I think it is safe to say that the Olympics, as a concept and "movement," emerged in the modern era as a European project to universalize certain values of competition and character-building. A Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, revived a Greek ideal, a latter day version of the Hellenism that was so common to the consolidation of a modern "Western" identity. It has proved to be successful beyond the wildest dreams of its inventors. This year, 204 countries have sent athletes to London to compete. And no country has been more successful than the PRC, sitting today atop the gold medal count.
The PRC government has obviously made Olympic victory a national priority. It has spent extraordinary sums of money, and created a vast sports training system, to achieve very impressive results.
It is odd, then, that certain strains of anger and resentment have emerged in the Chinese media. Yes, some unfortunate things have happened to Chinese athletes. I think the statements questioning Ye Shiwen went too far. The badminton and bicycling complaints, however, are hardly the stuff of a global anti-China conspiracy. Shit happens – just ask the 1972 US men's basketball team. Get over it and move on. Indeed, it should be easy to move on: China has been fabulously successful at this Olympics. Why dwell on the negative, much of which seems just to be bad luck, when there are so many fantastic victories, like Feng Zhe on the parallel bars:
Feng’s routine was filled with intricate combinations, yet he did them with the precision of an artist and the rhythm of a musician. He held his handstands for what seemed like forever, looking like a statue, and there wasn’t even the slightest hesitation as he went from one skill straight into another.
While I hesitate to make too much of the Olympics – I don't think they mean anything in terms of real global power and influence – I can't help but notice the irony in the PRC government, which regularly tells us that it resists "Westernization" and cherishes unique Chinese cultural accomplishments, expending of so much wealth and national energy to show the world just how well it can "Westernize" by succeeding in a European-inspired endeavor to recreate and romanticize an imagined Greek past. Yes, yes, I am perfectly aware of postcolonial theory… but it's still ironic. (I'm using scare quotes for "Westernization" because most of what is refered to by this concept is about modernization)
Putting so much emphasis on athletic competition, and using the vast amount of resources to ensure victories, is certainly not a Confucian virtue. Confucius himself thought that "gentlemen" – junzi: 君 子 – noble-minded persons who live morally upright lives, should not strive for winning sporting contests in archery:
The Master said: "The noble-minded never contend. It's true that archery is a kind of contention. But even then, they bow and yield to each other when stepping up to the range. And when they step down, they toast each other. Even in contention they retain their nobility." (3.7)
子曰：「君子無所爭，必也射乎！揖讓而升，下而飲，其爭也君子。」
The Master said: "People's strength differs. So, in archery, shooting through the target-skin isn't the point. That is the way of the ancient." (3.16)
子曰：「射不主皮，為力不同科，古之道也。」
Putting those two together sounds rather like the old saying: it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.
It's hard to imagine Confucius sitting in the stands, waving a flag and yelling "jiayou!" And he would certainly see the cost to some athletes, in terms of the damage done to family relations, as in the case of Lin Qingfeng, as simply and completely unacceptable. Most likely, he would rather the money spent on Olympic preparation go to the preservation of historical and cultural relics and to social programs to ease economic inequality.
But, of course, the Olympics are hardly the only aspect of contemporary Chinese society that is un-Confucian…
Let me be clear: I think China's Olympic success is fine, though the excesses of training regimes and gold-medal obsessions are a bit much. I have no problem with Chinese people engaging in any aspects of cultural modernization that they like. Indeed, I think the development of sports in China has opened up new avenues for the cultural expression of Chinese-ness – and that's great. I imagine beach volleyball would have been considered "spiritual pollution" in the early 1980s; now, it's just fun and exciting.
I don't expect modern Chinese society to be Confucian.
What bugs me, however, is when sanctimonious Party ideologues argue that "Westernization" is anathema to Chinese culture and unsuited to Chinese realities, when, in fact, the Party embraces those aspects of "Westernization" that serve its power interests (global capitalist trade and finance; Westphalian notions of sovereignty; Monroe Doctrine-like claims to the South China Sea; deals with Hollywood producers; Olympic victories) and reject those that would challenge its political hegemony ("Western" multi-party democracy). The worries about "Westernization," on the part of CCP elites, is not about cultural authenticity, it's about a narrower concern with maintaining the political power of a one-party state, which itself is a rather "Western" idea.
Let's be honest guys. There's plenty about "Westernization" that you like; it's just that democracy thing you're trying to avoid.
The Useless Tree 
35 responses to “The Olympics and Selective Westernization”
This is an incredibly naive post. But you are correct that defaming a 16 year, old girl after she had won the Olympic medal and sullying her accomplishments, accusing her of cheating without a chred of evidence is indeed “going too far”. But you are also forgetting that is is common. Accusations like this fly at the Oluympics all the time at the Chinese. All or almost all without a shred of evidence. While the US remains the greatest Olympic cheats in history (or in Olympic style sports) it must resort to these accusations when it losses to save its own ego and to divert attention away from its own PED problems. Your single example of where the Chinese have claimed a “conspiracy” against the Chinese does not in fact show any such thing. The article did not claim that there was or is a conspiracy against China but did say that so far in this Olympic games, the rules or the judgments from ruling bodies have been used in a biased way against the Chinese and that the Chinese ought to do everything within them to protest and have them made more fair whereas in the past the Chinese usually politely accepted whatever decision it was handed out of sportsmenship.
The Chinese people are well within their rights to be angry at how Ye was treated. They will “get over shit” when the US can can get over their petty sour grapes. Your example of the 1972 basketball game shows that even after many years, the US side, ironically, like many countries obessed with sports, are hard spressed to forget and move on.
Your claim that the Chinese gov is against all western influence is wrong in my experience. They fully accept that there are many western ideas and values that are valuable for China. So it seems to be a strawman to point out a “contradiction” in accepting athletic competition rather than multi party “democracy” of the west.
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. . . except for, you know, those people who were kicked out for carrying growth hormone, the coaches and doctors who said it was a wide-spread practice in the team as late as 1998 and they were ordered to do it, things that were either catastrophic cock-ups or ridiculous lies like the whole He Kexin affair etc. etc. etc.
None of which is to say that drug taking isn’t widespread in sport. Nothing demonstrated this so well as the 1988 Seoul Olympics Men’s 100 Metres race. Most people know that Ben Johnson was stripped of the gold he won in that race after he tested positive for steroids, but people forget that it later came out that all the top three finishers (not just Johnson but Lewis and Christie) had tested positive for banned substances. Don’t forget just what it was that brought down Ben Johnson – it was his incredibly fast finish, a finish which still has not been matched by any competitive sprinter. It’s not for nothing that the first assumption people have when they see an incredibly fast finish, such as Ye Shiwen’s was, is that drugs were involved. A past history of wide-spread doping in the Chinese swimming team which was denied at the time does nothing to dull these doubts.
As for China being targetted by the governing bodies and judges, pull the other leg. Eight badminton players in total were disqualified for not playing hard enough, of whom only two were Chinese, four of them were Koreans. The Chinese women cyclists were relegated to silver behind the Ukraineans, but the British team were relegated out of the medals in the same contest for exactly the same thing. The discussion over the gymnastics is ridiculous – gymnastics is a very subjective sport and it is not surprising that the Brazilians won even if, in the view of some but hardly all observers, the Chinese performed better. In none of these instances were Chinese held to standards that others were not.
@Sam – I wouldn’t say the Chinese are entirely to blame for the way in which ‘Westernisation’ is used so regularly (and wrongly) to refer to things which are actually just examples of modernisation. Self-congratulatory rhetoric from columnists where things which are not intrinsically ‘western’ are lauded as such also should take a share of the blame.
As for the government being selective in its ‘westernisation’, this is not so objectionable as the way in which anything they do not like attracts the label ‘western’, whereas the things they do like are never identified as ‘western’. This is so even if they come from the west and are arguably as intrinsically ‘western’ as catholicism (such as communism).
Also it is worth pointing out that a lot of the non-Confucian aspects of Chinese society and culture are still most definitely Chinese. They either have their roots before Confucius, or from people either opposed to him or merely not influenced by him. This is the danger in labelling every single aspect of East Asian culture(s) ‘Confucian’. Non-Confucian =/= foreign.
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“. . . except for, you know, those people who were kicked out for carrying growth hormone, the coaches and doctors who said it was a wide-spread practice in the team as late as 1998 and they were ordered to do it, things that were either catastrophic cock-ups or ridiculous lies like the whole He Kexin affair etc. etc. etc.”
How many Chinese have been caught at the Olympics so far for doping? How many Americans? Do some cursory research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_the_Olympic_Games
If you go by innuendo and biased reports instead of actual Olympic positive drug tests, you simply beg the question. It’s like the fool who checks the veracity of one newspaper by another copy of the same paper.
“Don’t forget just what it was that brought down Ben Johnson – it was his incredibly fast finish, a finish which still has not been matched by any competitive sprinter.”
What bullshit. It has been matched and and surpassed. You really don’t have a fuckin clue. Johnson’s record has been broken many times since. Bolt’s time is substantially faster than anyone in history.
Of course all athletes or almost all athletes who compete on that level may be on drugs but the anti-doping technology hasn’t caught up yet to catch them. But you are missing the two major points. One is that the burden of proof is on the accuser. When it is not met or when it is even subverted by stronger evidence, the accuser is shown to have made defamatory claims. Might someday the Chinese athletes be found guilty of doping like Lewis and many other US athletes were at the 88 Olympics? Might someday all US athletes be found guilty? Sure, but is today that day? Do I have a right to accuse US medal winners on national press of being on drugs now? Obviously, only a morally deficient person would not see that as wrong. Two is that this kind of accusation falls on the Chinese far more often than it falls on other athletes from white western countries who have had similar remarkable performances or even more remarkable ones such as Phelps or Rebecca Addington who’s last 50 meters in one race was even faster than Ye’s and who did it in a swim twice as long.
This is not just sour grapes. I really think this is some deep psychological inadequacy complex in many whites who believe that whites ought to have superiority over Asians in at least athletics and when Asians dominate there, this injures their ego and causes feelings of insecurity.
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Gil,
or ridiculous lies like the whole He Kexin affair
Whose were the ridiculous lies? The IOC did a full formal investigation on the matter and determined that He Kexin was 16 rather than 14. Are you suggesting that the IOC were lying or incompetent when they had delivered that verdict? If that is the case, why even bother competing? For one thing, that strikes me as rather a mirror image of the anti-China conspiracy-mongering in the Global Times and 4M, but more to the point, besmirching the reputations of these young women after the fact doesn’t strike me as particularly sportsmanlike, gentlemanly or honourable, to be perfectly honest – either in the Confucian or in the classical Western sense of the word.
And Sam, I agree with you that the Chinese attitudes toward the Olympics are a far cry from ‘Confucian’. Always have, actually – I was in Beijing in 2006-7 when they were tearing out all the old neighbourhoods to make way for Olympic-related facilities and accommodations (Confucius, Mencius and Zengzi would all have been quite appalled). But there are a couple of points which again strike me as rather ironic.
The first is that, when you use the language of ‘get over it and move on’ with regard to (for example) Ye Shiwen, that hardly strikes me as the ‘humane’ attitude to take – rather, it borrows the authoritarian logic of the PRC that the merit and virtue of the athletes are of secondary importance to the benefit reaped by the society as a whole (in, for example, a medal count). I think that rather goes against the point you try to make at the end. Unless the point you are trying to make is that the PRC’s logic is selective, in which case, well played. 😀
The second is that, for all you enjoy using Confucian argumentation and logic, you seem to be doing your best to make sure that Confucian considerations are excluded from public discourse in general. As a Christian, I hear this all the time: I don’t mind that you are a Christian, but keep your religion to your own damn self. But Christianity is a social and political religion, just as Confucianism is a social and political philosophy. The reason I support progressive and left-leaning politics in the US (and oppose in China the sort of ‘liberalism’ which supports the broadening of the ‘reforms’ which cause ever-increasing inequality and vagrancy) is because Jesus preached that good treatment of the poor, the orphaned and the wayfarer are paramount. Does it do my own religion any credit if I ‘keep that to my own damn self’? Does it do the society any good?
Likewise, when you seem to support individuals being good Confucians, but balk when certain thinkers suggest that Confucianism might have anything relevant to say for modern societies or countries, that line of thought seems to me to be a bit alien to Confucian logic as a whole, given that Confucius and Mencius were first and foremost concerned with creating a humane social order (and saw the social order as intimately connected with individual life).
I am more sympathetic to the argument that China as it stands is not particularly welcoming to the Confucian ideal (though they pretend to be), and perhaps Confucianism will end up having to be ‘Benedictine’ in practice (small intentional enclaves of people dedicated to living out the Confucian model, with limited contact with state and market), rather than ‘Tocquevillean’ (with the public mass line and civil society taking the lead in promoting Confucian ideals). But that is not to say that a Confucian society is either impossible or undesirable.
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When team members and handlers admit to cheating after the fact, that is more than mere innuendo. To be sure, past cheating among Chinese swimmers in no way means that current Chinese swimmers cheat. And the Chinese girl in no way looks like the behemoth women Chinese swimmers of the 80’s. So her performance can invite some questions (just as any out-of-the-blue performance can invite some questions) but it doesn’t detract from her worthiness as a gold medallist. If someone wants to question Phelps, they are of course welcome to do so, but the time for it was likely 2 Olympics ago.
It’s no surprise that the ccp is selective about when they get their back up about “western” values, and when they don’t. I don’t think they really mind anything “western” unless it involves personal and political rights.
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This shows how incredibly little skc knows about sports and drug testing like he knows little about other matters as well. There are many kinds of PEDs, not just anabolic steroids. Many PEDs do not make athletes more muscular and manly looking. So you cannot tell just by looking at someone if they are on PEDs. The only way you can tell is if you test them. Ye has passed three Olympic drug tests and has passed every one. These tests are the top of the line for PEDs. So mere innuendo is all the accusers have. skc can’t seem to get that through his thick skull. Phelps only occasionally was and does meet with suspicion but Ye’s performance was characterized by negative western press framing the baseless accusations as if they were supported by fact. Bottom line is that Ye has passed three Olympic drug tests. What remains is suggestion and innuendo.
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And another piece of absolute bullshit is FOARP’s ignorant statement that what brought Ben Johnson “down” was his suspicious and “incredibly fast finish”. No, what brought Johnson “down” was that he failed his post victory drug tests(required of all medal winners), tests in which Ye has passed.
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He Keixin and Ye are just two examples among many which shows the power of propaganda. Even when these athletes are cleared after rigorous tests and investigations, their accusers still hold fast to their original allegations. They have been so thoroughly brainwashed that no amount of counter evidence will ever sway them. It takes the slightest of suggestions to make them believe something without evidence and the greatest counter proofs will never change their views. That is the fierce power of propaganda if there ever was a demonstration of it.
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Let’s refrain from assertions of “brainwashing.” In the He Kexin case, subsequent investigations found that one of the PRC gymnasts on the 2000 squad, Dong Fangxiao, had lied about her age – or we might better say her coaches and handlers lied about her age:
“The FIG has canceled Chinese gymnast Dong Fangxiao’s results from the 1999 Worlds and 2000 Olympics because she was age ineligible, the federation announced Friday.
“Dong was a member of China’s bronze medal-winning team at both competitions, but the FIG has determined after a 16-month investigation that her age has been falsified by three years.”
The He case essentially relied upon statements from the PRC government and sporting authorities, who had earlier lied about Dong’s age. Raising questions about He is not unreasonable under the circumstances.
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Man, if M could read properly and not selectively, we might get somewhere. Chinese swimmers in the 80’s were taking anabolic steroids, looked like behemoths, and passed their tests at the time. But they were lab experiments, as we now know by their own admissions. That part is not innuendo. And yes, newer drugs don’t necessarily build muscle, so you can be juiced without the same outward appearance. Which was my point: there is no obvious reason to suspect her compared to the 80’s versions of juiced athletes. And there is no official reason to do so either. I’m actually in agreement with M, but the dude is just too argumentative to notice. And I guess he’s an expert in performance-enhancers…he sounds like he could use some himself.
It never ceases to amaze me when ccp apologists accuse others of propaganda. But sounds like M is one amazing dude …at least In his own mind.
So as far as I’m concerned, the Chinese swimmer in question is officially clean, and that is all that matters. Is she actually clean? We’ll find out maybe in 20 or 30 years. The same could be said for many others. But while prior bad acts may be inadmissible in a court of law, prior bad acts do get considered in the court of public opinion. C’est la vie. Best to just deal.
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Here’s the thing, Sam. You are relying on results from one official IOC/FIG investigation and not the other. The sole criterion on which you base the revocation of Dong Fangxiao’s medal is not satisfied in He Kexin’s case. Unless you were actually on the IOC/FIG team investigating He Kexin’s background and are privy to some information that the rest of us casual observers are not (unlikely), then there is no reason to raise the same questions about He that were raised for Dong. No?
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@MFC – You appear unable to read. I said that the He Kexin affair was either a cock-up or a lie. Not only Xinhua but the Chinese sports bureau and the head of the Chinese sports authority had all stated that she was 13 in 2007, statements that weren’t questioned at the time they were made. Is it possible that they were all wrong? Yes – it’s possible, but if so, it was an amazing cock-up.
@Melektaus – you’ve got men on Johnson’s time – it was 9.79, a record that was not surpassed until 2008. But you’re pretty much wrong about everything else.
Firstly we’re talking about a history of doping in the swimming team – we’re talking people being caught with growth hormone at the airport and pretty much the entire team getting banned. That’s quite a record, and one which makes suspicion likely when such an incredibly fast race and improvement over previous personal bests are seen.
Secondly, yes, it was Johnson’s time that brought him down, as it triggered the particularly stringent drug testing that detected his drug use, and the time would not have been possible had he not been using drugs to the level that made detection possible. In the case of Lewis and Christie, they successfully hid their drug use, but they ran slower as a result.
Thirdly, there are actually several athletes who, although it was never proved that they were doping, doubts continue to be voiced – this is not something specific to the Chinese team. Florence Griffith-Joyner’s records are generally regarded as having been extremely dubious, given the incredibly fast times she suddenly became capable of and other factors. Flo-Jo, though, was not disqualified even after having been singled out for rigorous drug testing just as Johnson had been, but is it wrong to say that doubts hang over Flo-Jo’s records? Absolutely not, there’s still too much that appears dubious and we now know that it was possible to beat the drug tests used then.
As for your final accusation that “many whites” (including, by implication, all the white and other-coloured-folk who raised doubts about Ye’s swim) are essentially racists, this appears to have absolutely no proof other than your own ever-so-obvious inferiority complex. No doubt you’ll now start cutting into some nonsense about ‘collective defamation’, without the slightest hint of irony.
Thing is though, my own personal opinion is she’s not much more likely to be taking drugs than other Olympic swimmers at her level.
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This is the deficient, idiotic logic of skc.
Premise: Some Chinese swimmers in the 90s had used anabolic steroids
Conclusion: Ye Shiwen is using PEDs.
What more needs to be said about him?
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FOARP is caught bullshitting AGAIN. Ben Johnson was tested as is standard for all medal winners and was caught. He was not tested because of his 9.79 time which was not a startling time for him because one year earlier he had ran the world record time of 9.83. He was the number one ranked sprinter in the world at the time.
He is still not able to comprehend the possibility that almost all olympic athletes are doping (as the history shows with all the scandals around athletes who had “passed” doping tests and was later found guilty and admmited they had been using at the time of the Olympics). This hsows that the Chinese athletes even if they are guilty does not deserve to be singled out like they have. That’s the whole point. Cheating is where you obtain an unfair advatange. But if everyone is cheating, there is no advantage and no one deserves to be singled out for blame.
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Sam’s and skc’s and FOARP’s fallacies are all of a kind. It’s sad that basic critical thinking skills are sometimes never taught in US or other western schools.
Because many of the most prominent US athletes of all time had been implicated in drug scandals of some form or another at one time or another (the greatest US track and field, weightlifting and swimming athletes in fact such as Carl Lewis, Randy Barnes, Tim Montgomery, Maurice Greene, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones, etc etc etc) does that make it the case that we are justified in blaming today’s US athletes of doping without any evidence? In effect that is exactkly what they are saying in regards to China’s case.
Because one Chinese athlete had been found to be underage, He Keixin must be guilty as well. Allegations of her must be sound from that case. Because some Chinese swimmers had been suspected of cheating, allegations that Ye Shiwen is doping must be justied as well.
This is the level critical thinking skills has degraded into when propaganda blinds people.
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Could somebody give Melektaus a chill pill?
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Here comes the tone police.
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Wow, nothing says “won argument” like a string of “last” comments. Really proving me wrong about the inferiority complex and general chippiness of your commentary. For a guy who’s pretty quick to identify ‘tone’ that appears to exist only in his head, you’re pretty quick to complain when people ask you to calm down.
And yes, 9.79 was astoundingly quick, Johnson was targetted along with other atheletes like Flo-Jo, testing that was even more stringent than that applied to other medal winners. Some got caught, some didn’t, and the strong suspicion has to be that some who got caught weren’t, anyway, punished.
And yes, I am quite capable of believing that at least the majority of atheletes at the highest level were juicing at the time. I would not at all be surprised to see that a significant portion are juicing now. Even the testing authorities think the figure is likely in the double-figures percentage-wise. That’s why I say that I doubt that Ye Shiwen is much more likely to be doping than other atheletes.
If a team engaged in doping as a matter of course, got caught, said they changed their ways, but then had retired team doctors saying they had continued doping afterwards and were likely still doping today, as the Chinese swimming team did, is it any surprise if outstanding performances by team members draw suspicion of doping? Not much.
Anyway, having an argument about reasonable doubt with a guy who believes, based on nothing, that the media of all countries in Europe and the US are engaged in a concerted conspiracy to attack China, is pretty much a waste of time.
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Wow M, it’s amazing you don’t fall down more. Where did I “conclude” that the Chinese girl was juiced? I even said it outright: “officially”, she’s clean. But you are just like any typical apologist. When push comes to shove, the creative reading comes out. It’s genetic among you people.
And I love this one. If everyone is cheating, then why focus on the Chinese girl? Well, she won, so maybe she was cheating to an unfair extent. LOL.
I wonder what basic critical thinking skills allow M to see a conspiracy around every corner, and someone out to get china lurking in every shadow? And I wonder where he learned his unique brand of critical thinking skills?
You can’t “blame” someone or “conclude” that someone is cheating based on prior bad acts of their countryman. This goes for Chinese swimmers, or American track and field types like M listed. But it can raise suspicions. So if M wants to get in a lather about the American who finished fourth in the 200 yesterday, he can go nuts with it. Or if a Chinese swimmer does a PB with a sudden huge improvement and finishes first, perhaps…
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As for the age thing, the Chinese team was caught in a prior bad act. At the last olympics, was doubt cast upon the whole gymnastics team? Nope, only on the person who had some ambiguous paperwork. As with the current chinese swimmer, suspicion is aroused not only based on the flag and the team’s prior bad acts, but in combination with some aspect of the individual in question. It seems M sees red even with suspicion. But like I said earlier, he’s gonna have to deal.
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Premise: Some Chinese swimmers in the 90s had used anabolic steroids
Conclusion: Ye Shiwen is using PEDs.
I have not made that argument. This is your invention. I have simply said that in light of relevant and related past cases (Dong Fangxiao), which undermined the credibility of the sports authorities of the PRC, raising questions about He Kexin, especially in light of previously published and uncorrected PRC media reports that suggested she was underage, is not unreasonable.
Raising questions is not the same as asserting conclusions. I know this may be difficult for M to grasp but, yes, I do teach my students not to confuse questions and conclusions.
Again this is not my statement: “Because one Chinese athlete had been found to be underage, He Kexin must be guilty as well.”
I have never said “He Kexin must be guilty.” There is a rather large difference between that statement and “Raising questions about He is not unreasonable under the circumstances.” Please attend to such difference.
MFC, the IOC and the FIG are not gods. They are not infallible. We have to take each investigation they undertake on its own terms. They obviously erred by not catching the age problem with Dong Fangxiao earlier. It was only after the questions arose about He that they dug back into the Dong case and discovered the problem. And I am not saying that they are wrong in their final verdict with He. My only point is that it seems that they relied on information provided by PRC sporting officials, who were discovered to have lied in the Dong case and who would have had a rather powerful incentive to lie it the He case. Some independent source of information would be helpful. The evidence appears questionable. Their conclusion might still be true, but the evidence is questionable.
Finally, I agree that, in this day and age of widespread doping, virtually any unusual sporting achievement will raise questions. Lance Armstrong has been questioned. Any baseball fan in the US (of which I am one) wonders about any 50 home run season now. Phelps was questioned about his 2008 performance. And he underwent extensive testing, beyond what is usually required, in a pre-emptive effort to answer those questions. The competitiveness and materialism associated with high-level sporing achievement has created pressures for cheating that are universal. It may be unfortunate, but that is the world we live in. And it is not a giant anti-China conspiracy…
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@MFC – Apologies for the harsh tone of my intial response. I’m sometimes a bit quick to assume that people are intentionally misreading my comments. At any rate, I think I might assume to answer this point:
The problem is not where people arrive at a political viewpoint as a way of achieving a basic goal pointed to by religion. The problem is where a selective reading, or even misreading, of religious texts, is the only support for a particular policy because there is no logical one. We might call one trend the ‘Tutu’ trend and the other the ‘Santorum’ trend.
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@ Gil:
No problem! Amazing the havoc even small grammatical ambiguities can wreak.
That said, I certainly fall on the ‘Tutu’ side of that continuum. (Tutu also being an African Anglo-Catholic rather than an American cafeteria Catholic helps quite a bit.) But the Tutu example is instructive in that it illuminates the need for a creative middle ground between laicism on the one hand and out-and-out theocracy on the other. Or, in China’s case, a right-liberalism with laicist tendencies on the one hand and an authoritarian government seeking absolute regulative control over religion on the other.
An amicable partnership between church and state with a clear but flexible separation of roles is preferable to a hostile separation, is preferable to the domination of one by the other. But my point stands that a religion such as Christianity (or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, for that matter) or a religio-political philosophy like Confucianism needs to be allowed its social dimension; otherwise it irrevocably loses that which makes it distinctive.
@ Sam:
I never said that the IOC / FIG were omniscient or always right. But the fact that they conducted two concurrent investigations, one which proved Dong’s info fraudulent and one which failed to prove He’s so, should in the absence of any other solid proof be convincing. I am not privy to the information that these bodies used in guiding their decisions, but it would be incredible that their only resources are what the PRC provides them.
The most admirable trait of Anglo-American jurisprudence is the dictum that a defendant is to be ‘presumed innocent until proven guilty’. Dong has been proven guilty by the appropriate authorities; He has not. It strikes me as profoundly unfair – and perhaps malicious – that the questions are allowed to linger after such a ruling is made.
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I agree with MFC on the age thing. The powers that be conducted an investigation, and laid their reputation on the line in support of the results of said investigation. That’s different from having had reasonable grounds for suspicion at the outset. One can have a solid basis for suspicion and be satisfied if the subsequent investigation puts said suspicion to rest. But the age question is somewhat different than the issue of being juiced. Current testing being negative renders someone “officially” clean, but testing always lags behind the chem labs.
That said, presumed innocence doesn’t really apply in elite sports anyway. Athletes are tested without probable cause, and they essentially have to prove their innocence with negative tests.
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For a long time Westernization and Modernity is synonymous due to the association with Renaissance and Industrializtion. But it is no longer true today so of course China in pursue of Modernity would be selective in choosing which aspects of westernization to adopt, and it would do well in rejecting what it consider deleterious aspects and harmful to her interests.
The pushback against modernity, whether it be Islamic Fundamentalism or Tea Party rebellion will play out in world stage and China in her quest of modernity would do well by pursuing her own path. Democracy as defined by the Liberal establishment are not the answer. Whether Obama wins his re-election I suspect the stalemate in Washington will remain and the decline will continue.
Mao was wrong to try to change human nature, and the slogan of friendship over competition was so artificial and superficial, obvious the chase for Olympic golds may be way overboard, indifference to winning and losing can only be managed by saints like Laotze. I think the attack on Ye was expected, for swimming is the last bastion of white americans as track and field, diving and gynmastics gradually became multi-cultural. It must be painful for them to admit China may be better at chemistry or genetics (manage to evade drug testing) rather than she maybe physically better.
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Sam,
I never accused you of making that argument. If you read the post, it was explicitly directed at skc because it was his argument. But if you are defending the accusations against Ye, you are making a version of that argument and thus committing poorly reasoned thinking.
As for He Kaishin, it WAS FOARP who DID claim she was underage. So again, your thinking is misdirected. He simply wasn’t “raising questions.” He made an explicit claim. Read his posts in this thread again. You have defended these accusations too. SO at some level, uyou are also committing the fallacies in question though at least you have somewhat qualified your statements. The suspicions or “questions” you have managed to “raise” are based on the sparses of “evidence”. That because one Chinese athlete is guilty of being underage, He is under suspicion as well. That’s ridiculous. How many US athletes have been found guilty of doping opr cheating so far? Do I have the right to “suspect,” say, Phelps or any other individual US athlete? I know I would never do it in public. But maybe my moiral standards are different from yours.
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This is the degree FOARP has sunk to in his “reasoning”
WHen Johnson improved his time from 9.83 to 9.79, an improvement of 4 hundredth of a second in one year, this constitutes a drastic imporvement worthy of “strong suspicion.”
The main point remains. Johnson was found guilty during post race drug testing which was the reason he was disqualified. Not the fact that he had a fast time (which wasn’t that fast compared to his previous races and to today’s runners as well) while Ye passed all her’s and her swim is not as unprecendented as people claim.
WHat else do I need to say?
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Need I remind people what the point of the original post is? The contentious issue raised is whether Chinese ire at the coverage of is justified. Whether western criticisms of people like Ye are justified.
But if all you have is innuendo and some past discretions (which country hasn’t had them?) then that proves the poing that these are not justified especially in the face of the current evidence of not guilty (from drug testing etc).
The US is still the worst offender in Olympic doping. By Far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_the_Olympic_Games
How many times have China been caught? Given this drastic difference, don’t the Chinese have a certain justification in their ire at western hypocrisy? It’s not just sour grapes which of course it is, it’s hyopcrisy.
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I didn’t make “that argument”, which you would realize if you had the capacity to read non-creatively. I’m not sure you do.
There was ample justification to suspect the Chinese swimmer initially, based on prior bad acts of the team, and the nature of her performance compared to her previous track record. Though there is no longer any official reason for suspicion given her test results. If you’re bent out of shape because she was suspected initially, that’s your problem. If you’re bothered by people who still suspect her now, you have a point.
He kaixin was not suspected because of her team’s prior bad acts alone. Again, the whole team was not suspected of age violation. She was suspected specifically because she had contradictory documentation in the years before 2008.
So if you want to suspect Americans because of prior bad acts and some unique individual circumstances, fly at’er. Phelps in 2004, perhaps, when he went from one bronze in Sydney to multiple medals in Athens? Go for it. But then he tested clean too, which would put a stop to that. He was favored to beat spitz’s record in Beijing, so his performance there, though remarkable, wasn’t really unexpected.
You are correct that Johnson failed his post race test. However 4/100 sec is a big drop in the 100 meters. If bolt bettered his WR by that amount a few days ago, he would’ve been considered to have smashed it. And it’s ridiculous to compare Johnson’s time to athletes 24 years later and say it wasn’t all that remarkable. If he was clean, it would’ve been the world freaking record at the time. Not sure what else is required to constitute “remarkable”.
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There actually are two themes to this post. One is the response to “criticism”. The other is china’s affinity to western ideals (like Olympic ideals) unless those ideals don’t suit the ccp ( like rights and freedoms).
One also needs to consider context before flying off the handle. China hasn’t been criticized, nor have her athletes been suspected of anything apart from the swimmer in question, and the badminton pair who tanked purposely. To suggest that china has been subjected to widespread criticism on the basis of a couple of instances is bizarre To suggest some sort of conspiracy on that basis is no more than the run-of-the-mill playing of the victim card.
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“I didn’t make “that argument”, which you would realize if you had the capacity to read non-creatively. I’m not sure you do.”
This is sad. Truly Sad. Your cognitive deficiency is far worse than even I had suspected.
And Bolt smashed other people’s records and his own records many times before. Never has he seen the criticisms to the same degree leveled at Ye whose records are now eher near as impressive.
It’s very sad that there are people out there like skc who is this deficient both morally and cognitively.
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Hey, if you want to question usain bolt, or the Jamaican men’s 4×100 team because of their WR, or the us women’s 4×100 team because of their WR, you’d be well within your rights…although I’m not familiar with the Jamaican track record of prior bad acts. Then again, by your own argument, you’d have to cease and desist as soon as they passed their drug tests, so any such questioning would have to be pretty short lived. But you would certainly be welcome to get your jollies while the gettin’ was good.
And if you want to show us where I supposedly made the “argument” that you ascribed to me, that would be great. But it only occurred within the schizophrenic auspices between your ears, so you won’t be able to. That said, I am familiar with the character flaws of folks like you, so I don’t expect any acknowledgment of being caught with your pants down, which is becoming habit -forming for you.
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Idiots cannot undersand the difference between a right and an ought. In some sense, I have the right to question anyone. I have a right to question the fact that skc is a normal person and not a childmolester or a mass murder. There is always the possibility for the two later categories. However, only a severely deficient person would ever makie those accusations or do any such “questioning” in a public forum such as in the mass media without sufficient evidence. That is exactly what the mass media did to Ye and many Chinese athletes. It is shear character assasination.
So though everyone may have a right to “question” anyone on almost anything, it takes a grossely deficient person not to understand the difference between doing that and slanderous defamation.
But perhaps FOARP, skc, and Sam, have completley different moral standards than I do and do not care for that distinction?
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And yes, despite skc’s moronic suggestions to the contrary, the vaste majority of cheating allegations at this olympic games towards the Chinese were directed toward Ye. Again, the best proof so far (her drug results) presented overturn those allegations. Xiao ren like those still “questioning” her credibility simply have no basis to level their “questions”. They are groundles. They are morally bankrupt innuendoes and mere suggestions based not on reality but BIAS and PREJUDICE. WHat more could be obvious?
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This has descended to rather childish name calling… comments are now off…
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