Nation in the Spotlight: A Harvard Press Feature on China and the Olympic Games

As has become apparent in recent months, the athletes of the 2008 games face tough competition for the Olympic spotlight, not only with one another, but with China itself—the current leading nation in debate, controversy and intrigue on the international playing field. There is as much to learn about Beijing and China as there are events to watch on television (precisely 302), and HUP would like to welcome in the games by offering you an abundance of resources on the history, heritage, and politics of this multiplex city and burgeoning nation. So sit back, enjoy, and in between gold medals and outstanding competition, read a good book!
 
But first, some recommended Olympic Links from the Press:
— Speedo swimsuit technology and the destruction of old Beijing from The Economist
— Interactive Olympic Event Tracker from The New York Times; a priceless device when keeping track of 28 sports.

Beijing — "The Heart of the Enigma"

Beijing Time
by Michael Dutton, Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo, and Dong Dong Wu

“Where is the market?” inquires the tourist one dark, chilly morning. “Follow the ghosts,” responds the taxi driver, indicating a shadowy parade of overloaded tricycles. “It’s not called the ghost market for nothing!” And indeed, Beijing is nothing if not haunted. Among the soaring skyscrapers, choking exhaust fumes, nonstop traffic jams, and towering monuments, one discovers old Beijing—newly styled, perhaps, but no less present and powerful than in its ancient incarnation. Beijing Time conducts us into this mysterious world, at once familiar and yet alien to the outsider.

Read an excerpt from Beijing Time.


The Forbidden City
by Geremie R. Barmé

The Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng) lying at the heart of Beijing formed the hub of the Celestial Empire for five centuries. Over the past century it has led a reduced life as the refuge for a deposed emperor, as well as a heritage museum for monarchist, republican, and socialist citizens, and it has been celebrated and excoriated as a symbol of all that was magnificent and terrible in dynastic China’s legacy. Geremie Barmé peels away the veneer of power, secrecy, inscrutability, and passions of imperial China, to provide a new and original history of the culture, politics, and architecture of the Forbidden City. Designed to overawe the visitor with the power of imperial China, the Forbidden City remains one of the true wonders of the world.

Read supplementary material prepared by Geremie Barmé.

Read an excerpt from The Forbidden City.


Olympic History

Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008
by Xu Guoqi

Already the world has seen the political, economic, and cultural significance of hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing—in policies instituted and altered, positions softened, projects undertaken. But will the Olympics make a lasting difference? This book approaches questions about the nature and future of China through the lens of sports—particularly as sports finds its utmost international expression in the Olympics. Drawing on newly available archival sources to analyze a hundred-year perspective on sports in China, Olympic Dreams

explores why the country became obsessed with Western sports at the turn of the twentieth century, and how it relates to China’s search for a national and international identity. Through case studies of ping-pong diplomacy and the Chinese handling of various sporting events, the book offers unexpected details and unusual insight into the patterns and processes of China’s foreign policymaking—insights that will help readers understand China’s interactions with the rest of the world.

Read an excerpt from Olympic Dreams.

Greater China: Cities and Politics

City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong
by Leo Ou-fan Lee

Hong Kong is perched on the fault line between China and the West, a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Leo Ou-fan Lee offers an insider’s view of Hong Kong, capturing the history and culture that make his densely packed home city so different from its generic neighbors.

The search for an indigenous Hong Kong takes Lee to the wet markets and corner bookshops of congested Mong Kok, remote fishing villages and mountainside temples, teahouses and noodle stalls, Cantonese opera and Cantopop. Whether viewed from Tsing Yi Bridge or the deck of the Star Ferry, from Victoria Peak or Lion Rock, Hong Kong sparkles here in all its multifaceted complexity, a city forever between worlds.

Read an excerpt from City Between Worlds.


Worrying about China
The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry
by Gloria Davies

What can we do about China? This question, couched in pessimism, is often raised in the West but it is nothing new to the Chinese, who have long worried about themselves. In the last two decades since the "opening" of China, Chinese intellectuals have been carrying on in their own ancient tradition of "patriotic worrying." In Worrying about China, Gloria Davies pursues this inquiry through a wide range of contemporary topics, including the changing fortunes of radicalism, the peculiarities of Chinese postmodernism, shifts within official discourse, attempts to revive Confucianism for present-day China, and the historically problematic engagement of Chinese intellectuals with Western ideas.

Read an excerpt from Worrying About China.

The Great Wall Revisited
From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon's Head
by William Lindesay

A journey along the Great Wall in the past and present, this landmark volume offers an extraordinary portrait of perhaps the world’s most famous structure. Carrying his camera and a file of vintage photographs—the earliest dating from 1871—author-photographer William Lindesay traveled across Northern China for three years, searching for settings where the Great Wall could be examined in the past and present, side by side. The result, The Great Wall Revisited, presents seventy-two of the most elucidating then- and-now comparisons. This glossy dossier opens out as an extraordinary journey from the Jade Gate in northwest China’s Gobi Desert to Old Dragon’s Head on the Yellow Sea.

Curious to see photos from the book? Read what Smithsonian Magazine has to say about The Great Wall Revisited in "A Yankee in China," an article including a photo gallery from the story. 
      

Debate on China from the Harvard Press Off the Page Author Forum:

To read other author blog postings, please visit the forum.

Gloria Davies: Should we worry about Chinese patriotism?  May 28, 2008

There is no thing new about Chinese citizens shouting anti-foreign slogans. The triggers for these spectacles of communal outrage are always actions or decisions taken from outside China tha t are perceived as impacting on China’s well-being or international standing. In the last decade protest triggers have included NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and Japan’s 2005 bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In the turbulent period between March and May this year, Chinese patriotism has loomed once more into international view.

This year the relevant trigger has been the perceived bias in Western media reports over the unrest in Lhasa. Self-declared Chinese patriots volubly denounced the Western press as being “anti-Chinese”, expatriate Chinese protestors demonstrated outside CNN in Los Angeles, while a few even sent death threats to Western journalists. All of this has fostered a growing apprehension towards China amongst the international reading public. Western antipathy deepened even more when it became clear that these xenophobic denunciations were coming largely from students and educated young professionals both within and outside China. Western media commentaries began to take on a particularly worrying tone when the protest-encumbered Olympic torch relay wended its troubled way to the accompaniment of patriotic cheers from huge Chinese crowds in each of the host cities en route.

This worrying enthusiasm of the Chinese people for their Olympics was further confirmed when photos of the Olympic torch’s triumphant tour of Guangzhou and Shenzhen in early May appeared on televisions all over the world as well as on the Internet. In these bustling Chinese cities of commerce, the millions of people who not only thronged the streets but climbed trees and clambered onto any higher perch to afford themselves a better view, presented the local authorities with unprecedented problems of crowd management. But just four days later on 12 May, a disastrous earthquake struck the city of Wenchuan and surrounding areas in Sichuan province and the international media focus suddenly changed.

After the earthquake, the international media brought into view a very different picture of China. The Chinese government was loudly commended for showing admirable efficiency and transparency in the management of disaster relief. The enormous public support for the earthquake victims, with people all over China rushing to donate their time and money as well as essential supplies, medicine and blood, enabled Chinese patriotism to acquire a far more salubrious complexion in the international limelight.

It is important to grasp that “anti-foreign feelings” and a “love for the national family” are but different shades of Chinese patriotism and we should never lose sight of their proximate positions along a common cultural continuum. It is also important to grasp that both are essential elements in the constitution of the modern Chinese identity - an identity that is always remembered in terms of belonging to a nation that was hurt into being.

In Worrying about China, I draw attention to how Chinese intellectuals, despite their different persuasions, nonetheless share a common attitude of cultural defensiveness. As members of the educated Chinese elite, they also reflect a sensibility to the enduring Confucian virtue of bearing responsibility for “all under Heaven”. This characteristic cultural defensiveness has become part and parcel of “being Chinese” and while there have always been different articulations of this attitude, an ambivalence towards the West has remained a constant element of them all. This is because the West remains perceived, on the one hand as the cause of China’s civilizational decline, while on the other as an important aid to China’s redemption through modernization. Accordingly, the cosmopolitanism of Chinese thought tends to be couched in the problematic of showing the right kind of hospitality to foreign ideas.

To gain an appreciation of Chinese patriotism in our time, then, we need to reflect on the profound sense of cultural loss that animates contemporary Chinese intellectual life. From the 1890s onwards, that sense of loss became vital to the forging of a communal feeling in the Chinese-speaking world. Among other things, it was kept alive through revolutionary anthems that turned wounded Chinese pride into a battle cry. A century later, educated Chinese speak proudly of their nation’s economic prowess and modern achievements. Their unabashed patriotism is understandable, given that “loving the nation” (aiguo) remains scripted in mainland public discourse as the “natural attitude” of any Chinese person.

We should not fear Chinese patriotism because of this. Rather, we should note that while the hate speech of the more extreme Han chauvinists is worrying, it nonetheless remains largely rhetorical and ephemeral. It would be more productive for us to reflect on the complex asymmetries that have shaped and continue to shape the relations between China and the West. This would help us acquire a keener sense of why such historical injustices as coerced trade concessions, the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Versailles are kept alive in Chinese public discourse. This collective remembrance of historical injustices is much the same sentiment the incumbent American president attempted to articulate, namely “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”

In Worrying about China I argue that the present trend in contemporary Chinese thought reflects a similar sentiment, “Because we have been othered, we must now learn once more how to be ourselves”. Consequently, as China rises to become a twenty-first century superpower, it is the synthesizing idea of salvaging the traditional Chinese past alongside a mastery of Western techniques of theorizing that excites and animates prominent Chinese thinkers. Thus while their destiny-inspired discourse remains oriented toward achieving China’s civilizational perfection, it is nonetheless also deeply cosmopolitan.

This cosmopolitanism, amply demonstrated in the impressive familiarity of Chinese intellectuals with an extensive range of contemporary Western ideas, bodes well not only for contemporary Chinese culture but for us all. We would do well to also remember that China’s public intellectuals, despite their comparative lack of freedom of speech, still command an authority and social relevance that exceeds the role of public intellectuals in the West today. Thus, rather than worry about Chinese patriotism, we might want to reflect on the kind of hospitality we are prepared to accord Chinese ideas, while reminding ourselves that educated Chinese have long accorded hospitality to Western ones. 

Gloria Davies was born in Singapore and trained in Australia, where she teaches Chinese Studies at Monash University.

Xu Guoqi: Beijing Olympic Torch relay and its implications for China and the rest of the world
May 22, 2008

For the 29th Olympiad, Beijing has many ambitious plans including its Olympic torch relay which will traverse the longest distance, cover the greatest area, and involve the largest number of people in Olympic history. The Olympic flame has even reached the peak of the Mt. Everest. Beijing also designed its torch to be so-called “lucky cloud” and chose the theme and slogan of the torch relay as “the journey of harmony” and “light the passion, share the dream,” respectively. However, since the start of the torch relay, it seems that many Westerners did not share the same dream and the torch routes were nothing harmonious. The torch seemed also to have lit anti-Chinese passion among some Western media and politicians. The torch relay legs in London, Paris, and San Francisco were turned into fiascos. Free Tibet groups and human right groups, among others, seemed determined to use the torch relay and the coming Olympic Games to humiliate and shame Beijing and to squeeze concessions from China. Yes, the Olympic flame or “sacred fire” described by the Chinese was heroically brought to the peak of Mt. Everest by Chinese torch bearers on May 8. But the Chinese seemed unable to enjoy the historical moment due to the Western criticism.

For more than a century, China have been obsessed with its dream of joining the West-dominated world system as an equal and respected member. To host the Olympic Games is an important part of this obsession. Through the Olympics, including the ambitious torch relay, the Chinese wanted to prove to the West that they could compete and they were not “Sick Man of East Asia” anymore, and wanted to demonstrate to the world that a new, open, prosperous, and internationalized China has emerged. However, despite the breathtaking fast growth of its economy and rising international power in the last three decades, the Chinese seemed to have suffered what I called in my recent book Olympic Dreams  a “syndrome of can-do spirit and inferiority”. The Chinese are not self-confident and have cried for Western acceptance, recognition, and due respect. To organize the most impressive and ambitious torch relay clearly reflects this seemingly paradoxical feeling. But to the dismay of both the Chinese government and its people, the West seemed not to be impressed by or hostile to the Chinese accomplishment or share the same dream of having a strong and powerful China. Through their coverage and handling of the Beijing torch relay, the West seemed to remind the Chinese they were still not equal and they were still not good enough.

However, perhaps surprising to many ill-informed Westerners, their humiliation of China through politicizing the torch relay and the coming Olympic Games seems to have backfired. Instead of undermining Beijing’s legitimacy and credibility, the torch relay has become a rallying force to mobilize Chinese at home and abroad to support their government and defend China’s honor and has lead to the rise of outpouring of patriotism and nationalism. By trying to use the torch relay and the coming Games as leverage to force China to change its behavior and score political and diplomatic points, the West seems to have alienated the majority of Chinese and lost its credibility among the well-educated young Chinese. Instead of undermining Beijing’s legitimacy, Western misuse of torch relay and the Games has strengthened the Communist regime’s power and support base among its own people. The arrogant attitude of the western politicians to use the torch relay and the coming Games to humiliate and shame China was treated by many Chinese at home and abroad as a collective insult and forced many Chinese to ask whether it is still a good idea for China to follow the Western ideas and norms. In other words, due to the West’s self-inflicted wounds, the Chinese government seems to start to enjoy some popular support and the Chinese people seem to share the government’s dream to make the Games a great success regardless of the West responses and criticisms.

Regardless of their good wish and hope, the year 2008 has seemed to be a year of bad luck for the Chinese before the Olympic Games even start. The terrible snow storm early this year froze most of the nation and destroyed many Chinese celebration plans for spring festival. Then the Tibet unrest in March turned China into a target of world denunciation. In April, there was a deadly train crash, and now in May China was hit with the most deadly earthquake since the PRC was founded. But the year 2008 may prove to be the year of most significance in China’s relations with the world in the long run. What happened to their torch relay in the Western countries will fundamentally change Chinese perception of the West and 2008 may mark the beginning of a fundamentally new way of thinking about themselves and the West. Many thinking Chinese, if they can overcome disasters like this earthquake, and if both government and the people can work together to turn the shared dream into reality, don’t feel they have to prove anything to the West. Rather, they only have to prove to themselves. If the Chinese can successfully overcome the deadly earthquake, they definitely will be able to host a most successful Olympic Games. The Olympic Games is an opportunity for China, but it is also an opportunity for the West to prove to the Chinese that it still has some credibility and still can be trusted. What happened to the torch relay may symbolize the beginning of the end of Chinese romantic feeling for the West and provide a starting point for China’s search for more suitable national identity that is independent of western influence and pressure. If that is the case, the year 2008, in the long run, may indeed be a pivotal and a lucky year for China.  

Xu Guoqi holds the Wen Chao Chen chair in History and East Asian Affairs, Kalamazoo College.