photo courtesy rich115 on Flickr
I asked my friends on Facebook and also my social-media addicted FriendFeed “friends” whether they felt more negative or positive about China as a result of the Olympics. Here’s some of the responses:
FriendFeed
Here were a few responses I got on aggregator site FriendFeed (link to the discussion thread here):
Summary:
- Some people were more positive than negative
- Generally impressed with architecture, modernity
- Chinese Olympic cheerleaders in bikinis at the beach volleyball games also help
- Some felt that “the positives and negatives balanced each other out” and theGames “confirmed many of my impressions.”
My feed on FriendFeed is here: http://friendfeed.com/elliottng
Here were some responses I got in Facebook:
Some reactions:
- “exactly, utterly the same”
- positive about the ability to pull of an event of this size and scale
- negative about the perceived need for perfection that caused organizers to fake fireworks, to fake minorities with Han children, and to hide the singer with crooked teeth
- impressed by Zhang Yimou (see Southern Weekend interview of Zhang Yimou at China Digital Times: part 1, part 2), but less impressed by the Party
- not surprised by the crackdown on protests and undesirable people
- impressed by the art and architecture…”there is some free thinking going on there”
Exactly, Utterly the Same
“Exactly, utterly the same”: I think this is probably the most powerful insight. People came in with a set of impressions and feelings. Some had a more negative feeling about China than others. The Olympics gave xenophobic, hateful people what they wanted: intimidating armies of performers, goose-stepping soldiers, demonstration of unrepentant authoritarian power, casual disregard of press freedoms and “the truth.” The Olympics gave critical people what they wanted: empty protest parks, 70+-year old women sentenced to re-education. The Olympics also gave supporters of China what they wanted: Gold medal leadership, exceptionally well-run games, friendly volunteers, artistic and architectural achievement.
In summary, the Olympics did not win hearts and minds for China that already had a strongly negative impression of the Chinese Government, or a strain of xenophobia or fear of the Other. But the Games did create a richer set of images for people who have limited awareness or previous interest in China, or have images of China from 1989, 1993, 1997, or some other time-lagged perception of China. In that way, it may be a small step forward in helping some people see China for what it is today.
How would your non-Chinese friends answer the question: “Did the Olympics make you more negative or positive toward China?”
photo courtesy 赤子之心chizi-zhixin on Flickr
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Shel Israel: 8 Stories of Global Social Media – CNBloggerCon 2008 
*squinting*
You’re definitely right that many people merely saw what they wanted to see.
For everyone else in the middle, as you said, I do hope they were able to update and revise some of their own conceptions and misconceptions of what China is today. At the very least, let’s hope there was at least one thing that helped everyone acknowledge and accept the basic humanity of the Chinese, even with all the–very human–warts.
The following paragraph was taken from Wiki regarding to “Significance of the 1988 Olympics in South Korea”:
“Hosting the 1988 Olympics presented an opportunity to bring international attention to South Korea. The idea for South Korea to place a bid for 1988 Games emerged during the last days of the Park Chung-hee administration in the late 1970s. After President Park’s assassination in 1979, Chun Doo-hwan, his successor, submitted Korea’s bid to the IOC in September 1981, in hopes that the increased international exposure brought by the Olympics would legitimize his authoritarian regime amidst increasing political pressure for democratization, provide protection from increasing threats from North Korea, and showcase the Korean economic miracle to the world community.”
With the exception of the portion related to North Korea, the goals of Beijing Olympics from the point of Chinese government view are very similar to those of the South Korean government. My own opinion is that it is a success if the game will generate enough interest for those people (who never been to China) to go and visit China and make their own judgements on what China and Chinese people really are.