The Beijing Olympics starts in less than a month. Plainly these Olympics are deemed highly important to the prestige of the Chinese. As with the Seoul Olympics hosted years ago (was it 1988?) by South Korea, hosting the Olympic games is viewed by the Chinese as something of a rite of passage into the community of powerful, elite nations. Of course, this event alone is not sufficient but other events without this may be viewed as somewhat incomplete.
Sometimes there is controversy in the competition. You might think that determining the winners in these sports is totally objective, but that isn't the case. Some outcomes are determined by subjective judgments of judges, and sometimes judges evince a severe nationalistic bias. For example, my son, a gymnast, informs me that a Russian rings gymnast was considered to be the obvious rings event gold winner at the Athens games but a greek judge threw his vote obviously to a greek athelete, leaving the russian gymnast in 2nd place and placing the "home boy" greek athelete in first place with the gold. I don't recollect the particulars. Other examples come to mind. Seems there was some figure skating controversy at the Salt Lake City games. Seems there was some controversy with respect to some short-track speed racing in some recent Olympics -- sometimes the controversy isn't about who finished first but how to deal with special circumstances, like a runner interfering with another runner (Mary Decker in some race was accidentally tripped by another runner somewhere, maybe not an Olympic race, many years ago) or some other unusual circumstances. I remember a South Korean boxer sat down and refused to leave the ring for 45 minutes in Seoul during their Olympics over some dispute.
Given the sometimes "heavy handed" role taken by the Chinese government in controlling news and public perceptions of events and also given the propensity of the Chinese to take a seemingly stubborn, parochial, insularly pro-Chinaview of events (Tibet comes to mind), what are the odds that rather than China shining on the world stage as a result of hosting these Olympics instead China exhibits itself in a bad light? Feel free to comment and reflect at length on this theme.
hosting the Olympic games is viewed by the Chinese as something of a rite of passage into the community of powerful, elite nations
I hope they don't get the venues finished,that the area where the sailing is to be competed stays locked in an algee plume, and they have to postpone events because of their pollution problems. The Chinese should not have recieved the games and we shouldn't have granted them the trade status we gave them.
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Just a purely personal, subjective, and limited opinion on the subject of doing business with China . . . I think this is a very dangerous proposition (of course, I realize we are heavily committed to this at present, not like we are standing in the doorway, contemplating whether to cross the threshold or not). I think our American businessman imagines himself to be a super star capitalist jockey who rides the salesmanship and negotiation pony with supreme grace and skill. When it comes to doing business in the orient, we are out of our league. Those guys will work harder, negotiate tougher, throw curveballs, knuckleballs, and other kinds of balls that we have never heard of before in conducting business with us. They will tough-out for an incremental advantage in every transaction -- say an unearned 5% or a 10% advantage with respect to what might be judged an equitable deal -- and end up over the long haul far ahead. They maintain a consistent policy, controlled or promoted by the government, over many years while our policy vacilates from administration to administration and each new administration replaces the only just beginning to find their legs under them oriental policyspecialists with new inexperienced oriental policy specialists. Our business magnates think they are getting manufacturing at a discounted price; they are teaching the Chinese how to compete with and overcome them and enabling them to forge ahead by injecting capital into their economy. They are sowing the seeds of our destruction. But that is only my opinion.
Chinatries really hard to have an image as a 1st world nation, but they simplyhaven't arrived yet.They are kind of a shell of a beautiful skyscraper with nothing inside of it except poor engineering. Give them 25 years- if they don' collapse under their own weight, they'll have caught up to us.
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As I suggested above, the Chinese -- and East Asian rim countries in general -- are not dummies and they apply themselves diligently. This is something we need to be aware of and fear. They are entirely capable of catching and overtaking us. Some wise man, whose name I don't remember, said that the very thing that causes us to rise to economic dominance and success sows the seeds of our decline. When in poor and constrained circumstances we set our sights on overcoming our condition by working hard. Our fathers grunt and sweatunder a weary load, bearing fardels, to earn money and send us to college. We go to college, get well paying professional jobs, enjoy the satisfactions of leisure our professional jobs have earned us but begrudge working 80 hour work weeks or earning a third Ph'D in our spare time after working 60 hour work weeks. We in the US have developed a very high standard of living, and speaking only for myself, I'm not motivated to work my tail off as for example Andy Groves was willing to do (Groves, one of the founders of Intel,for many years -- and maybe still today -- was known to regularly work 105 hour work weeks), to earn marginally more money of to prepare for eventualities that may or may not materialize in 10 years. The Chinese, however, are still at this stage.
Now, if there is hope for us to maintain our dominant economic position in the face of the development of China and of India, some internal conflict or contradiction or weakness of economic conditions in those countries must execise some significant countervailing force on their success. This is possible but not clear to me, it is a speculation. I see that one of our virtues in our country is that we are highly independent and people "follow a different drummer." This leads to some valuable diversity of doing things. This is intrinsic to our culture: strong individualism is encouraged and culturally viewed as a positive value. We are even derided by others as a "cowboy culture" because of this. The Chinese, and orientals (maybe not India) in general, are culturally predisposed -- by Confucianism -- to not get out of line, to not make waves, to go with the flow, to follow the direction from above in the hierarchy. This conformism may limit the ability of these nations to overtake and surpass us. Copying our innovations and refining them can provide them some mileage, but to really blow us out of the water they need to invent some totally new innovation -- such as semiconductors (thanks Bardeen and others at Bell Labs!), telecommunications (thanks Alexander Graham Bell, a Canadian who pushed his invention in the US first -- I think), mass produced automobile industry (thanks Henry Ford!), the Internet (thanks Al Gore! just joking, thanks US military and the Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA]!), the web browser (thanks Marc Andresson!), etc. Can a Confucian culture do this? Can a Confucian culture do this as readily as a "cowboy culture" that spontaneously pours forth independent, unorthodox thinkers? The Indians are not a Confucian culture, but they may have their own weaknesses. For example, their economy remains, I think, weakened by the culture of corruption and the role of bribery in conducting affairs.
Just watch out for the diving, since the US spanked their invincible squad in the last world championships. The real fun is going to be how drug testing is going to be administered. I'll bet a few positive tests will be overlooked/lost and a few false positives will be found. If the chinese world record holder in the 110 high hurdles does not win, there will probably be all kinds of inquires made into the other athletes. Should be fun starting on 8/8/08. GO USA!!!!!
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The Chinese gov. is taking a big chance holding the Olympic games. It will be very interesting how or if they will be able to control the world media. I still remember the reports on the establishments that had "dog" on their menues during the Korean games. It will be interesting what dirty little secrets that will be able to be leaked out during these games. I'm almost looking forward to those as much as the games themselves.
As I suggested above, the Chinese -- and East Asian rim countries in general -- are not dummies and they apply themselves diligently. This is something we need to be aware of and fear. They are entirely capable of catching and overtaking us. Some wise man, whose name I don't remember, said that the very thing that causes us to rise to economic dominance and success sows the seeds of our decline. When in poor and constrained circumstances we set our sights on overcoming our condition by working hard. Our fathers grunt and sweatunder a weary load, bearing fardels, to earn money and send us to college. We go to college, get well paying professional jobs, enjoy the satisfactions of leisure our professional jobs have earned us but begrudge working 80 hour work weeks or earning a third Ph'D in our spare time after working 60 hour work weeks. We in the US have developed a very high standard of living, and speaking only for myself, I'm not motivated to work my tail off as for example Andy Groves was willing to do (Groves, one of the founders of Intel,for many years -- and maybe still today -- was known to regularly work 105 hour work weeks), to earn marginally more money of to prepare for eventualities that may or may not materialize in 10 years. The Chinese, however, are still at this stage.
Now, if there is hope for us to maintain our dominant economic position in the face of the development of China and of India, some internal conflict or contradiction or weakness of economic conditions in those countries must execise some significant countervailing force on their success. This is possible but not clear to me, it is a speculation. I see that one of our virtues in our country is that we are highly independent and people "follow a different drummer." This leads to some valuable diversity of doing things. This is intrinsic to our culture: strong individualism is encouraged and culturally viewed as a positive value. We are even derided by others as a "cowboy culture" because of this. The Chinese, and orientals (maybe not India) in general, are culturally predisposed -- by Confucianism -- to not get out of line, to not make waves, to go with the flow, to follow the direction from above in the hierarchy. This conformism may limit the ability of these nations to overtake and surpass us. Copying our innovations and refining them can provide them some mileage, but to really blow us out of the water they need to invent some totally new innovation -- such as semiconductors (thanks Bardeen and others at Bell Labs!), telecommunications (thanks Alexander Graham Bell, a Canadian who pushed his invention in the US first -- I think), mass produced automobile industry (thanks Henry Ford!), the Internet (thanks Al Gore! just joking, thanks US military and the Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA]!), the web browser (thanks Marc Andresson!), etc. Can a Confucian culture do this? Can a Confucian culture do this as readily as a "cowboy culture" that spontaneously pours forth independent, unorthodox thinkers? The Indians are not a Confucian culture, but they may have their own weaknesses. For example, their economy remains, I think, weakened by the culture of corruption and the role of bribery in conducting affairs.
Pretty much sums it all up.
We will stay ahead of them so long as we don't bring about our own demise. I think of them as a 'hive' culture not unlike termites or ants. Everyone has a specific role in their culture, and all are expected to fall into line. It doesn't do much for progress or creativity, but does make for a very stabile society that can survive what would destroy other cultures. The think in terms of decades and centuries, we think in terms of time periods encompassing Britneys latest snafu or the amount of time until the next episode of 'Grays Anatomy' airs.
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Chinese Olympic faux pas???
