I'm sure by now you've heard about or seen the Opening Ceremony for the Beijing Olympics.
- The government has spent over 100 million dollars on the exhibition
- It's supposed to be a comment on global warming and "other problems" facing the planet
- It features(d) over 2000 people doing martial arts, or "tai-chi"
- The participants are wearing Mao-era clothing, in reference to the "Great Cultural Revolution"
Pretty cool, right? NBC, and their panoply of sponsors, wants you to watch this crap and celebrate the spirit of the Olympics in China. Ignore the pollution, ignore the military regimes in Darfur and Burma, ignore the burning monks in Tibet, and ignore the trillion poor people in China's western region. Just focus on the Olympics in a city built on the sweat of poor people imported from the rural country-side.
If you ask the Chinese Government, the Opening Ceremony is supposed to be a celebration of, "how far China has come"; or, a symbol of "the might of China opening its doors and collective talent to the future of human-kind in the 21st century." --Insert-propaganda here--
Give me a break.
These guys are communists running a tyrannical regime. I wrote about the Chinese government and games a few months ago, so here is the link. Displaying a 100 million dollar show, let alone hosting the Olympics, doesn't change this fact, nor does it cover up their human rights abuses and crappy behavior. I won't rehash these facts, but suffice to say they're assholes to the 10th degree. Ask the Dali Lama, for instance.
What really gets me going is that US Companies are complicit in this propaganda campaign. You call it smart advertising, I call it a company spending share-holder dollars to support an a corrupt regime. For example, NBC/GE paid a ton of money to host the games; Coke is putting the Olympic logo on it's Coke cans; any commercial you watch during games is revenue for the Olympics and Chinese.
Think about this: most Americans have pension funds which invest in stocks in order to see appreciation in their retirement funds. A lot of these pension funds invest in GE, which is one of America's best companies and stocks. GE owns NBC and NBC is the network hosting the Games and displaying this opening ceremony / propaganda bullshit. By watching the games, you're indirectly supporting China by verifying their legitimacy to host the games. You're also saying it's "ok" for American companies to prop up these assholes on the world's largest stage.
I have nothing against Chinese people. I just can't stand their government and the American companies that do business with them. Long story, short: don't watch the Olympics this year.
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8 comments:
Ted, I agree with your many points about the human rights blemishes in China's past. In particular, I think it's horrible how much information the government keeps from their people.
However, I have enjoyed the Olympics more than I expected. And, I think that not watching them or boycotting them is really punishing the athletes from all over the world who have trained extremely hard (especially those that participate in lesser known sports where they probably won't become rich).
Also, I have heard all of the criticisms. And, as I said, the human rights ones for the most part are valid.
however, I think we need to keep things in mind:
1) Rapid urbanization always happens by exploiting the labor of poor people. The United States expanded the exact same way. Our cities and railroads were built totally by immigrants that we brought in to work in conditions that were essentially the same as slave labor. Our first transcontinental railroad, which gave way to the entire birth of the West and the rise of many cities, was built by Irish and Chinese immigrants (depending on what part of the US we're talking about) who made about 35 cents a week, were usually not given food, and who were asked to do jobs that put them in severe danger. Hundreds died every winter. The industrial revolution started in the second half of the nineteenth century. And now, many many generations later, those workers families are living much better in a very advanced country.
--I'm not saying that it's right, but I'm just saying we expanded and built up our infrastructure the same exact way that China is now. And, up until the labor movement in the early 20th century, we had most workers (including children as young as 5) working 16 hour days in factories for next to nothing in order to feed the big businesses.
--Again, I'm not exscusing it. But, just pointint out that our country has dealt with all of these issues as well. We eventually worked them out.
2) I hate hearing people talk about the air quality. Since the environment became a major world concern, China has taken greater steps than the U.S. has towards energy efficiency. We are in the stone age compared to them and most other countries. It would be impossible for China to function as wastefully as we do with their population.
And, as much as we talk about the pollution, we have to remember how huge their country is. It's like how many people in America say it's horrible that China limits families to 2 children, but they are just dealing with issues that we haven't hit yet.
We should look at their pollution issues as motivation to work towards developing better energy alternatives otherwise we are going to face those same problems.
Also, not to be overly liberal here, but I would also point out that lots of very successful American companies are also exploiting Chinese people for economic success. An obvious example is Walmart, which sells goods for really cheap and still makes huge profits because it pays workers in China (and other nations) next to nothing for their work. It's hard for us as Americans to denounce the Chinese for exploiting their people when we also exploit their people.
Again, I think a lot of the criticisms are valid. In particular, the Tibet situation is tough to think about. But, I think that a lot of the onslaught from the rest of the world goes a little over the edge. We have to be able to separate our criticisms that are valid from our ones of which we ourselves are guilty as well.
I agree with everything you're saying. People in glass houses shouldnt throw stones. And yes, I am probably being a bit tough on the Chinese when they're doing a lot to combat global warming and we're not.
that said, I guess the real point of my post was to express disgust with american companies that broadcast communist propaganda...that's really it.
obviously we buy and consume too much shit from china to ever really boycott them or really give credible criticisms without sounding like total hypocrits, right?
But, that's not to say that I disagree with you on a lot of stuff.
- I don't think that they should sensor their people from the country's past.
- I think people should be allowed to practice religion freely (I'm not religious, but people who are seem to enjoy it).
- I think people should be able to speak out against the government without fear.
And, those are mild criticisms, there are a lot of more obvious ones in terms of how they treat their own people and people from other countries. I just want to make sure that we are not being self-righteous, hypocritical Americans (which most people over there probably expect by this point).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2545387/Beijing-Olympics-Faking-scandal-over-girl-who-sang-in-opening-ceremony.html
did anyone see this?
nick change your picture would you? you look like tattoo on a penis from here
Although I agree that human rights violations are the norm in China, the West's record has not been spotless either and not done enough to repair the damage. Colonization, slavery, economic exploitation, war mongering (guess where 2 world wars started). The US alone has expelled Native Americans from their native homelands to reservations and gave diseased blankets for winter. These days that would be ethnic cleansing and genocide. How will the American people confronted that issue? How will they ever heal the damage of mass kidnapping of people from another continent for forced labor? Will the US government pay compensation to the descendants of slaves? The US government keeps a lot of information secret too, like the truth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It's also been the habit of the US of poking its fingers in other's soverignity for its own strategic interests to that nation's detriment. Foreigners may like the American people but they don't trust its government.
You might know by now that most of the performers of the Opening Ceremonies were soldiers from the People's Liberation Army. If the Games were held in the US right now it wouldn't be possible to get them to perform. They're stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That is what I was trying to get at with my first comment. We leave ourselves WIDE open for a bunch of very valid criticisms here.
wide open to criticisms, but at least we're not jailing 71 year olds who protest the olympics
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