China and the Olympics #
The New York Times ran three interesting Op-Eds yesterday about the Olymics. All of them, I should note, were blessed with blandly simple titles.
The first, Matthew Forney’s “China’s Loyal Youth,” details how, contrary to expectations, Chinese most well-educated youth are among it’s most patriotic. An example:
As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as “a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society.” She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated Native Americans.
Elliot Sperlings’s “Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History” detail’s Chinese distorted historical claims to Tibet. The basics:
In China’s view, the Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don’t understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation.
And finally, Buzz Bissinger’s “Faster, Higher, Stronger, No Longer” argues that the “Olympic movement” should be completely disbanded. (A similar argument is made by Stephen Hugh-Jones.)
A permanent end to the Olympics might actually not be that difficult. All it would really take is a single act of courage and morality by the United States to pull out of the Games forever on the basis that the mission is not coming close to being served. An American departure would severely dilute the Games since it would no longer be a world competition of anything.