Why the Games bring out ugly side of the Chinese

• Keane Shum
• July 30, 2008

 

It is time to heal from the colonial scars and look forwards.

 

THEslogan for the Beijing Olympics is "One World, One Dream". It isplastered in huge print on billboards across China, but no one can tellme which "one dream" it is that we are all supposed to be chasing. Andas the nation fires up its Games preparations, it's also starting tolook less like we all come from the same "one world".

 

Iam working in Beijing for the summer. More than anything else, this isbecause I wanted to be here for the Olympics. I wanted to be a part ofwhat is supposed to be a seminal moment for my people. My parents areChinese originally from Hong Kong and Indonesia who migrated toAustralia in the 1960s. I was born in Sydney. I have never lived inmainland China full-time and may never do so, but because I am Chinese,what happens in China happens to me. Ethnicity runs deep in thiscountry, among its people, and across the oceans of our diaspora. Iwant China to win the most gold medals. I want Chinese brands sold inAmerican department stores.

 

But in the pastsix months, Chinese nationalism has started to scare me. I was shockedat how fiercely young Chinese fought back against Tibet supporters. Ihave been saturated by the Chinese media's self-congratulatoryglorification of the response to an earthquake that should not havekilled 70,000 people. As I get the chance to work on the Olympics andwatch them, I am not elated, as the Chinese Government tells me to be,but, instead, disappointed.

 

I am disappointed that manyChinese people seem to have abandoned the Olympic spirit in the name ofpatriotism. I am disappointed that they are claiming sole ownership ofthese Games as theirs alone to organise as they please so they canprove how far they have come. With less than two weeks to go, theOlympics no longer feel as if they are about nations coming together,leaving their baggage behind, and competing on a level playing field;they seem more about just us Chinese coming together, and dramaticallyshowing ourselves why we are so great and strong. A friend of mine iswilling to bet that the Chinese athlete chosen to light the Olympicflame and officially open the Games will be Jin Jing, the Paralympicfencer who became a national hero when she was accosted in herwheelchair by protesters while she was carrying the Olympic torchthrough Paris.

 

What scares me — in addition to a mobmentality in a country of 1.3 billion people — is that I think at leastpart of this mentality comes from refusing to be the white man'slackey, from wanting to emerge triumphantly from oppression, from aneed to say, "I told you so" to former imperial powers. It scares mebecause I think it comes from a place not so different from whereconversations with my own friends sometimes end up, a place in whichyoung people want not only to deconstruct the mainstream but fight itas well.

 

I fear that the difference between asking why awhite French youth clings to exotic, romanticised notions of Tibet andboycotting French goods because Parisians protested against the Olympictorch relay is sometimes only a matter of degree. And that thedifference, then, between boycotting European goods and expellingEuropeans from the country altogether is also only a matter of degree.I fear that a young Robert Mugabe or Than Shwe also once sat aroundwith his classmates and had passionate discussions about how whitepeople just don't get it. Post-colonial empowerment is vital todevelopment and still has a surprisingly long way to go. But too oftenit masquerades as an excuse for angry, anti-colonial nationalism.

 

Thesefeelings cannot be ignored; in fact, a fundamental problem with howWestern powers often deal with former colonies is that they do simplyignore what to them seem like irrational hang-ups. These feelings needto be acknowledged and only then can we put them behind us. Ourcolonial pasts must matter and then, as soon as they do, they muststart to matter less.

 

So here in Beijing, China deserves toshow off how far it has climbed, but now it must invite others to joinin and take the next steps forward, together. It can be on the track orat the UN Security Council, and it can begin with an Olympic Games thathave always been — and should forever remain — the whole world's toenjoy. And we, the young people for whom borders are no longerboundaries, should be leading the way. Chinese or otherwise, we shouldall be enriched, not burdened, by our new ability to transcend thetraditional categories of a bygone era. Is that not the one world andone dream we're searching for?

 

Keane Shum is an Australian studying law at Georgetown University in Washington.