The Useless Tree

The Olympics and Selective Westernization

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.

Mao Zedong and the PRC's Olympic Gold Anxiety

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....