I always enjoy watching the Olympic games. I enjoy the stories of the athletes’ determination, the hard work and mental focus they devote to reaching their goals.
But this year, that enjoyment has been marred by a disturbing note. During the first week of coverage from Sydney, NBC showed a profile of the Chinese system for training gymnasts and other athletes. It is the kind of system that used to be typical of Soviet-bloc countries — a system that could not exist in a free country.
China’s athletes do not come to the sport of their own accord; they are picked by coaches who pluck them out of kindergarten. For these children, their sport is not a hobby or pastime; from the age of 5, they are drilled round the clock at government-run athletic schools. Many board at the school and are rarely allowed to see their families. They are worked brutally hard; one profile showed children grimacing while being twisted into pretzels to improve their flexibility, and an online “photo essay” shows the blistered, bleeding hands of a 9-year-old gymnast.
But worst of all, the primary purpose of this system is not the well-being of the children; a Chinese gymnast explains that they train with “military discipline” and that their goal in winning is to glorify the state.
Such images and statements, if they came from an American gym, would be met with a chorus of protest, and rightly so. The Chinese government is clearly exploiting these children for political gain.
And that’s what was most disturbing about the news reports: there was no such protest. NBC’s profile had a friendly, almost glowing tone, as if this system of athletic work camps were normal. The sportscasters’ remarks consisted of platitudes about the “hard work and sacrifice” that goes into being a champion.
Hard work from an early age is also normal for American gymnasts. But in a free country, children and their parents can choose their coaches, locations, training regimens, and so on. And most important, the purpose of the hard work is supposed to be the child’s own well-being and personal achievement.
By contrast, the Chinese athletes are at the Olympics, not to pursue their own ambitions, but to put a shiny gloss on the country’s dictatorship. This is always how totalitarian countries have treated sports teams, ballet companies, and other showpiece programs. That’s why the Soviets poured billions into a “space race” with the United States — while Russians back on Earth were waiting in line for bread. That’s why Hitler used the 1936 games to showcase his “master race” (a goal famously undermined by black American runner Jesse Owens). And that’s why China works its young athlete-soldiers so hard.
The Chinese athletic system serves two purposes. Like the Soviet space program, it is supposed to bring China international “prestige.” But it is also meant for internal consumption: to show that “military discipline” and subservience to the state bring rewards.
Why has this aspect of the games gone unexamined in the American press?
I know that the Olympics are supposed to be non-political. But that won’t prevent NBC from showing lengthy profiles about the Australian aborigines. And no such kid-gloves treatment is given to American sports coaches. An AP column posted on the same day as NBC’s puff piece on China smears former U.S. gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi for “working (gymnasts) eight hours a day, six days a week, then pass(ing) them off as willing little pixies” — harsh words that have not been directed at China.
Of course, it’s easy to criticize Americans and Australians; journalists are free to do so without fear of reprisal from censors. Not so in China.
But perhaps there are also deeper causes at work. After all, isn’t it politically correct to criticize U.S. “imperialism” and Western “genocide” — while it’s taboo to “criticize other cultures”? Isn’t it enlightened to search for feet of clay on our Founding Fathers — while it’s hysterical “McCarthyism” to denounce the atrocities of Communism? Didn’t our own president travel to China to declare that our past sins give us no high moral ground from which to condemn China’s Tiananmen Square massacre?
China’s athletic training system is not a crucial foreign policy issue. But at a time when vital issues are being decided — when China is being granted special trade status and Congress is investigating the theft of American nuclear secrets — our journalists have an obligation to tell us the unvarnished truth about life under China’s Communist dictatorship.
