China’s historical identities clashing

WASHINGTON — As we face the opening of the Beijing Olympics next week and speculate about what this intensely historic event could mean to mankind, two questions come to mind.

Will it be a Games that will resemble the super-nationalistic Berlin Olympics of 1936, when we saw Hitler play on every theme of racial weakness, hatred of others and the triumph of the German people over all others? Or will it have more in common with the friendly, expansive Seoul Olympics of 1988?

In Berlin in 1936, the gathering darkness of Nazi Germany was on display, even though 18 African-American athletes won 14 medals, and Jesse Owens became such a star on the great world stage that Adolf Hitler angrily walked out of the proceedings. The coming Holocaust was in the air.

In Seoul, the Games confirmed the long-struggling but now budding South Korean society as one of the promising young countries in the ranks of the developing Third World. After all, the nation had just written a new constitution; it was bringing in investment, and had opened up the country to the world, inviting cultural performances including everything from the Russian ballet to Gloria Estefan. Modern prosperity was on the horizon.

There was no longer any turbulent waters in South Korea for its radical complainants to swim in, and so they just simply disappeared. Within a few years, Seoul had recognized China, and all of Asia had changed at the behest of a small but determined nation.

Massive arrests

Chinese specialists tell me that China can be seen, at this remarkable juncture in its history, as torn between the examples of Berlin and Seoul. On the one hand, the Chinese are already cracking down, with massive arrests against Tibetan demonstrations, the recent executions of Uighur dissidents, the literal walling over of any small restaurants or shops that had the bad luck to be in the way of the Olympics, and the expected monitoring of all electronic communications.

On the other hand, the Chinese want to be seen as saying to the world, we want to OPEN UP. Can’t you see our gorgeous new buildings, all for the Olympics? Can’t you see how we’ve tried to clean up the streets, not to speak of the air that chokes all? Why, we even invited the South Korean who ran their Games to come and advise us on our pollution problem! What more can you expect of us?

In fact, no matter what the host country does, the Olympic Games, with their tests not only of athletic prowess but also of virtue (yes, even in today’s commercialized and vulgarized world), remain the most revealing test of a nation’s spirit and sinew.

The displays simply cannot be only controlled expressions of national greatness, for there are too many variables; the truth will reveal itself, regardless. The Chinese already have tens of thousands of police, paramilitary troops and regular soldiers alerted to protect the Olympic facilities, major buildings and public spaces. And if there are any “surprises,” as with, say, members of Falun Gong suddenly appearing in Tiananmen Square, China will simply not be able to control itself — then watch for echoes of 1936.

Human rights

Not surprisingly, in the weeks before the Games begin on Aug. 8, the government has been accused by prominent international groups of failing to meet promises made on human rights and the environment when it gained the Games for 2008. Amnesty International experts have accused Beijing of “sweeping up human rights activists out of sight.” Freedom House states that “Chinese journalists face greater repressions today than in 2001 when the Games were awarded to them.” So it goes.

Orville Schell, a fine writer on Asia, wrote in the Olympics issue of Newsweek magazine: “While Chinese leaders furiously insist they’re not, and should not be, ‘political,’ these Olympics promise to become one of the most charged in history. Rarely has a more varied array of contentious issues crystallized around a single sporting event.”

Chinese writer Xu Guoqi says that Beijing is fixated on winning gold medals as a means of proving its status in the world. But Xu observes archly, “A nation that obsessed over gold medals is not a self-assured nation.”

Universal Press Syndicate