rounded up or rounded down and there was a second or two to wait before we would find out whether he had broken Johnson’s world record or merely equalled it.
Those seconds seemed a long time for me — heaven knows what Bolt must have been feeling — but eventually the time was rounded down to 19.30. It was an incredible achievement for the Jamaican and a memory I will treasure.
This is the seventh and last in our series of Beijing snapshots — moments from the Games that will live long in the memories of all who witnessed them.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt in the 100m, by Paul Majendie here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.
I think above the players had practiced heavely and its confidence will give them a prizes.
A pleasant surprise in Beijing
I’d expected the worst when I got to Beijing three weeks ago. I remember what it was like in another Communist country — East Germany with its suppressed and scared people coupled with deplorable service and shoddy quality everywhere you turned.
That’s roughly what I had in mind for China, although I knew Beijing itself would certainly be a more prosperous and modern place than East Germany, and with a bit of window dressing for the Olympics.
But China has turned out to be a lot different than I imagined. Even if it is perhaps a facade for the multitudes of foreign journalists like me getting their first taste of China, the single-most overwhelming aspect for me has been the wholehearted friendliness of the people.
I’ve been looking everywhere for that proverbial half-empty glass and the fly in my soup ever since I got here but instead have found mostly kind, helpful and friendly Chinese people who have been doing perfect 10-score back-flips to keep me and the fraternity of curmudgeon-like journalist colleagues from Seattle to Saigon happy.
I’m sure they’ve been drilled on how to be friendly and helpful to Lao Wai (foreigners) like me. The volunteers in Athens were all pretty friendly too, until the last day of the Olympics when they started ignoring my questions and the smiles disappeared. Here they haven’t stopped smiling or being helpful yet.
It doesn’t mean there haven’t been angry, tense, frustrating moments. And no one here can forget the ostracised and punished dissidents in China (you wonder why free speech runs into limits in such a powerful and proud country with so much going for it).
I’ve also had a few minor run-ins with rather inflexible local officials. But there is still no escaping the kindness, smiles and friendliness of the Chinese people everywhere you turn. It’s contagious.
Oh My GOD!
It is fine to respectfully congratulate the chinese on their culture and the games. However, facism may make the trains run on time and the Parks stay clean. But, do not unconditionally praise facist society unless you would be happy to live in one yourself!
Snapshot Beijing, 6: Michael Phelps wins eight golds
Michael Phelps trouncing his rivals is always something fantastic to see, and here in Beijing it took your breath away to watch him so often leave everyone else for dead.
But the races which stick most vividly in my mind are the two in which gold appeared to have escaped him.
First of those was the 4×100 freestyle relay. I thought the race was lost for the U.S. when Frenchman Alain Bernard turned for the last length nearly a second up. But Jason Lezak had other ideas and snatched victory with the swim of a lifetime. I’ll never forget the sight of Phelps roaring his joy and release.
Then there was Miroslav Cavic reaching for gold in the 100 fly, only for Phelps, charging through the faster, to swing his arms over, hit the wall first in that final lunge and win by just one hundredth of a second. I’d expected Phelps to catch him earlier but thought, at the death, he’d run out of time to do it.
The next day Phelps made it eight in the medley relay and I had been lucky enough to witness each movement of his swimming symphony.
Swimming is my sporting passion. I’d been in Munich for my first Olympics in 1972 but was covering gymnastics and couldn’t get to the pool nearby to see any of Mark Spitz’s seven golden swims. Thirty-six years on, it was all the sweeter to watch Phelps take his place as arguably the greatest Olympian of them all.
I may have missed the seven but I got the eight.
Kevin Fylan adds: This is the sixth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.
Beijing bustling again already
As Olympic visitors started to worry on Sunday about airport return traffic, cars in Beijing were being parked on sidewalks again.
Night clubs were open after an anti-prostitution blitz a few weeks ago. Once banished vendors scrummed on sidewalks to sell Olympic pins, the collection of which had grown to a competitive roar among locals close to the Games.
In shopping districts, you’d win gold for walking 100 metres in under an hour, a silver to stay standing amid shoves and a bronze to hear yourself talk on the phone.
China’s athletic dominance at a terrorism-free Olympics motivated celebratory locals to re-emerge into the streets over the final days of the Games, clogging venues with bodies and cars, basically returning to life as usual.
The coming-out followed a chill over Beijing orchestrated earlier this summer to reduce the risk of upsets during the country’s signature event.
“There’s a happy atmosphere now in Beijing,” said Sky Zhou, 23, a government employee, on Sunday as he joined crowds of police, military and athletes in lining up for the closing ceremonies. “Two weeks ago there was an atmosphere of anticipation.”
Before the Olympics, Beijing sent migrant workers home, removing the ubiquitous din of hammers and the smell of poured cement at construction sites. Beijing car owners can drive only on alternate days, hollowing out once gridlocked intersections the size of small sports fields.
Olympic fever hits London
Riding a wave of sporting euphoria after its best Olympic performance in a century, Britain accepted Olympic host-nation status from China on Sunday with a huge street party in front of Buckingham Palace.
Owen Wyatt catches up with Olympic gold medallists Michael Phelps and Bradley Wiggins as London throbbed with 40,000 partygoers at a live concert to start the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics.
Britan is the next host nation to organize the Olympic 2012,is really auspicious matter to the Briton.The sports lovers from every corner of the world will remain eager as well as avid that, how the sports person of Britain will perform in Managing the numbers of medals? Also it will be asked that,whether the scoring of Britain will be significant as compared to China or not? It is although expeced that,Britain must do better as being host-nation.
Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten
It was everything the event was not supposed to be. The Olympics should embody sportsmanship and fair play. Taekwondo is about discipline and civility in a fight.
Unfortunately Cuba’s Angel Vaoldia Matos forgot about both in the heat of his bronze medal bout.
Matos was leading 3-2 against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov when he slumped to the floor rubbing his leg. When he was disqualified for exceeding a minute’s injury time, his coach rushed on to the mat and Matos exploded in anger, reacting to the referee’s call by clocking him with a well-aimed kick to the head.
The discipline of the taekwondo mat descended into chaos as both Matos and coach stormed out, with the head of the World Taekwondo Federation in hot pursuit.
The sport’s governing body reacted swiftly and strongly. Both were banned for life from the sport for what the federation said was behaviour that strongly violated “the spirit of taekwondo and the Olympic Games.”
Matos’s bouts in Beijing were struck from the Olympic record. Order was restored.
Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fifth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: The greatest dive in Olympic history, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.
Fair play in the Chinese Games? Give me a break. If those baby girl gymnasts do not get officially busted for China’s international fraud and cynical deceit (there were many Chinese tricks, but this is the biggie), then other gymnsasts will have been cheated out of their rightfully earned medals.
We’ve learned a lot about China during these games, and it’s mostly quite unpleasant. They will scratch, bite and claw their way to the top every chance they get.
The governing board of the IOC needs to ditch their spineless performance so far and take action.
Will China change post-Olympics?
The million dollar question on the minds of many: Will China change after the Olympics?
I’ve worked intermittently in Beijing for 11 years and in Taipei for 15, but analysing the world’s most populous nation, and an opaque one for that matter, is like a blind man feeling an elephant.
In many ways, I expect it to be business as usual for the Communist Party post-Olympics, resisting political change and tightening the security noose in restive Tibet and Xinjiang. But my money is also on ordinary Chinese clamouring for greater freedoms and forcing their government to be more transparent and accountable.
Chinese have never had it this good since the 1949 revolution, enjoying unprecedented personal freedoms after three decades of liberalisation transformed the country from an economic backwater into the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
They have traded their Mao suits for business suits. They are no longer rationed food and have more than enough to eat. They can choose where to live, travel, study and work and don’t need Party approval to tie the knot.
There is no turning back the clock. As China seeks its rightful place in the world, it is likely to be more open and integrated with the rest of the world.
The word “Westernisation” is still taboo among Chinese leaders, but many of my Chinese friends fancy jeans, McDonald’s hamburger, Kentucky fried chicken, Coca-cola, Hollywood movies and rock and roll. Many Chinese have yet to forgive and forget Japan’s wartime atrocities which Japanese ultra-nationalists claim were fabricated, but Beijing’s roads are filled with Japanese cars and Chinese youth are obsessed with Sony Playstations and Nintendo Game Boys.
“With or without the Games, China will change at its own pace.”…This is the part of the post I’d like to respond to.
In a certain sense the above qoute expresses an anti-imperialist sentiment and amen to that. But, “With or without the Games, China will change at its own pace.”, also ignores the true dynamics of change today. In fact today, we are all being forced to change at a global pace.
China’s herculian preparations for the games is one proof of global interdependency. Sure it was an expression of national pride as dictated by the Chinese Comunist Party, but those 15,000 performers in the opening ceremony were were only going to all that trouble to impress a global audience.
It shows that we, the members of that global audience, have influence.
I know from from news reports and from my relationships with people in China that the preparations for the Olympics involved a deepening of opression. In the runup to the games life became harder for everyone who was already oppressed and marginalized by the system administered by the Chines Comunist Party: disidents, petioners, and people of faith espicially Falun Gong practitioners.
If you and I know this and we know that the whole olympic spectacle that creates a responsibility in each one of us to say no to the way the spectacle was achieved, otherwise we are complicit.
So…Dear CCP,
Thank you for the beautifull facilities you shared with the world. But, I do not aprove of how entire comunities of poor and ordinary Chinese were uprooted to make way for those facilities.
Thank you for the soul stiringly beautifull way the world got to see the beauty of your great people, in the artistic displays of the ceremonies and the athletic displays of the games. But I do not believe that the CCP’s system of repression is the best way to free expression. How much more soul stirring and great could the achievement of Chinese people be if they were free to full political and religious expression.
Snapshot Beijing, 4: The greatest dive in Olympic history
The Water Cube was almost silent as a slight blonde man who two years earlier was not even diving leapt off the ten metre platform, twisted and somersaulted through the air and slid into the water with just the slightest of splashes.
Matthew Mitcham resurfaced to an explosion of applause and as the judges’ scores came up his smile of delight dissolved into tears of disbelief.
He had snatched a medal gold from the Chinese favourites with just one, perfect dive.
For the next hour the Australian looked how I always imagined Olympic gold medalists should — overwhelmed with disbelief and delight.
In some ways it was incredible Mitcham was even in Beijing, much less topping the podium. He had battled depression and burnout, retired and come back before he turned twenty. And shortly before he came to Beijing he went public about his sexuality, the only openly gay male athlete at the Olympics.
I felt sorry for the Chinese diver who came second. But after watching his team mates take the other seven medals, some apparently more relieved to have done their duty than excited about the result, it was an unforgettable upset.
Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fourth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.
Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.
More to follow over the course of the day.
a review of handover of beijing to london
http://olympicsbeijingtolondon.blogspot. com/
