So that the Beijing Olympics may not be a farce
Rome (AsiaNews) – ‘We are ready!’ A year to the day, about 120 singers from the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong are set to tape the theme song tomorrow evening in Tiananmen Square. It will muster all their enthusiasm to tell the world that Beijing “is ready” for the 29th Olympiad.
Mixing a bit of playfulness and superstition, the Beijing Organising Committee chose the number 8, considered lucky in Chinese culture, to mark the event. The taping is in fact set to take place on the eight hour of the evening of the eight day of the eight month, a year before the Games begin at 8 pm, on August 08, 2008.
Still a year from the real thing, a song titled “We are ready” sounds a bit ironic given the recent scandals about food safety that have plagued China. Will the food served at the Olympic village poison athletes? How about Beijing’s air so thick with smog: Will it reduce athletes’ performance?
For now the residents of China’s capital look on bewildered at the destruction of central Beijing’s historic neighbourhoods. Ancient buildings dating back to the Ming and the Qing dynasties are being gutted to leave room for brand new structures and hotels and local residents are being displaced.
Beijingers are having to put up with an increasingly dense and chaotic traffic—moving around the city is taking more and more time.
Residents are also seeing food and real estate prices go up, standing powerless as walls are built along the main roads to hide the misery and grime that inhabit the hútòng, the narrow streets or alleys, where the city’s real heart still beats, far from the shining seven-start hotels and the giant Olympic structures.
For many residents of the capital, the Olympics are real ‘national disaster’. But for the country’s leadership, it is a unique chance of showing how great China is, truly the Middle Kingdom at the centre of the world’s attention.
The public relations operation is so important that party leaders are expected to move for the Games from Zhonghanhai, near the Imperial Palace, to the new campus at the Olympic Village.
The Games will give China an opportunity to show itself as the world’s great friend. Until now it had been viewed as the world’s workshop. But in order to become everyone’s “buddy” China must respect more than the Olympic rules. Indeed, it must respect human rights.
In 1998 China signed the United Nations conventions on cultural, civil and political rights but it has so far failed to turn its commitment into laws.
China’s must be a “buddy” to its own population as well. But the period leading up to the Games have been marred so far by violence, abuses, corruption and gag orders.
What China needs are institutional fora for social dialogue and democracy. Without them China will remain a pariah to the world in spite of its sparklingly new sports facilities; without them the Olympic Games will be just an abominable farce, another form of ‘opium for the masses.’
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30/08/2004
