"One World, Different Dreams": The Contest to Define the Beijing Olympics
by Jacques deLisle Olympic Values, Beijing's Olympic Games and the Universal Market
by Alan Tomlinson
On Seizing the Olympic Platform
by Monroe E. Price The Public Diplomacy of the Modern Olympic Games and China's Soft Power Strategy
by Nicholas Cull "A Very Natural Choice": The Construction of Beijing as an Olympic City during the Bid Period
by Heidi Ostbo Haugen Dreams and Nightmares: History and U.S. Visions of the Beijing Games
by Jeffrey Wasserstrom The Fragility of Asian National Identity in the Olympic Games
by Sandra Collins Journalism and the Beijing Olympics: Liminality with Chinese Characteristics
by Briar Smith "All Under Heaven" — Megaspace in Beijing
by Carolyn Marvin From Athens to Beijing: The Closing Ceremony and Olympic Television Broadcast Narratives
by Christopher Kennett and Miquel de Moragas New Technologies, New Narratives
by Lee Humphreys and Christopher J. Finlay Embracing Wushu: Globalization and Cultural Diversification of the Olympic Movement
by Hai Ren "We Are the Media": Nonaccredited Media and Citizen Journalists at the Olympic Games
by Andy Miah, Beatriz Garcia and Tian Zhihui Definition, Equivocation, Accumulation, and Anticipation: American Media's Ideological Reading of China's Olympic Games
by Sonja K. Foss and Barbara J. Walkosz Towards the Future: The New Olympic Internationalism
by Christopher J. Finlay Beyond Media Events: Disenchantment, Derailment, Disruption
by Daniel Dayan
"One World, Different Dreams": The Contest to Define the Beijing Olympics
by Jacques deLisle The Olympics are as much about politics as they are about sport, notwithstanding frequent calls not to "politicize" the Olympics that come from top officials of the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing Games' hosts and even a U.S. administration that has faced growing criticism for President Bush's early commitment to attend the opening ceremonies. China's leaders hope Beijing 2008 will broadly parallel Seoul 1988, Tokyo 1960 and Munich 1972, serving as a "coming out party" for a rising China and an international "seal of approval" offering rehabilitation—in China's case, from the violent suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement which contributed to the PRC's failure to land the 2000 Olympics. The regime's principal story line thus is to present a prosperous, orderly, internationally "normal" and globalized China. Like other Olympics hosts only more so, the official narrative also includes a very different, strongly nationalist strand—one that risks, and with the torch relay has produced, friction abroad. Some foreign observers hope that the Beijing Olympics will reprise Seoul 1988 or perhaps Moscow 1980 in contributing to the political transformation of a repressive regime. Less sweepingly, foreign and domestic critics of PRC behavior concerning human rights, media freedom, the environment, Chinese citizens' property rights, labor rights, intellectual property and Tibet are trying to seize the Olympic stage and link their issues to the Olympics and Olympic ideals. The unrest in Tibet and the protests dogging the torch provide an early and dramatic example, and an indication of Chinese authorities' response. return to top Olympic Values, Beijing's Olympic Games and the Universal Market
by Alan Tomlinson Having survived waves of political disruption and economic crisis in the years of boycott and under-funded amateurism, the Olympic Games has emerged in the last quarter of a century to establish and consolidate its position as a leading global brand in the international media and consumer markets. Tomlinson's analysis of the sponsors of the Beijing 2008 event—the so-called Olympic partners of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)—highlights this narrative of growth and expansion. Drawing upon promotional documents and materials from the Beijing bid, other bidding cities' use of Olympic rhetoric and ritual, the public rhetoric of the Beijing hosts and the privileged and preferred 2008 sponsors, Tomlinson subjects the claimed values and missions of the Olympic bodies and corporate partners to a critical scrutiny demonstrating the increasingly corrosive capacity of the universal market to negate or collude with purportedly cosmopolitan and universalizing cultural forces. return to top On Seizing the Olympic Platform
by Monroe E. Price Because of the centrality of China and narratives of China in the global and domestic imagination, the stakes in producing and controlling the stories produced through the Beijing Olympics have been great. Through this, the event has become something of a watershed for altering perceptions and engendering change. This chapter looks at the 2008 Olympics as a case study for the idea of hijacking or seizure-exemplified by the protests that have erupted in recent weeks around the Olympic Torch Relay. Price looks at the more abstract questions surrounding "platforms," as the thing that is hijacked, looking at the category as a relatively underexplored vehicle for systematic communication. He then turns to the historic use of the Olympics as a platform and, finally, identifies a few examples of external civil society advocacy groups and others seeking to seize the Olympic platform to exploit the 2008 Olympics to their advantage. He dwells specifically on a campaign to increase China's pressure on Sudan over the Darfur crisis. return to top The Public Diplomacy of the Modern Olympic Games and China's Soft Power Strategy
by Nicholas Cull This chapter introduces the concepts of public diplomacy and soft power and looks first at their relationship to the modern Olympic movement and then at the evolution of Chinese practice in the field. The Olympics are presented as having served as public diplomacy for peace, as a theatre for national prestige and as an arena in which political agendas at odds with the organizer's intent can challenge the official narrative of the games. China's growing fixation with world opinion is analyzed with reference to Confucius and the cultural emphasis on image or face; its history is traced through from international propaganda of the revolutionary era through to the pivotal tenure of Zhao Qizheng as minister at the helm of the State Council Information Office (SCIO) in the 1990s, and on to the immediate run up to the Games. Publicity materials prepared for the Games are analyzed, as are some of the emerging challenges to the Chinese narrative for Beijing. The chapter concludes that the Games are a high risk strategy as neither the negative aspects of modern China nor the attempt by other voices like Tibet to claim the Olympic spotlight can be easily dodged in the era of the internet. |
