First of all, let me send out congratulations to all the Chinese athletes at the London Olympics. There have been many outstanding accomplishments, gold and non-gold, for a truly great team.
And much has been made about the gold rush. Over at CDT is a roundup of various stories that look into the PRC's "Olympic fetish for first." Take this op-ed from the Party-managed Global Times :
There are people who blame institutional problems for China's gold medal obsession.
They argue that the existing system purely pushes athletes to get the gold medals and the public should never worry about gold medals that much.
There are certainly problems here. But that's no excuse for giving up the pursuit of the top.
It identifies the problem – "gold medal obsession" – and begins to think through the reasons it exists. The title of that same op-ed, "Historical weakness creates China's gold medal fixation," suggests a longer-term dynamic at work, as do these lines:
China was known as "the sick man of Asia," torn by war and poverty. Liu Changchun, who was the first Chinese to participate in the Olympic Games in 1932, was sponsored by the warlord Chang Hsueh-liang as the first representative of war-torn China.
Liu arrived only three days before the opening ceremony, after a nearly month-long journey from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Finally, he was eliminated in the preliminary round.
China didn't win its first Olympic medal until 1984. It is understandable that China puts such weight on gold medals.
But notice: there is a rather significant stretch of time between 1932 and 1984. A lot happened in China then, including the revolutionary victory and political domination of Maoism. The op-ed alludes only indirectly to the "Red sun that never sets:"
During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), China deliberately lost games or conceded points to other countries in international competitions as part of a diplomatic sports policy of "friendship first, competition second."
This approach actually showed no respect for athletes from other countries. It was a perverted notion of sportsmanship.
There is much more to be said here. Indeed, an argument came be made that the destruction wrought by Maoism on China from 1958-1976 is the primary determinant in the PRC government's current obsession with winning Olympic gold now.
Mao actually supported sports and physical culture. What might be the first article he published was on the importance of physical exercise in strengthening the nation. So, it was not too surprising when the newly established PRC sent athletes to the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. But it seems that the division with Taiwan created a "two Chinas" problem that caused the PRC to stay away for the 1956 games in Melbourne and thereafter until 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid.
In the interim Mao and Maoism had metastasized into a political movement hell-bent on destroying counter-revolutionaries and those taking the "capitalist road." The Great Leap Forward devastated the country. Millions died. Administrative structures were destroyed. While sport may have been the least of the losses, it, too, was fundamentally damaged. How could an effective national sports system be maintained when people were starving? In an article (pdf!), "Sport, Maoism and the Beijing Olympics," Dong-Jhy Hwang and Li-Ke Chang point out that the GLF was a "…considerable setback for sport
and physical education…". And they go on to analyze the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution:
Following on the heels of the Great Leap Forward, the developmentof sports in the early stage of the Cultural Revolutionwas affected by disruption of competitive sports, the dismantling of the training system, the closure of sports schools, the discontinued participation of Chinese teams in overseas competitions, and the condemnation and persecution of outstanding athletes as offspring of the bourgeoisie.
In short, Maoism devastated sports in China.
Essentially, then, due to political decisions at the highest levels of power in the PRC, China was cut off from the Olympics for thirty years, a time period of significant improvement in sporting technologies and efforts around the world. What had held China back was not that it had been, in the previous century, the "sick man of Asia," but that Mao and the Party leadership denied the country systematic development of sports infrastructure and competition.
The current PRC government is running to catch up and surpass the "West" in Olympic competition, not simply as pay-back for 19th century imperialism, but also to further bury the destruction of the Maoist period. Indeed, my sense is that it really has more to do with the latter than the former, because the latter is the thing that animates so much of post-1979 PRC but is also the thing that cannot be fully confronted.
Every time a PRC athelete kisses a gold medal, he or she is proclaiming to the world that Mao Zedong was wrong. They have succeed in something Mao rejected – not sport in and of itself, but "bourgeois, Western" sports competition. They have rejected the old "friendship first, competition second" dictum, and embraced the competitive and materialist culture that Mao struggled against.
But, of course, you can't say that in the PRC today, when Mao's mausoleum is being put forward for "World Heritage" status….
The Useless Tree 
36 responses to “Mao Zedong and the PRC’s Olympic Gold Anxiety”
A more balanced verdict of Mao is China’s own: “Two-thirds good, one-third bad”.
That two thirds will, I’m guessing, be sufficient for history (which will, as usual, be written by the victors) to elect Mao as the greatest figure of the 20th. century and, possibly, of all time.
A good start for appreciating Mao is to read some of this writings, rather than the nonsense written about him and promoted by capitalist interests terrified of him.
Then think about his military leadership in liberating China and his revlotionary reform of 3,000 years of Chinese history….
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Then, think of the millions who died during the Great Leap Forward. After that, think of the millions more who suffered during Cultural Revolution. Then, the picture will be complete.
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Then, think of the vast improvements in the living standards of common people which took hold in China between 1950 and 1980, the near-100% literacy rate, the reduction of infant mortality in 1980 to a third of what it had been in 1950 (an indicator of huge improvements in women’s health particularly), the development of industry and modern health care systems reaching China’s poorest…
No picture of the Mao era will be complete that portrays him as an utter monster or as a god. Mao was, after all, only human; he brought China into the modern age, but at incredibly great cost to the society in human life and in less tangible forms of value.
And let us not pretend that modernity in the West was not built upon the graves of millions upon millions of enslaved, oppressed and colonised people worldwide; the legacies of Mao and of modernity as a whole are the same. Yet I think very few Western liberals would argue that the benefits of modern society are irrevocably tainted as a result.
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Err . . . how come the ‘near 100% literacy rate’ is actually still closer to 9/10ths literacy?
Why is the immediate aftermath of a civil war which Mao himself started a suitable point of reference for economic statistics?
It was Sun and Chiang who brought China into the modern era. Mao, on the other hand, crippled the Chinese economy and stunted its cultural growth.
The view that modernity in the west was somehow created through slavery rather than scientific progress and industrialisation is total bunk. Colonial enterprises were long-term money-losers, slavery delayed industrialisation, and oppressive societies in the end collapsed.
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It seems to me that it is really a lot more complex than you let on. There’s many reasons why China is now obsessed with gold in sporting events. Part of it may be as you suggest, a reaction against Maoist thought but it is also a reaction against western racism and a display of national pride (like it is in all countries).
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Gold is a symbol of money. Money is everywhere in Chinese society – for instance, even by saying good luck, “gongxi facai,” you will mention money. “Face” is a sort of currency, and that is in a very literal sense (China invented both face and paper money.) Maybe going out on a limb a little bit here, but there does seem to be a distinctively Chinese conception of money that includes these sorts of things. http://theartofeconomicwar.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/the-chinese-view-of-money/
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Gilman, you will note that a lot of the economic and human development indicators in China have stagnated or even regressed since 1980. Why is this?
And once again, you are ignoring the impetus for industrialisation in examining its effects. Industrialisation, at least as it happened in your country, was dependent upon the mass exploitation of working-class children domestically (hence the need for the child labour laws), upon raw materials which came from colonial holdings in Egypt and India, as well as from slave societies such as our own at the time, and was also dependent upon certain third-world markets, where British, erm, ‘products’ were given preferential pricing and promotion at the point of a gun.
Just like the Qin Dynasty apologists who point to the Great Wall as a symbol of that era’s technical and political prowess, the disciples of ‘scientific progress’ and ‘modernisation’ theory ignore that the development of the West is essentially a history of theft.
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And I am not arguing the point that Mao crippled China’s cultural growth. The Cultural Revolution was one of the most terrible things ever to happen to the Chinese nation – the problem is that nowadays the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution and the excesses of Mao are being used to silence entire segments of public debate within China, which is unacceptable.
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I think people like winners. So it’s no surprise that Chinese like their athletes to win gold, and they like to be leading the medal count. It’s no longer the days of east Germany, the soviets, or maybe even the ccp of 20 years ago when their athletic performance was for the purpose of bringing glory to the communist way.
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Mathew F. Cooper said:
“And let us not pretend that modernity in the West was not built upon the graves of millions upon millions of enslaved, oppressed and colonised people worldwide; the legacies of Mao and of modernity as a whole are the same. Yet I think very few Western liberals would argue that the benefits of modern society are irrevocably tainted as a result.”
True but the major difference is that most of Mao’s major mistakes were just that, inadvertent mistakes due to incompetent understanding of economic and agricultural sciences. While the modern west was built on the backs of the peoples of the world including oppressed westerners in purposeful acts of exploitation.
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Peng Dehuai, at the Lushan Plenum in 1959, tried to stop the GLF. Mao purged him. Most of the GLF deaths happened after that. Peng, hero of the Korean War, died in prison after years of persecution. If Peng had prevailed in 1959, many millions of people would have lived. But Mao demanded that the GLF continue.
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No one is denying that Mao could have stopped the GLF’s resultant famine or at least severely reduced it’s scope. He and his other Chinese communist leaders might have even been the primary causeof the tragedy. What is equally true is that all the evidence suggest that he inadvertently caused it and did not understand how to stop it once it started. Not that he maliciously did any of these things. So comparing him with Stalin and Hitler and many other mass murdering wackos throughout history is wrong. This is a case of false comparison. They are morally on a separate level. That’s not the say that what Mao did was not blameworthy of something, just not mass murder like Hitler and Stalin, etc.
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The CR, too:”Mao set the tone.”
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I agree it’s ridiculous to compare Mao with hitler and Stalin. But was anybody doing that here? But if it needs to be said, then yes, Mao was better than Stalin and hitler. That should adequately constitute exhibit A of ‘damning with faint praise’. Even the talk of 2/3-1/3 is ridiculous. How do you quantify something like that? Just so pointlessly arbitrary. I’d actually go with what mfc said: he did some good things, and did some bad things. What I would say instead is that, as supreme leader, it was his fiduciary duty to do good things; as supreme leader, it was not his job to cause “lots” (in order to avoid the usual back and forth about just how many excess deaths we’re talking about) of bad things, but he did them anyway. That the glf was perhaps unintentional only slightly mitigates the blow, and also can’t be used to excuse the cr.
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The CR was not orchestrated by Mao. He might have been responsible for creating much of the conditions that made it possible and even ineluctable but he did not orchestrate the mass persecutions like the top Nazis orchestrated the Holocaust and the many German invasions of other countries or Stalin’s orchestration of the extermination of the Kulaks or the Japanese imperial regime’s invasion and mass murder of millions throughout Asia. So again, the comparison fails. Mao was bad but he was bad because of his ignorance (perhaps even willful ignorance). But he was no genocidal monster like many others especially in western history.
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Need I remind what Mathew Cooper said above?
“And let us not pretend that modernity in the West was not built upon the graves of millions upon millions of enslaved, oppressed and colonised people worldwide…”
I suppose Hitler was not one of the westerners who had built their Nazi society on oppression and on the backs of invasion and slave labor or on the graves of millions? Surely not. So the comparison is relavent.
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. . . and then totally destroyed it through ill-thought-through utopian ideas. Not at all like Mao then.
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It’s hilarious when some people say that Mao shouldn’t be compared to Stalin and hitler, then proceed with precisely such a comparison repeatedly anyway. Well, as I said, if it makes them feel better that Mao was not as bad as Stalin or hitler, good on them. It’s the whole thing I was talking about wrt faint praise.
Mao was the supreme leader. So the buck stops with him. Rather lame to try to minimize his responsibility for his “bad” by questioning his “intent”, especially when that will never be precisely known.
And the thought process of “such and such was not orchestrated by so and so ” lives on in today’s apologists, some of whom deny the ccp’s culpability in cases like CGC by placing all the blame on corrupt local cadres who did the dirty work, while ignoring the fact that the circumstances which allowed such dirty work to occur we’re engendered and/or tolerated by those higher up the food chain.
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skc is deeply confused…yet again.
“Comparison” does not mean the same thing as contrasting. What I was doing was contrasting the different people. Making note of salient, relevant differences. Because of his functional illiteracy and severe cognitive learning disability, he thought that by puting Mao, Hitler and Stalin in the same sentence and speaking of some relationships between them, one is “comparing” them in the sense of making a note of similarities when it is the opposite of the case.
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skc said,
“Mao was the supreme leader. So the buck stops with him. ”
Again, skc shows his severe cognitive limitations. It’s not that Mao doesn’t deserve blame for things he did wrong. The question is what those things ought to be. I made this clear with language most 10 year olds can understand. The basic literacy skills is simply not there with skc.
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LOL.
“So the comparison is relavent.” (M, aug 8, 1025pm)
But after he’s called on the repeated comparisons, to which he himself admits, all of a sudden, it’s “contrast”. Ok pal, whatever you say. Just like with any typical apologist, language loses it meaning after a while.
Anyway, my assessment is the same. Mao still richly deserved the faint praise that he was not as bad as hitler or Stalin. M can roll that puppy up and smoke it, along with whatever else he is evidently inhaling on a regular basis.
” The question is what those things ought to be.”
—that question has also been answered if only M possessed the most rudimentary capacity for comprehension. What part of “the buck stops with (Mao)” does M fail to grasp, I wonder? Mao is responsible for whatever apologetic platitudes M offered up previously ( Like “ignorance” and such), as well as whatever negative consequences resulted from said ignorance. In other words, the whole enchilada (that would be “the buck”, for those like M on the remedial program.
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I just discovered your blog. For a beginner like me it is a great source of information. And well written too! Thanks for providing it.
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“language loses its meaning after a while”
This is the statement of someone so ignorant of basic reading skills that he thoroughly has confused himself and is now having a conversation with an imaginary adversary. It “loses” its meaning because to someone who canot read basic sentences, the meaning is not conveyed.
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@SKC – M’s continued devotion to, and excuse making for, Mao Zedong from high in the Appalachians is touching in the same way a dog’s continued devotion to its master even after death is. Just treat his comments here as the written equivalent of Ol’ Yellow pawing as his owner’s tombstone and move on – hopefully he’ll get tired at some point and go take part in a banjo duel or whatever it is people do with their free time in his neck of the woods.
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FOARP and skc displays their severely deficient reading and analytic skills again and again.
I did not defend Mao. In fact, expolicitly said that there was aq lot of say against him. Mass murder, to the scale of Hitler and Stalin, however, is not among them.
I think Mao was one of the worst people in the history of China. But he is not as evil as Hitler and Stalin. That muchg is clear to me and nothing morally and intellectually deficient people here have said have convinced me otherwise. It takes a grossly stunted person not to see that unintentional acts are not morally comparable to acts done out of ill or malicious will. Even children (at least the non psychopathic ones) can see that. I do think that ignorance is blameworthy. ANd Mao’s ignorance llike that of his country men are unexcusable. They are worthy of condemnation. But he is still not guilty of mass murder.
And I am not in Appalachia. I am in China. In fact, I am in Beijing, the place where I was born.
Yes, ignorance is definetly blameworthy, it’s a vice under many circumstances, but I would never blame you for murder despite the fact that you two nitwits are guilty of such profound ignorance.
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When someone says “So the comparison is relavent”, that is indeed a basic sentence. And I think the meaning is not elusive either. Ironically, it seems to be the author of said sentence who wasn’t pleased with the meaning of it after having been called out on it, and wanted to change it rather than simply owning it. Why folks like him lack the character to acknowledge missteps but instead choose to obfuscate remains one of life’s mysteries.
For an imaginary dude, M is certainly given to repeating himself. He is still repeating the comparo of Mao to Stalin and hitler. Hmmm, maybe he thinks that faint praise repeated often becomes more substantial. “imaginary” kids these days do the darnedest things.
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Petty xiao ren like skc must always try to have the last word because they cannot maintain any substantive points and arguments. SO they must resort to petty quibling and fallacious red herrings to divert people’s attention away from their intellectual and moral short commings.
I contrasted Mao with STalkin and Hitler. That does not mean that I showed any ssalient similarities. These things are very different (comparing and showing similarities). It’s a shame that severely stunted individuals like skc and FOARP are incapable of seeing that basic difference.
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Whatever you say, M. Like I said, words, concepts, and logic are very fluid things in the hands of people like you, many of whom reside in places like HH. It’s actually unusual for those types to venture off the reservation, so good on you for at least seeing the world. That said, you similarly lack the character to acknowledge mistakes, so you certainly share the basic DNA with those with whom you flock. But I guess you can only do so much with what you’re given.
Mao is not as bad as Stalin or hitler. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t get any better for him. Remember, faint praise is not an additive attribute….then again, maybe it is in the minds of folks like you.
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Often when someone who is defective in basic logical thinking skills have their defective reasoning pointed out to them they will quickly turn into logic releativists (logic being “fluid”). But they are quick to always try and point out the “error” in other people’s thinking. They are disgusting hypocrits.
They are rigic absolutists when pointing to what they think are other peoples’ “errors” but relativists when shown their own real errors.
Anyone that thinks Mao is as bad as Hit;er and Stalin is not only severe;y defective in their logical thinking skills but seems to lack masic moral development. There is really nothing more to say other than the fact that this is really a disagreement between people who have different moral standards. Some people don’t see a difference between Mao and Stalin and Hitler or think Mao is worse. Much like SOme people don’t see anything wrong with leveling baseless accusations at a 16 year old girl for her amazing accomplishments after she had been cleared of those allegations. It’s really also a difference of moral standards being different between us who disagree.
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Gosh M, you really are having a conversation with yourself. Either that, or you do think faint praise applied liberally adds up to substantial praise. That really is quite cute.
But you continue to amuse me on a daily basis, so your purpose in life can be considered fulfilled.
As for Ye, she is officially clean. Time will tell if she is truly clean, or merely as clean as the 80’s and 90’s era Chinese swimmers were at the time.
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Since it’s been a slow day, thought I’d have some fun.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comparison
1(b) in particular would be rather informative for some people here. Mean what you say, and say what you mean. Not that difficult when you put your mind to it.
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This is the state of skc’s mental breakdown.
Now he is supplying the proof of his own mental deficiency. From his own link:
“: identity of features : similarity ”
For “contrast”
“: to set off in contrast : compare or appraise in respect to differences”
Brainless twit thought I was comparing in the sense of describing similarities when I was contrasting, i.e., describing differences.
Even a 6 year old child knows the difference.
He proves he has a severe cognitive disability.
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Since this means so much to skc’s ego, having been so thoroughly humiliated and exposed, I will let him have the “last word”.
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Ah, the selective reading continues. M is certainly consistent in his ways, much like the typical CCP apologist in their style of “debate” – when you can’t debate, obfuscate.
From Websters:
Definition of COMPARISON
1: the act or process of comparing: as
a : the representing of one thing or person as similar to or like another
b : an examination of two or more items to establish similarities and dissimilarities
As I said, 1(b) was particularly apropos here. So the act of making a comparison of Mao with Stalin and/or Hitler would reveal that all three were responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths (those would be the similarities), but Mao could possibly arguably be tarred less than the other two because he did not necessarily fully intend for the entire sum of those deaths to occur (that would be about the only dissimilarity). This basically sums up what M has said repeatedly as he has been bobbing for faint praise on Mao’s behalf.
But I must say, the obfuscation force is strong in this one. Dude must be a Jedi apologist.
As I also said earlier, one should say what they mean, and mean what they say. We’ll see if M is capable of adhering to that basic principle, but I wouldn’t wager much on it given his prior performance.
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People who were making a mountain out of a molehill regarding the questions raised about the Chinese swimmer need to look to the latest Lance Armstrong saga for some perspective.
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I have taken down two comments because they have descended into name-calling. And I am closing comments on this thread….
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