Less Than 100 Days to Olympics, Beijing Games Seem "Not Lucky"

The opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics are less than 100 days away and already Chinese people are starting to say hosting the Olympics in China is, perhaps, “Not Lucky.”

In a nation and culture obsessed by luck, or as they say, "Good Fortune," it is almost as if China's luck has run out.
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Sidebar

Fu is one of the most popular Chinese characters used in the Chinese New Year. It means "luck" or "good fortune." It is often posted upside down on the front door of a house or an apartment. The upside down fu means good luck came since the character for upsite down in Chinese sounds the same as the character for came.

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To show, in some small way, the depth of China's love for "luck," we offer this.  Marking one year until the opening of the Beijing Olympics, last August 8, China started a massive public diplay in Tiananmen Square at the 8th hour, the 8th minute and the 8th second.

Next August 8, the opening of the Beijing Games will commence on the 8th day of the 8th month of 2008 on the 8th second of the 8th minute after the 8 PM hour.

Eight is lucky in China!

The problem is, Tiananmen Square is no longer considered lucky.
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After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, widely known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, China's state controlled communist media said that a student protest had been "disbursed."

Unfortunately for China, there were many witnesses to that “disbursal” who lived to tell the tale.  I even talked to some who had horror stories of Chinese repression that were easily verified and “fact checked” person to person.  These folks were not lying.  They were eye witnesses to repression of the harshest kind.
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So with the bad luck of Tiananmen overshadowing these Summer Games. we looked at several facets of China's national life that seemed "Not Lucky" since the International Olympic Committee announced that Beijing would host the 2008 Summer Games.  That announcement came in Moscow on July 13, 2001. 

July 13 is "not lucky."

The Associated Press reported, "The International Olympic Committee put aside human rights concerns in making their historic decision, hoping to foster further change in the world's most populous country. In a gesture that has global, political and economic repercussions, China won the games for the first time in a landslide vote over Toronto, Paris, Istanbul, Turkey, and Osaka, Japan."

But since that time China's reputation in the eyes of the world is that of a stumbling bear, not the svelte athlete.

We review here some of China's major difficulties and activities since 2001.  There have been serious transportation and public safety problems, social maladies, a lack of freedoms other nations take for granted, a bewildered medical establishment, a burgeoning economy and a military in resurgence.

But overall, it seems, in a nation and culture preoccupied with “Good Fortune” or luck, the run up to the Olympics has been a “train wreck.”

In fact, just this last week, China witnessed a real train wreck on the railroad line serving the Olympic sailing venue at Qingdao.

The accident killed as many as 70 and put about 250 people in the hospital in east China’s Shandong province. It was the worst railroad accident to hit the nation in more than a decade.

The site of the accident, near the city of Zibo, is about 70 kilometres (44 miles) from Jinan.

The accident underscored the way many Chinese people view rules and regulations.  The train engineer was speeding and perhaps as many as 100 of the dead and seriously injured were standing in the train car’s aisles.  Rules clearly state that all passengers must be seated whenever that train is rolling.  The train’s conductor was not enforcing the rules.

The engineer said he was speeding because he was late leaving his last station.  The problem at the station involved a lack of supervision by railroad personnel who allowed passengers to mingle in confusion while they should have been queueing up for an orderly boarding of the train.

In a rare example to China’s ability to respond to a crisis quickly and with force, top officials and soldiers were immediately dispatched to Zibo, the site of Monday’s pre-dawn crash in eastern China’s Shandong province. Within hours, two railway officials were unceremoniously fired.  A third rail official was fired a few days later.

Why such an impressive response by the communist government of China? Because the rail line will be chocked full of Olympic tourists (the Chinese hope) this August and China already has plenty of bad news negatively impacting the Olympics.

Far above: train cars lay as twisted wreckage this week.  Near above: This is what a Chinese train SHOULD look like….

Disease

Also this last week the official China news organization, Xinhua reported that a disease outbreak killed 22 children.

Reuters reported on May 2, 2008, “A deadly virus has spread rapidly in eastern China, killing at least 21 children and infecting nearly 3,000, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.”

“Enterovirus 71 began spreading in Fuyang in the eastern province of Anhui in early March but authorities only reported it publicly on Sunday, saying there had been 789 cases.”

“By Thursday, the number had risen to 2,946, Xinhua said.”

“Enteroviruses are spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faeces and can cause high fever, paralysis and swelling of the brain or its lining. There are no vaccines or antiviral agents available to treat or prevent the virus .”

“‘There was one more fatality on Thursday afternoon, so the latest death toll is 21,’ Xinhua said, citing Anhui’s health chief.”

“The delay in reporting the virus to the public has triggered heated discussion and criticism in the Chinese media, which said local government officials should be sacked.”

The delay in reporting a problem is pretty common in China.

The Associated Press had this to report:

“China’s Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday calling for heightened efforts to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and shows signs of spreading.”
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“Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot and mouth disease following a ‘relatively large’ outbreak in the central city of Fuyang, the Health Ministry said in notices on its Web site.”

No drugs or medications have stopped the disease.... [snip]
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The ministry warned that cases were more numerous this year than in any recent years, and the peak for transmission would likely come in June and July.

The Olympics is set to open August 8, 2008.  Talk about “not lucky.”

Tibet

China’s record on human rights in Tibet is abysmal.  Despite the fact that China has been taking over Tibet and abusing the Tibetan people since the 1950s, many Westerners could not even find Tibet on a map until just this last year.

The impending Olympics in Beijing turned out to be a catalyst for Tibetan human rights activists of all kinds and from all over.  And China was kind enough to provide a focal point in many countries in the form of the round-the-world Olympic torch run.

Anti-China protesers turned out in droves.  All the hoopla gave China a terrific pre-Olympic black eye.

China tried to blame the aged holy man, the Dalai Lama.  But he looks like a sympathetic man and not a terrorist to just about ever citizen of the world except the Chinese....

[snip]

The China government has a three phase plan for dealing with a crisis. The food safety scandal gives us a perfect example.

Phase one is denial, phase two is a flurry of activity that does little good but serves to distract the media, and phase three is the “come clean and solve (or at least seem to solve) the problem phase.”

In 2003, China faced an epidemic of a disease called Severe Acute Reparatory Syndrome (SARS).
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As the story broke that the disease was reaching epidemic proportions in Vietnam and Singapore, China didn’t make a sound.
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Then China started issuing denials. This is Phase One.  Sure enough, after many denials of any medical problem in China, news reports began to come out of China that it, too, was experiencing SARS but that the problem was being competently managed. Phase Two was on.

Near the end of the crisis China began to escort news people around hospitals and other facilities to demonstrate the professionalism and medical readiness of China’s system. Phase three.

It was then that many realized the government of China responded the same way to every crisis...

Minor Civil Diobedience

Minor forms of civil diobedience abound in China and despite great effort on the part of the Beijing government, some of these will undoubtedly be on display during the Olympics.  Men who have been told not to smoke in public, on the metro or in eateries will probably smoke anyway.  Public spitting and urination will probably become issues -- they often do in Beijing. You might come upon a husband beating his wife on the street in Beijing.  Usually this is ignored as an "internal family matter" -- just as Beijing considers human rights abuses an "internal China matter" and no business of the international community....
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Read the rest by linking to:
“Not Lucky” Beijing Olympics
or link to:
http://johnibiii.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/not-lucky-beijing-olympics/

Remaining topics include:
Tibet, China’s Crisis Response Formula, Darfur, Food Safety, Smog and Air Pollution, Human Rights, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Military.....

Players in the drama include:
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Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama

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Jacques Rogge of the IOC

 
Jin Jing
 
Steven Spielberg

 
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Director Michael Hayden

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Humanitarian and actor Richard Gere

胡锦涛 Hu Jintao