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China, however, still lags hugely behind the West when it comes to the international media. Recently the Chinese government has attempted to expand their international reach, upgrading Xinhua, the state news agency, creating new overseas editions of the People’s Daily and an English-language edition of the Global Times, professionalizing the international broadcasting of CCTV, and enabling satellite subscribers in Asia to receive a package of Chinese cha
THE BEIJING OLYMPICS
Sport is not an activity in which China has traditionally excelled, but over the last twenty years Chinese athletes have become increasingly successful. The government has invested large sums of money in sports facilities in order to try to raise China’s level of achievement, with the main emphasis being on those disciplines represented at the Olympics, where success has been seen as one of the requisite symbols of a major power. Although China has only been competing in the modern era since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, the investment was rewarded at the Athens Olympics in 2004 when China won thirty-two gold medals, behind the US but ahead of Russia. China first applied to hold the Olympics in 1993 but only in 2001 did its bid finally succeed. The 2008 Beijing Olympics was the first occasion that China had ever hosted a great global sporting event and it was clear during the build-up that the Chinese government saw them as an opportunity to demonstrate to the world what China had achieved since 1978. The preparations were enormous and lavish, with little expense spared. Magnificent new stadiums were constructed, new parks laid out, and many new roads and subway lines built — with the Games costing, including the many infrastructural projects, an estimated $43 billion. The centrepiece was the Bird’s Nest, which has rapidly become one of the world’s iconic landmarks — a work, notwithstanding its scale, of beauty, intricacy and intimacy. It was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with the Chinese artist Ai Wei-wei, and contains many traditional Chinese motifs. [1319] The Chinese authorities went to great lengths to try to deal with the pollution that envelopes Beijing on most summer days, including ba
The Games themselves were generally agreed to have been a tour de force. They were very well organized and ran perfectly to time, the athletes were well cared for and there were no serious mishaps. The Chinese topped the medal table for the first time, with fifty-one gold medals compared with thirty-six for the United States, although the latter’s total medal haul exceeded China’s by ten. Arguably the most impressive event was the opening ceremony, which was directed by the Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. The elaborate show included 15,000 performers and a three-part production focused largely on China’s history; it was suffused with many typical Chinese elements, including the choreography of dancers on a giant calligraphy scroll and the serried ranks of 2,008 drummers on a traditional Chinese percussion instrument, the fou. It was a demonstrably confident, sure-footed and highly accessible statement to the world about Chinese history and culture. [1321] After the Games, there was general agreement that China had raised the Olympic bar to a new level which it would be well-nigh impossible for others to equal, let alone surpass; as the baton passed to London, which holds the 2012 Games, there was some trepidation in the UK as to how it might stage an Olympics which did not pale in comparison. Notwithstanding that China is a poor country and Britain a rich one, the UK authorities made it clear from the outset that the 2012 Games will be a much more modest affair.
Apart from the Olympic events, Chinese players have managed to make a mild impact on the te
CHINESE FOOD AND MEDICINE
There are two ways in which China already enjoys a major global cultural influence: food and, to a rather lesser extent, traditional Chinese medicine. The global spread of Chinese cuisine has been taking place for many decades, consequent upon Chinese migration, to the point where it is now highly familiar in most parts of the world. Even if people know little about China, they are often familiar with a Chinese dish or two, and are conversant with chopsticks even if they ca
[1317] Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive, p. 63.
[1318] David Barboza, ‘The Games Are Golden for Beijing Network’, International Herald Tribune, 23–24 August 2008.
[1319] Edwin Heathcote, ‘Power Games’, Financial Times, 19 July 2008; Nicolai Ouroussoff, ‘ Beijing Unveils a Landmark Olympics Stadium’, International Herald Tribune, 7 August 2008.
[1320] Shi Jiangtao and Al Guo, ‘Clear View for the Games?’, South China Morning Post, 21 July 2008.
[1321] Christopher Clarey, ‘Spectacle Has Viewers Floating on Air in Beijing ’, International Herald Tribune, 9-10 August 2008.
[1322] Pete Thamel, ‘Future of NBA Lies in China and Millions of Fans’, International Herald Tribune, 11 August 2008.
[1323] Frank Ching, ‘Sport For All in China’, South China Morning Post, 8 September 2004; Rice, ‘China’s Long March’; Brook Larmer, ‘The Center of the World’, Foreign Policy, September-October 2005; Ian Whittell, ‘How a Small Step for Yao Can Become a Giant leap for China’, The Times, 10 February 2007; Chih-ming Wang, ‘Capitalizing the Big Man: Yao Ming, Asian America, and the China Global’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5: 2 (2004).
[1324] David Y. H. Wu and Sidney C. H. Cheung, eds, The Globalization of Chinese Food (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 2–7; P. Y. Ho and F. P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influence (Singapore: World Scientific, 1998), p. 37.
[1325] Wu and Cheung, The Globalization of Chinese Food, pp. 5–6.
[1326] Ibid., pp. 10–11.
[1327] Ibid., pp. 9-10.