Politically Speaking: China's political pole-vault

The Olympic torch is crossing the world, and these incensed Tibetan protesters are fixing to screw everything up. "But why would these people want to disrupt such a historically symbolic event as the running of the torch?" you inquire so incredulously. Well, it is probably because the essence of the Olympics is firmly political. Is it really about the power of sportsmanship and purity of athletics? Not totally. Just as bookies value the World Series for the action they have on it, so too do many citizens around the world love the Olympics for the global bragging rights it entails. Sure, Bob Costas and the rest of the NBC media circus will present American viewers with culturally pertinent information and sugary human interest stories, but this is just icing on the cake when the United States is 14 gold medals ahead of its next-closest rival. In fact, the Olympics are like an alternative form of warfare; except, instead of only a few nations being able to join the combat, every nation is invited, and what is more, every nation is watching.

This Olympiad's spotlight shines ever so brightly on China, and for the past seven years, the Chinese have been preparing for 08/08/08. They have constructed new athletic facilities which have been hailed as architectural masterpieces, restructured and expanded the congested transportation system within the city of Beijing, and made concerted efforts to make these games "green" by reducing the smog in the city. However, within the past four weeks, a wholly new problem has entered the arena, one that I doubt Chinese officials saw as a serious snag even one year ago. Now, the nation that has devoted so much time to improving its physical image must measure the necessary responses to a cancerous political issue.

Aside from the informed Berkeley activist or confident health club yoga instructor, Americans have not thought much about Tibet in recent times. In fact, no government has ever recognized Tibet as an independent country since the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951.

Yet, this tenuous Asian equilibrium quickly changed on March 14 when violent protests erupted in Lhasa. Now, the Tibetans have begun to vehemently demand their independence, something they believe was unjustly stolen from them in the Maoist Revolution of the late 1940s. Luckily for the protesters, it has taken little effort to focus the media on China and their message is being heard around the world, with serious threats of protest in every major country through which the torch will pass (including Tibet itself). In addition, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called for President Bush to contemplate a boycott of the opening ceremonies, a moratorium to question numerous counts of China's human rights violations.

Of course, this is only the most recent installment of a storied precedent. We have seen the political and Olympic mix countless times before: Berlin, 1936 is an austere example, with many historians viewing this as Hitler's thinly-veiled attempt to demonstrate a thriving post-World War I Germany as well as general Aryan supremacy. However, this attempt failed due in great part to the performance of African-American track star Jesse Owens. The Games made another stop in Germany 36 years later, this time in Munich. Originally hailed as "The Happy Games," the competition took a dire turn as members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group, killed 11 Israeli athletes right in the Olympic Village.

Just eight years later, President Jimmy Carter led an American boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow as a protest against the USSR's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Four years hence, the Soviet Union headed a 14-country retaliatory boycott of the XXIII Olympiad in Los Angeles. This Olympic soap opera doesn't even take into account 1980's "Miracle on Ice." Finally, North and South Korean athletes have marched together in opening and closing ceremonies a total of five times before, which seems to be five times more than leaders from those two countries have ever met in person to discuss policy issues.

The most interesting thing about this XXIX Olympiad will be how the Chinese handle both the pressure from the competitions themselves as well as that from Tibetan activists. If everything goes smoothly and China can act as a competent host, the praise they garner may drown out (but not totally destroy) foreign detractors. On the other hand, one misstep could destroy China's carefully constructed façade and lead to a more unilateral foreign call for Tibetan independence and other elementary changes. In the end, though, the Olympic Games really are about the competition and the athletes (despite my earlier cynicism). They are their country's peaceful soldiers. It is rather easy to call the Olympics a global beauty pageant or an international circus, but it seems to me that these games accomplish more useful politicking than does the United Nations.

Through the pure act of sport, many impure political questions can be put on hold, at least for two weeks. After all, a 100-meter dash is far less exhausting than negotiations with foreign ambassadors.