To most people outside of Taiwan and China, a dispute over the name of Taiwan’s Olympic team might seem petty. However, the argument has underscored an elemental point: The Games that open on Friday in Beijing may be the most politicized since Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler sought to enlist the Berlin Olympics of 1936 as evidence of Aryan racial superiority.
Moreover, US President George W. Bush, who plans to attend the opening ceremony, will be part of that highly charged political event as the first US president ever to go abroad to the Olympics. His decision has been mildly controversial: On one hand, it gives the president an opportunity to engage Chinese leaders; on the other, it may be seen as reinforcing the oppressive rule of China’s communist regime.
Bush jumped into Olympic politics last week by welcoming five Chinese dissidents to the White House. A Chinese spokesman responded by contending the president had “rudely interfered in China’s internal affairs.”
Later, Bush told a Chinese TV interviewer: “I’m coming to China as the president and as a friend.”
Several weeks ago, Chinese authorities suggested that the team from Taiwan compete under the name Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, or Taipei, China).” The proposal caused an uproar in Taiwan because that name, Zhongguo Taibei, implied that Taiwan was part of China, like Hong Kong or Macau.
Instead, Taiwan’s leaders, Olympic committee and press insisted that their team be called Zhonghua Taibei (中華台北, Chinese, Taipei). That form was devised in the 1980s when China demanded that international organizations not allow Taiwan to use its name, the Republic of China.
In the argument with Beijing, Taiwan even threatened to withdraw from the games, a warning that had teeth. Earlier, the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games planned to have the Olympic torch carried through Taiwan on the way to Beijing. The route made it look as if Taiwan were part China. Taiwan promptly refused. Beijing evidently decided that, after being criticized for several other issues, more bad publicity would not be helpful.
Although political leaders, Olympic committees and athletes everywhere have decried efforts to embroil the Olympics in politics, that has often been the case — and none more so than in China now.
Orville Schell, a China specialist writing in Newsweek, said that the Beijing Olympics were intended to mark the emergence of China from its “national inferiority complex” that began with its defeat by Britain in the Opium War of 1839 to 1842. This was followed by a period when the “Chinese melon” was sliced up by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Portugal, the US and Japan.
Today, Chinese constantly remind themselves that they come from a nation with a 5,000-year history and contend that their nation is entitled the respect of a global leader. Perhaps the Olympics are that first step in the Chinese saying “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” in ending centuries of the Chinese sense of inferiority.
China appears bent on regaining its place as the “Middle Kingdom,” a concept formed in the Han Dynasty (206BC to 220AD). In that scheme, China is the center of the world and its neighbors are vassals who pay court and make no move of consequence without Beijing’s permission. Other nations, particularly those in the West, are barbarians to be fended off.
Politicizing the Olympics has a long history. Tokyo, in the first games in Asia, marked Japan’s recovery from World War II; the lad who lit the Olympic flame had been born in Hiroshima the day it was hit with the first atomic bomb. The 1972 Olympics in Munich saw Palestinian terrorists kill 11 Israelis. The US boycotted the 1980 games in Moscow to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
In revenge, the Soviet Union and its 14 satellites boycotted the Los Angeles Games in 1984. South Korea turned the 1988 Olympics into a showcase for its economic achievements. Another terrorist attack took one life and injured 110 others in Atlanta in 1996.
Sometimes, however, Olympic politics backfires. Hitler had his vaunted Aryan superiority thrown in his face by a US sprinter and long jumper named Jesse Owens — who won four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry