COMMENT Chinese athlete: 'I owe it
to the party' By Li YongYan
BEIJING - "I owe my Olympic gold medal to my
parents, my coach and, above all, to the wise leadership
of the Republican Party and President Bush." Can anybody
imagine such a remark from an American athlete speaking
to Fox News Network? Of course not. Not even the
irreverent, wise-cracking talk show host Jay Leno has
such a fertile imagination.
But when it comes to
Chinese athletes, this extravagant tribute to the
political leadership of a country is anything but
fictional in the 28th Olympic Games now under way in
Athens. The minute a young Chinese girl bagged the gold
medal in the women's table-tennis singles final on
Sunday, a Beijing TV network reporter stuck a microphone
under the nose of her parents. The father, without
batting an eye, told the audience that his good daughter
was a good Communist Party member and her success was a
tribute to the party organization. We can only imagine
the hyperbolic tributes, straining credulity, when
Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics.
For all
intents and purposes, he is right: the government and
the Communist Party own all the Chinese athletes. They
are trained, funded, and sent to the Olympics in Greece
and to other sporting events by the China Sports Bureau,
a cabinet-level ministry in the government. By
international standards, the party trains them well: as
of Wednesday, China was No 2 in overall medal earnings:
51 total, including 24 gold, 15 silver and 12 bronze
(the US had 71 overall, including 25 gold, 27 silver and
19 bronze).
And the government treats its
athletes well, too. Each gold medalist will receive
200,000 yuan (US$24,000) in reward money, or 23 years'
worth of an average Beijinger's annual income, when he
or she returns home, because such athletes have repaid
the party's kindness by, as the grateful father put it,
"bringing glory to the party and country".
Everybody knows that with a few exceptions,
competition sports is an expensive activity that
requires huge amounts of money but generates little if
any revenue. Yet Beijing still retains full monopoly on
this costly endeavor. Why in the world is the Chinese
government, galloping on the capitalist road, willing to
go to such expenses when it is now allowing private and
even foreign ownership in most industries? The monopoly
on such industries as telecommunications, aviation,
postal service and defense is easier to understand:
national security and high profit margin are the two
chief motivations. But figure-skating and weightlifting
never come close to making money or contributing to
territorial integrity by any stretch of imagination.
The answer lies in history. Not unlike Adolf
Hitler, who mixed a heavy dose of Nazi propaganda into
the 1936 Berlin Olympics, China's association with
sports has always been closely intertwined with
politics. During the Mao Zedong years, Beijing boycotted
every international sports event, refusing to share the
same venue with fellow Chinese across the Taiwan Strait
or its ideological enemies from the West. In its few
staged sports events, participants were invited from
Third World countries, all expenses paid by China's
government. These "friends" had no skills; no problem.
Chinese table-tennis players were ordered to strike the
ball into the net so that each invitee would win a title
or two. The government let it be known that the games
were inversely rigged. "Friendship First, Competition
Second" was the theme of such "Friendship Games".
Problem was, many self-respecting athletes from Asian,
African and Latin American countries felt manipulated
and insulted by being given medals they had not earned.
Belatedly, China realized that it couldn't buy or give
away friendships.
With the opening of China
since the late 1970s, sports and friendship took a back
seat as the country was occupied with more pressing
needs, such as abolishing the bankrupt commune system of
agriculture and reforming the bleeding industries. Then
something unexpected happened in the early 1980s.
China's women's volleyball team, out of sheer
determination and hard work, overcame seemingly
unbeatable odds and clinched three consecutive world
titles over three years - the World Cup, the World
Championship and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
It so inspired the politics-weary Chinese that
some impressionable students took to the Beijing streets
in celebration and hailed the victories as a "stimulus
to revitalizing the Great China". The political
significance was not lost on veteran propagandists who
had been scratching their heads in search of the next
bonanza. To their delight, they found that an athletic
achievement served both to provide a convenient outlet
for popular discontent with society and an emotional
adhesive for nationalist unity.
After the death
of Mao and his ideology, nothing has been able to focus
the national attention and energy like the sound of
China's national anthem in a Western stadium. The way
the government media put it, when a red five-star flag
is raised, the republic's past humiliation is washed
away and replaced with a pride that every Chinese is
thrilled to share. The "Sick Man of East Asia" is now
strong, is fast, and stands high and proud. Thus
national prestige suddenly finds a new support in the
able-bodied, professional athletes - instead of the
export of communist ideology.
So the government
has increased the budget for competition sports. Untold
bucks have poured into those teams that have a good
chance of winning a gold medal, in less confrontational
fields such as table tennis, diving and gymnastics.
Exactly how much is spent on winning the gold medals is
never clear. The latest public budget report from the
Treasury Ministry is for the year 2000. A total of 2.6
billion yuan ($3.4 million) was allocated to culture,
sports and broadcasting. No breakdown is given. With
more than 3 billion yuan budgeted for a single Olympic
stadium, Beijing certainly knows how to stretch, or
cook, the budget. In any event, the government pays all
the way, from training, equipment, multimillion-dollar
contracts for foreign coaches, fashionable clothes for
world tours. So the athletes and their families are
telling the truth when they gush about how grateful they
are to the party and the state.
If only the
sports glory would rub off a bit on the nation as a
whole. None of the country's many stadiums and sports
centers are open to the public at no cost. That may be
understandable from a commercial standpoint, but behind
the glittering gold medals and silver trophies lies the
less glamorous fact that China is still very sick. As
many as 120 million people carry the active hepatitis B
virus. Another 5 million suffer from tuberculosis (TB);
as many as 150,000 people die from this terrible lung
disease each year because they have no access to
medication. China's government is doing so little that
the world community cannot stand by and simply watch.
Since 2002, the World Bank has lent $104 million to aid
China's fight against TB. Another $48 million in grants
is provided by an international health fund. Even the
Japanese government gives $3 million each year to
China's 12 provinces for this cause.
Few
countries produce as many world-class sports champions
as China does, but they have a much healthier population
that is perfectly content being a spectator to the
Olympics. On the other hand, the impressive records of
China's athletes at the Athens arena will not help
improve the life of the masses who have neither physical
prowess nor fitness back at home. East Germany and the
former Soviet Union were both big achievers in sports
events. And where are these gold-plated countries now?
Li YongYan is an analyst of Chinese
business, economy, politics and social trends.
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