This year’s Olympics Games attracted attention that went far beyond the sporting events themselves. Press coverage of China flourished: whether it was regarding political tensions, extravagant opening ceremonies, environmental reform, or underage gymnasts, the press could never get enough of China during the Games.
Now that the Olympics have passed and the hype has cooled, what remains of the nearly decade long process of massive publicity, construction, and preparation for the Games? The Chinese slogan for Beijing’s Olympic bid was xin Beijing, xin Aoyun or “New Beijing, New Olympics.”
While many may have hoped that these Games would catalyze reform in the Chinese government or provide incentives for real environmental improvements, most modifications to create the “new Beijing” seem to be only temporary.
For the first time in Olympic history, all aspects of the Olympic Games will be meticulously measured. Beijing will be the first host city to produce a full Olympic Games Impact report. It will focus largely on quantitative measures of economic and sports development. While this report won’t be concluded until two years from now, it will certainly lend a great deal of insight into the Games. Until that report is published, however, the world is left to wonder what kind of a mark these Olympics have left behind, both on China and the US.
Tangible costs include the billions of dollars that the Chinese government spent on the Games and tangible benefits include the hundreds of Chinese athletes adorned in gold medals. But the real question is: what were some of the underlying effects of the Olympics?
The Most Expensive Olympics in History
If China’s efforts to project an image of a “new China” are to be successful, long-standing beliefs about the country must be changed. Has the huge investment of money and manpower paid off in changing western conceptions of the Communist regime?
Claire Conceison, an associate professor in the Department of Dance and Drama at Tufts and a member of the core faculties for the International Relations, Asian Studies, American Studies, and International Letters & Visual Studies majors, has spent a great deal of time in China and her research includes cultural representations between the US and China.
Conceison is hesitant to accept explanations attributing China’s unprecedented expenditure to an attempt to “throw money at a problem or [distract] us with other things such as an elaborate opening ceremony. We could interpret it this way if we wanted to,” she said, “but the other way to look at it was perhaps that it was the first phase of real change that’s happening” in China.
It is no secret that China has spent more on this year’s Olympics than any Olympic Games in history. Over $40 billion dollars were spent, a shocking number compared to Athens’ total of $16 billion four years ago.
Conceison describes the money spent in Beijing as “an investment in China’s world image.” There is no doubt that this event was far more than a sporting event for the Chinese government and people: this was a golden opportunity to portray themselves as a nation to the rest of the world. Whether or not the investment was worthwhile is up for debate.
The unprecedented amount of money spent certainly created a crowd pleasing spectacle, but some observers feel that because China is a developing country, the money could have been better spent elsewhere. After all, according to World Book in 2006, 135 million Chinese people were living on less than $1.25 a day.
“In some ways it was necessary to invest big in order to get a big result,” Conceison said, “but of course, on the practical level, if a country has 20 billion dollars, would I rather see them spend it on feeding the poor citizens in the rural countryside and…bringing much needed changes to impoverished communities? Of course I would.”
The total budget reflected $1.9 billion spent on building 12 new stadiums and refurbishing old ones, $2.1 billion on operational costs such as staging sporting events (including $100 million on the opening ceremonies alone), about $4 billion on the dragon shaped airport terminal to host the arrival, and several billions more on other infrastructure projects like the extra subway lines that were built to accommodate the Olympic visitors.
A Green Olympics
Despite not being the focus of media coverage on Beijing’s Olympic expenditures, the overwhelming majority of money spent actually went to cleaning up the environment, a task that should certainly improve every Chinese citizen’s basic quality of life. That is, if China keeps up the environmental reforms it has started.
Over the past 10 years, environmental projects such as reforestation, controlling air and water pollution, and improvements to the city’s sewage systems have cost the Chinese government a whopping $20.5 billion. This could explain why the 2008 Olympics cost so much more than any other in history.
The Chinese government has also implemented major reforms to protect the environment such as temporarily closing hundreds of harmful factories and removing about 1.5 million cars from its roads.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabou vowed before the Games opened to keep the environment clean long after the Olympics have passed, but it’s not clear that even the new reforms will be able to sustain a clean environment with such a large population and so much existing damage.
Regardless, the major reforms were a success in the short term. Residents and visitors saw clearer skies in Beijing than had been seen in over a decade and a reduction in traffic increased average vehicle speeds by 10% in a city plagued by traffic problems and congestion.
The policy of taking half the cars off the road ended on September 20th as the Paralympic Games drew to a close. Now, the restrictions will only remain for government owned vehicles. The hope is that rather than setting strict regulations, soft pressure will be created by government officials who will act as examples for the rest of the Chinese people.
Although the current government measurements on pollution levels still far exceed the World Health Organization Guidelines, they have decreased dramatically in the years since China won the bid for the Olympic Games.
Political Reform
Some expected the Olympics to bring about massive political changes in a system that constantly attracts western criticism and condemnation for its authoritarian tendencies. In fact, the Western media coverage of these Olympic Games was more dominated by politically oriented content than any previous coverage of the Games in the past.
These hopes were not unprecedented. After the 1988 Seoul Olympics, many political changes took place in South Korea. The country attracted international attention and it seemed that a new South Korea had truly emerged. Many might have thought that the Olympics in Beijing would produce the same results.
Changes did take place during the immediate course of the Games. For example, after an international outcry regarding censorship, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs temporarily lifted a law to grant foreign journalists the freedom to cover any topic they wanted as long as it related to the Olympic Games. While local journalists were not allowed the same freedoms, the temporary law certainly indicated a step towards change.
It seems that a large part of the reason westerners accepted China’s successful bid to host the Olympics at all was to evoke change. It was a “pivotal moment” seven years ago when the international community knowingly gave the Games to a communist regime, explained Conceison, “[The Olympic Committee] knew what kind of government they were giving the Olympics to. Perhaps there was some hope that it would foster some kind of gradual reform and change, but I don’t think anybody thought that it would…change the government overnight.”
Now that the Olympics are over, hopeful observers are left to wait and see what will come over the next couple of years. During the Games, contact and communication between Chinese people and foreigners increased and the Chinese have certainly become more familiar with international practices and standards. Whether this exposure and public pressure will nudge China to comply with western concerns remains to be seen.
A New View of China
It is clear that China was hoping to project itself in a positive light and show the “New Beijing” to the world.
Conceison gave mixed reviews of the American media coverage of the Games, acknowledging that it included negative political angles she anticipated, but admitting that she “expected worse things to be uncovered in the Olympic coverage than there actually were.” Despite enjoying extensive authoritarian powers at home, even the Chinese government could not control how they were being portrayed across the world.
Ultimately, observers will need to wait for social and political developments in the years following the 2008 Games to fully assess whether the negative press coverage and political criticism propelled China to respond to western pressures.
Overall, Conceison feels that the Olympics were a success. “China managed the Olympics very well in terms of pulling off this huge feat in a huge city with a huge population,” she says. “I think people need to remember how big Beijing is and how many people live there. I don’t think there has been another Olympics hosted in a city that’s so huge and so densely popu lated.”
source: tuftsobserver.org
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