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Mon. Aug 25, 2008

Beijing Olympics, Afterthoughts

When it only comes one every four years, seventeen days can pass awfully fast for someone like me. But the Beijing Olympics have come and gone, and while most of the feared events never occurred, we did learn quite a bit during this couple of weeks.

To me, the Olympics are about the athletes, and it has to be said that China provided first class facilities for the various competitions. I don’t recall a single athlete complaining about sub-standard conditions, and most said the opposite: that the facilities gave them the best chance of an Olympic caliber performance.

These facilities also succeeded quite well aesthetically, in my opinion. In addition to be functionally exceptional for the performing athletes, they were exceptionally well designed. It showed in details, like at some of the indoor events where the athlete has bags of gear, they provided courtside “boxes” that were decorated the same as the court and sideline colors. When the athletes placed their belonging in the box, no clutter was left, only the clean design.

There were a couple of things that were glaringly “off” to me, perhaps because everything else was so “on.” The white water course was simply a concrete tube with bare walls. I realize the hydraulic engineering requires that, to a degree, but we’ve also seen at previous Olympics that you can “naturalize” that concrete channel in many aesthetically pleasing ways. Also, the jumps in the equestrian events looked like they’d been decorated by someone who normally built putt-putt golf courses in Myrtle Beach … extra-super tacky. Given the extra lengths the Chinese went to in other areas, things like those stuck out.

But other than picky details like that, I thought China provided a tremendous environment for the athletes to perform. And perform they did, smashing World and Olympic records in dozens of sports.

But at what cost?

Well, if you want to put a number on it, let’s start with $43 billion. That’s how much China put into facilities and infrastructure upgrades in order to host these Games. That’s about five time more than London plans on spending, and about 15 times what was spent here on the Atlanta Games.

Of course, to keep that vast amount in perspective, $43 billion is also roughly the amount of money China loans to the US every two months, financing our national debt.

There are other costs, visible and invisible. While China had promised a new level of “openness” during the Games, in fact they denied any request to protest in either of the two “designated protest areas,” arrested 9 Americans who engaged in pro-Tibet demonstrations, and reportedly sent two Chinese nationals to be “re-educated” due to their request to be allowed to protest.

While it can said that China has opened up to the world considerably over the past decade or two, it also is abundantly clear that the Chinese government is only interested in opening their doors to the world economically. They are more than happy to profit from our relationship, but do not extend that relationship into areas like human rights or democratic reforms.

And the economic impact has been enormous. China’s “middle class” now outnumbers the entire population of the US, a vast new capitalist market. For example, it’s estimated there are 432 million cell phones in use today in China (up from 87 million in 2000). And, unfortunately, you can see the economic impact in the air, in the form of massive pollution. Even with five to six weeks of enormous efforts to shut down sources of pollution before the Games …. it was still horrific on many days. And we all know that right now those temporarily shut down factories are working overtime to make up.

China may well choke itself.

And if not on pollution, on their severe demographic issues, mostly caused by the “one child policy” enacted in 1979. It has indeed reduced population growth, but at a grave cost. Today, 119 baby boys are born for every 100 girls. The “one child policy” has also created generation of “only children” numbering more than 90 million.

Why do the Chinese so desperately prefer having a boy over a girl? Because in their culture, when the children grow up they provide for their parents in retirement. In fact, 3 in 10 Chinese families have grandparents living in their home. Having a boy, especially in a rural farming area, provides the parents (and their parents) with future security.

And that is why baby girls are often abandoned outside orphanages in rural China, and a very few are lucky enough to grow up to be a Princess in America. But the impact of the “one child policy” and a generation of single children will be long lasting:

China’s immense workforce, key to today’s boom, will shrink after 2015. The country should be able to fill jobs by continuing to tap underemployed rural laborers. But by 2050 close to a third of China’s citizens will be over 60 – three times the current proportion. With little social security or pensions to ease the burden, China’s only children will have to support two parents (and in many cases four grandparents) a piece.

“China: Inside the Dragon,” National Geographic, May 2008

In many ways, China is at its peak. The overwhelming message of these Games, from their overall organization right down to the staging of the Opening Ceremonies themselves, was clear; “China is a country that has vast amounts of people, who can integrate and work together in complete harmony, to accomplish gargantuan tasks … in a way no other country can.”

And it’s hard to argue with that. Despite whatever feelings you might have about the Chinese government, the Chinese people are amazing. Driven in ways we no longer are, awakening as a society in ways that remind me of the US after WWII.

And immensely talented as a group. With an eight year head start, the Chinese sports programs were able to do a “talent search” from a pool of hundreds of millions of youngsters, and then spend years training that talent to be capable of world class performance. 51 gold medals resulted (China only won its first gold medal in 1984), and it seems clear that the Chinese athletes will be a powerful performers in future Olympics as well.

And that’s where I have to bring this full circle to what matters most to me about the Olympics, the athletes and their performances. China provided a first class platform for the Games on that level, even if a bit sterile at times (there were apparently no evening gathering areas like previous Games … people don’t go to China to “party”).

When the Games began, I feared that I would end up having to repeat what I said four years ago after the Games in Athens; “If the Games could have a permanent location, this is where they truly belong.” However, though I still question awarding the Games to China, in the end there were no catastrophes, and few controversies to distract from the performances themselves.

And for someone like me who hates all the parasitic entities that attach themselves to the Olympics and end up drawing criticism to it, that’s got to be labelled a success.