The 2008 Summer Olympics came to an end today.
Surprisingly, The New York TImes was one of the few mainstream media outlets to put the Beijing Olympics in their proper perspective:
Beijing got what it wanted out of this globally televised spectacular. It reaped a huge prestige bonanza that it will surely use to promote its international influence and, we fear, further tighten its grip at home.
It pocketed these gains without offering any concessions in return. When it increased repression — rather than loosening up — a supine International Olympic Committee barely offered a protest. Most world leaders, including President Bush, were nearly as complicit.
In Beijing for the opening ceremony, Mr. Bush seemed eager to play the role of the apolitical sports fan, instead of publicly pressing China’s leaders on the ongoing Olympics crackdown. That nicely fit into the Chinese script of talking up sports while shutting down politics.
To win the right to host these Games, China promised to honor the Olympic ideals of nonviolence, openness to the world and individual expression. Those promises were systematically broken, starting with this spring’s brutal repression in Tibet and continuing on to the ugly farce of inviting its citizens to apply for legal protest permits and then arresting them if they actually tried to do so.
Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.
Surely one of the signature events of these Games was the sentencing of two women in their late 70s to “re-education through labor.” Their crime? Applying for permission to protest the inadequate compensation they felt they had received when the government seized their homes years ago for urban redevelopment.
A year ago, the I.O.C. predicted that these Games would be “a force for good” and a spur to human-rights progress. Instead, as Human Rights Watch has reported, they became a catalyst for intensified human-rights abuse.
(…)
The medal count and DVD sales cannot be the last word on the Beijing Games.
Unfortunately, for the most part, I think that they will until something happens and the world wakes up to the fact that, for all it’s pretty dancers and cute pixie-like gymnasts, China is still a thug nation.
H/T: Kip Esquire
I’m not so sure the cadres really got what they wanted.
From the accounts I’ve seen, most Chinese tuned these games out, and there was more talk of the seven-year-old told sh was too ugly for the stage and the scandal of the gymnastics team than anything else regarding the hosts.
It takes a lot to screw up the Olympics, but the Communists just might have pulled it off.
For once I actually agree with an NYT article. I have to agree with you that the majority of the mainstream media has said very little about everything wrong with China.
I was really disappointed with NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Every nightly special they had focused on all the “progress” China has made without saying anything critical.
I realize that in order for them to even be there and cover everything, they probably couldn’t say anything too harsh. However, I think it would’ve been better if they just hadn’t said anything at all instead of helping to legitimize the government.
DJ,
That’s true if you assume that China was aiming for a domestic audience.
I would submit they weren’t
They were seeking world exposure and credibility.
And, there’s at least some evidence it worked:
http://tinyurl.com/0