2008 Games in Beijing

[MHS Fencer]

Remember what happened the last time they had a Great Leap Forward - massive starvation. I think that we're rewarding human rights abuses by giving them the games. That said, I'm still going to make the squad and win a metal .


-Ian

[veeco]

Well human rights are abused in many countries. The US are not clean with that either (the death penalty for example is not accepted by the UN, I think) and the Games have been in the US many times. France for example was also bidding and they are not clean as well. All in all, it is going to be very hard to host the games every time in a perfect country, that's the image of a society that is perfect and where no nutcase is going to start putting bombs, or where people are always treated nicely without respect to their race, age, sex, etc.

Also I don't think it is a good idea to politicize sport too much. Beijing has never had the Games, so let them have it, and hopefully they will make something great out of it. If they don't too bad, we'll just have to wait another 4 years until we get better ones. Or 2 years if you watch the winter games.

[Pommel]

This is a very complicated issue that strikes very strong emotional cords with a lot of people and I'm not going to attempt to comment on the "morality" of China hosting the Olympic Games. What I will say is that any American illusions that this will "open up China" and stir the Chinese people into open rebellion is false. The Chinese people do not live under a rock, they have Coca-Cola just like the rest of us and descriptions of Disney Land aren't likely to impress them. One of the reasons the Party has been able to maintain such continued control of the nation is their integration of capitalist economic theory and consummerism into the Chinese Communist system. Furthermore the Party itself has moved more toward a merit based system of advancement within the bureaucracy and party officials now move onto positions as CEOs of Chinese corporations. The fact of the matter is that the Chinese are supporting a consumer culture in their Communist country, and to think that the Olympic Games are going to be a wake up call to material wealth is as backward a notion as I can think of.