I was researching my debate topic just now ("This house would not allow countries with poor human rights records to host the Olympics") and I found this article~ (it's quite long.. I'll quote some important parts and add my views)
Article
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Here we go again: Beijing is trying to get the Olympic Games, for 2008. In the early '90s, they made an all-out effort to win the Games for 2000, losing out by a hair to Sydney. Now they are the clear front-runner; a decision is expected next summer. The Chinese insist aggressively that the 2008 Games are their due. So it is time to consider, once more, whether the Games-which are extremely important to much of the world-should be staged in a totalitarian capital.
That was the opening paragraph. Losing out by a hair to Sydney? Know why? Cause Sydney BRIBED two of the African countries to vote for them.
Beijing is totalitarian? Since when? I don't seem to remember that..
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Wei brings up-as do many others-the specter of Berlin '36. These were, of course, the Hitler Games. The standard American view of these Games is that they blew up in Hitler's face thanks to the historic performance of the (black) U.S. track-and-field star Jesse Owens. This view is handed out to Americans in kindergarten along with crayons and construction paper. But it is untrue: The opportunity to host the Olympics was of great importance to Hitler and the furtherance of his regime, as scholars of the period uniformly acknowledge.
The Gong Chan Dang is comparable to Hitler's Germany now?
Are the Chinese gov't sending people off in trains to concentration camps? Are they blaming the woes of the world on one ethnicity? Are they performing experiments on live humans? I think not.
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Then there is the key question of nationalism. "If China gets the Games," says Wei, "that would inflame extreme nationalism. It would play a harmful role in the moral and spiritual lives of the people. The Party would promote itself to anti-Western elements, and it might even be encouraged to attack Taiwan." In this regard, "there is a clear parallel to Berlin-the regime would be bolder." But if Beijing were again denied the Games, would that not incite further nationalism and xenophobia? "Just the opposite," answers Wei. "The regime would have gone unrewarded. When the bad boy is not behaving himself, we should not encourage him, but find a way to tell him he is wrong."
Nationalism is harmful to the "moral and spiritual lives of the people"? WTF? How arrogant do you have to be to assume that you know what's best for 1.3 billion people? Spiritual lives of the people? If he's referring to the FLG prosecution, they are the most minute fraction of the people.. and I support getting them out of the country.. but that's another story.
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The Olympics, according to Yu, are strictly "a tool for Beijing to use. The Games give them a reason to crush Falun Gong, for example. (These are the meditators and slow-movement exercisers who so vex the Party, and who are arrested, tortured, and killed.)
Not another story, apparently~
Have they mentioned how they surrounded the Chinese equivalent to the White House without warning? Have they mentioned how the FLG followers refuse medical treatment because they believe in the miraculous healing of the leader of the cult? Have they mentioned how some practitioners have cut the stomachs of their relatives open with scissors to try to find the "law wheel"?
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They will say to people, 'We have to show the world that we are unified. You have no freedom, but we have the Olympics. So sacrifice more, be patient, and accept more people in jail.' And if people believe that having the Olympics will raise the prestige of the PRC, they will go along with it."
"No freedom"?
That was said by
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Justin Yu, a Chinese journalist working in New York.
He obviously hasn't been to China recently..
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Su Xiaokang, the Princeton, N.J.-based editor of Democratic China, an online magazine, puts it this way: "After Tiananmen Square, the government had no authority. So they had to find another source of support-that was nationalism. They made everything a matter of Chinese pride. They had lost trust, and something like the Olympics is a way of getting it back. They took Hong Kong back. They want to take Taiwan back. The Olympics would strengthen them, make them look good. That's why they want them so badly."
Oh for ******** sake (@mods - sorry about the language). Western people seem to think that Tiananmen Square is the be-all and end-all of all arguments. "China is improving." "Look at Tiananmen Sq!" "China's football is improving." "No it isn't, look at Tiananmen Sq! How can a football team sponsored by a nasty evil regime ever be better than one from a democratic nation?"
Judging China by TAM Square is like judging Britain by Margaret Thatcher.
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Of all the cities in this great, vast world, from Tipperary to Timbuktu, why the capital of Red China?
Alright, this is really annoying me now.
In case they haven't noticed, CHINA IS NOT, and I repeat NOT a true communist country.
They're still using the old fear of "communism" (I mean, in 60s' America, you could practically be arrested for wearing red)..
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Here is a first principle, a simple criterion: The Games should not be held in any country whose own people are not free to leave.
What the hell?
I left China pretty easily.
~
So, guys, opinions please? Do you think that any country has the right to judge another? Do you think the Olympics should be so politicised? Do you think that China should host the 2008 Olympiad? Why?
Do you think people should be allowed to make such blatant generalisms and stereotypes? Does this not make the western world guilty of the very thing they accuse China of so often - propaganda?
Is China now comparable to Hitler's Germany? What do you think of FLG and other such groups?
We, as young overseas Chinese, are in a unique position; we are the people who can and hopefully will change western perceptions of China before they are set too deeply. We are the ones who see both sides of the story, who have western ideas of human rights and democracy as well as pride in being Chinese and love for our country and the desire to see it grow and improve.
Should we be allowing such discrimination on an international scale against China?
Is this post too long? sweatdrop
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