Paralympic prejudice

For the most part, sports coverage changes the way they feel but I believe the Paralympics is one of very few events that genuinely change the way people think.

Wheelchair-friendly London cabs with distinctive Beijing taxi livery are waiting outside the Bird's Nest stadium, buses fitted with ramps cruise the city and all over the capital there are banners and bunting proclaiming the arrival of 4,200 disabled athletes for the Paralympics, which start this weekend.

But it is not until you are inside the Paralympic Village itself that you see a single Chinese person in a wheelchair or one with any other obvious disabilities; China's 83 million disabled are a largely invisible presence in a country where disabilities are viewed as a source of shame in some families, particularly in urban areas, and where discrimination is widespread.

The Paralympics are being hailed as an opportunity for China to deal with these deep prejudices and as a catalyst for improving the situation for people with disabilities in China. Experience in other cities hosting the Paralympics has shown that the situation for the disabled improves after the Games. Cynics in the city say that the Paralympics will do as much to change prejudices against the disabled in China as the Olympics did to improve human rights. Precious little, in fact.

Disabled people face enormous difficulty getting jobs and health care. Many of China's 12 million blind people can take jobs only as blind masseurs at special blind-massage parlours. Disabled Chinese are regularly referred to as can fei, which basically means "useless cripple", although there have been efforts to have disabled people referred to by the direct translation can ji ren.

In May, an official guide for Olympic volunteers had to be rewritten after it characterised the disabled as "stubborn and controlling" and "unsocial and introspective". The shocking references were attributed to a translation error, and the Beijing organisers were deeply embarrassed by the way the media launched a broadside over the story, although the Chinese version was pretty similar, in effect.


The May earthquake in Sichuan, which killed upwards of 170,000 people, left many thousands of people maimed, as rescuers were often forced to perform quick amputations to rescue people from the rubble. A commonly expressed fear among the parents of children who had lost limbs in the quake was that they would not now be allowed to take the college entrance examination, because students must pass a medical examination first which often bars disabled people from entry.

Yang Yang, who has been in a wheelchair since a swimming accident at the age of 10, lives in Chengdu in Sichuan province, where wheelchair access is primitive. But he said: "China has made a lot of improvements for disabled people. As to Chinese people's attitude to disabled people, I think people have changed. The Paralympics will be an opportunity for China and Chinese people to pay more attention to disabled people. What worries me most is that all these good things, people's attention and the many special facilities, cannot last forever. I hope these things are not just for a short while. I hope China can persevere in doing these things."