identify an important concept, theory, or insight about globalization that you learned in Steger Chap. 1 and discuss it in r
identify an important concept, theory, or insight about globalization that you learned in Steger Chap. 1 and discuss it in relation to the assigned readings by Brownell "Beijing Olympics" and Taylor "North Korean Mass Games." (maximum 400 words; approximately three paragraphs)
Just a reminder. need a 400 words, three paragraphs response papaer. Don't use reference and citation, this paper will scanned by Turnitin,,,,Be original…Thanks
The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 7 | Issue 23 | Number 4 | Jun 2009
1
The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? China’s First Olympics in East Asian Perspective
Susan Brownell
The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? China’s First Olympics in East Asian Perspective
Susan Brownell
It is commonly stated that the 1964 and 1988 O l y m p i c s w e r e “ t u r n i n g p o i n t s ” f o r t h e i n t e g r a t i o n o f J a p a n a n d S o u t h K o r e a , respectively, into the global community. It was anticipated that the Beijing Olympics would be a “turning point” for China. Now that the Beijing Games are over, we can ask whether anything “turned,” and if so, in which direction? This essay deals with a central paradox of the Olympic Games – they reinforce nationalism and internationalism at the same time. A one-sided focus on nationalism, such as characterized much of the media coverage of the Beijing Olympics, can lead to the erroneous conclusion that the Olympic Games exacerbate rather than moderate political conflicts. Wishful thinking that the Beijing Games would be a turning point for h u m a n r i g h t s a n d d e m o c r a c y l e d t o t h e conclusion by China watchers in the West that the Beijing Games were not the turning point that was hoped for. However, reflection on what actually “turned” in Japan and South Korea helps us to see what we should actually be looking for in the case of China. This retrospective suggests that the interplay between nationalism and internationalism was similar in all three Olympic Games, and offers a more optimistic prospect for C h i n a ’ s p e a c e f u l i n t e g r a t i o n i n t o t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o m m u n i t y .
Most of the modern Olympic Games held between 1896 and 1988 took place in the shadow of wars, past, present, and future. The political
a n i m o s i t y s u r r o u n d i n g B e i j i n g 2 0 0 8 w a s especially highlighted by contrast with the comparatively tranquil background of the four preceding Olympics. The Albertville 1992 Winter Games had been the first Olympics in history considered to have “100% participation,” with no boycotts or IOC-dictated exclusions (in addition to these reasons, before World War II nations often did not compete for lack of funding or indifference from the central government). South Africa’s exclusion since 1964 had ended in 1988, but the tail end of the Cold War had extended into the Seoul Games with the boycott by North Korea, Cuba, and Ethiopia. The Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics were marred only by the IOC’s barring of Yugoslavia; both there and at the preceding Albertville Games, the former Soviet Union was represented by the Unified Team. From the Barcelona Olympics onward the Games were considered to forward integration and reconciliation, and the political issues that dominated public opinion were domestic or regional (Catalonian sovereignty in Barcelona 1992; the rise of the American South and racial integration in Atlanta 1996; Aboriginal rights in Sydney 2000; Greece taking its place as a respected EU member in 2004).
Although after the Tibetan uprisings in March 2008 some Chinese expressed the hope that the B e i j i n g O l y m p i c s m i g h t p r o m o t e e t h n i c reconciliation like that between Aborigines and Whites in Sydney 2000, a closer look would have r e v e a l e d t h a t i n A u s t r a l i a t h e w o r k o f reconciliation through the Olympic Games had begun at least as early as 1996, when the use of aboriginal symbols in the Sydney segment of the Atlanta closing ceremony had provoked protest.
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
2
In Beijing, however, the use of ethnic minority symbols, including Tibetan symbols, was notably absent in the opening ceremony, which was especially significant since the use of dancing and singing minorities to symbolize national unity is a c o m m o n f i x t u r e i n C h i n e s e n a t i o n a l celebrations. The restoration of dialogue with the Dalai Lama and a discussion about whether to invite him to the opening ceremony only emerged after the March uprisings, which suggests that previous to that time no serious attempt had been made to utilize the Games toward reconciliation between Tibetans and Han. Indeed, the National Traditional Games of Ethnic Minorities of the People’s Republic of China, which had been one of the showpieces of the P.R.C.’s ethnic policy since their initiation in 1953, suffered from a lack of attention due to the focus on the Olympics when the 8th installment was held in Guangzhou in December 2007. Most of the opening ceremonies performers were Han students dressed as minorities and many of the athletes were Han students at sport institutes recently recruited to learn “traditional ethnic sports.”
Another reconciliation that did not take place at a symbolic level was that between the people and the Communist Party as represented in the figure of Chairman Mao. As Geremie Barmé and Jeffrey Wasserstrom have observed, Chairman Mao was absent in Zhang Yimou’s opening ceremony, which skipped from the Ming dynasty to the late 1970s and gave the spotlight to Confucius, whom Wasserstrom has called “the comeback kid” of the Beijing Games. [1] The Communist Revolution was also generally absent from Olympic symbolism. This was due to a decision that traced its roots back to the 1990 Asian Games, China’s first hosting of a major international sport festival. The cultural performance in the Asian Games ceremony had been choreographed by the same national team of choreographers that had designed the cultural performances for the previous three Chinese National Games – starting in 1979 with the first
post-Cultural Revolution performance, which had the theme “The New Long March.” The themes and symbols utilized by this team of choreographers had gradually evolved away from the political symbols that dominated ceremonies after 1949 and toward “cultural symbols.” The 1990 Asian Games had taken place one year after the Tiananmen Incident, w h i c h h a d b e e n a d i s a s t e r f o r C h i n a ’ s international relations and a severe setback for its plans to reach out to the world through the Asian Games. (The Asian Games were, nevertheless, the occasion for the first official cross-straits exchanges, and Taiwan sent a large official delegation.)[2] In 1990 it was recognized that “ethnic cultural” (民族文化)symbols were more attractive to the outside world in general and also constituted a shared cultural repertoire with East Asians and overseas Chinese.[3]
B y t h e t i m e t h e p l a n n i n g f o r t h e B e i j i n g ceremonies had begun, this strategy for drawing in international audiences was known as the “cultural China” (文化中国)strategy. It traced its roots to multiple international developments, including the 1980s and 1990s works of Harvard historian and philosopher Tu Weiming and other “New Confucianists,” as well as government policies for promoting the “cultural industry” in Japan and South Korea in the mid to late 1990s; the international orientation of the Korean cultural policies had gained impetus from the 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.[4] “Cultural China” was also expressed in t h e C h i n e s e g o v e r n m e n t ’ s s u p p o r t f o r “Confucius Institutes” around the world, and it was linked to Hu Jintao’s concept of “soft power.” For the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a key policy recommendation from the People’s University concluded, “On this basis, we cautiously propose that in the construction of China’s national image, we should hold the line on ‘cultural China,’ and the concept of ‘cultural China’ should not only be the core theme in the dialogue between China and the international community in Olympic discourse, but also it
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
3
should be added into the long-term strategic plan for the national image afterwards”[5]. Although the vast majority of educational and cultural programs surrounding the Beijing Olympics targeted the domestic population (see the discussion of Olympic education below), a debate about the target audience for the opening and closing ceremonies was resolved in favor of the international audience. Film director Zhang Yimou, the choreographer of the ceremonies, is not well-regarded inside China, where his work is seen as pandering to Western tastes with a superficial and exoticized picture of traditional Chinese culture. His “Eight Minute Segment” in the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics was so disliked that the bid competition for the choreography of the 2008 ceremonies was re- opened. That Zhang was finally re-confirmed in 2005 indicates that the final decision was to prioritize international tastes over domestic.
Tang Dynasty Symbolism in the Opening Ceremony. From BOCOG official website
(http://en.beijing2008.cn)
In the end, the only significant violence did not pit sovereign states against one another but took place in China’s Tibetan areas. However, this should not mislead us into thinking that the Beijing Games did not take place in the shadow of war – a point that, I believe, was very present in the minds of the East Asian audience but was missed by Westerners with shorter and more spatially distant memories. And it is important to remember that the Beijing Olympics were the
first Olympics to take place in an East Asian country that is not host to U.S. military bases. This was the “present absence” in 2008 in comparison to Tokyo 1964 and Seoul 1988.
Shimizu Satoshi, Christian Tagsold, and Jilly Traganou remind us that many of the symbols of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics established continuity with pre-war Japanese national symbols.[6] Japan did not have an official national flag or anthem in 1964: the hi no maru flag and the kimi g a y o a n t h e m h a d b e e n p r o s c r i b e d b y t h e occupation authorities after World War II and were not officially reinstated as the national flag and anthem of Japan until 1999, and indeed, they have been plagued by controversy ever since. However, the logo of the Tokyo Olympics consisted of the rising sun over the five Olympic rings, which was also used in the first of the four official posters. While designer Kamekura Yūsaku denied that his design was the hi no maru, stating that it was meant simply to be a red sun, he had played an active role in nationalist representations of Japan in wartime propaganda.
Tokyo Olympic Poster. From IOC official website (http://www.olympic.org)
The 1964 torch relay was the longest held to that date; indeed, a sense of rivalry with Japan’s coming-out party may well have been a principal
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
4
reason that China insisted on holding the largest- ever international torch relay. The Tokyo 1964 torch passed from its origin in Olympia, Greece, across the Middle East and Asia, into countries that Japan had once invaded, finishing with Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan (but not Korea) – and then on to Okinawa, which at that time remained a U.S. military colony. The Mainichi Shimbun wrote, “In Okinawa, it gave power, hope and encouragement to the islanders who are longing for the day when America returns Okinawa to Japan.”[7] Indeed, an Okinawan movement for reversion to Japan was gaining strength as the Olympics neared. During the relay in Okinawa, hi no maru flags were waved by spectators on the roadside and the kimi gayo anthem was played, which, as Tagsold points out, lent cultural weight to Japan’s claim to Okinawa.
In Tagsold’s accompanying essay, the role of the genbakuko (atom boy), and the Self-Defense forces in the opening ceremony offer points of comparison with the Beijing Olympics, as does his argument that the Tokyo Olympics enabled the “re-nationalization” of Japan by associating the classical national symbols (flag, anthem, emperor, military) with the Olympic symbols of internationalism and peace. This subtle symbolic shift was largely unremarked in the West, and the concomitant absence of international contestation contributes to today’s recollection of the Tokyo Olympics as a peaceful turning point in Japan’s integration into the international community. Tagsold also argues that Sakai’s igniting of the torch enabled Japan to assume the role of victim in World War II as the first nation to bear the brunt of atomic attack.[4] While detailed scholarship on U.S. and Asian reactions to the use of symbols associated with emperor, nation and the Asia Pacific War in Tokyo 1964 is lacking, it appears that neither the U.S. nor the Asian victims of Japanese colonialism and war publicly opposed the use of symbols representing Japan’s “re-nationalization” or its claim on Okinawa.
Before the Beijing 2008 Games, the major regional tension – between China and Taiwan – flared up in April 2007 over the route of the torch relay, when Taiwan insisted that the torch must enter Taiwan and exit through a third country so that it w o u l d n o t b e p o r t r a y e d a s a t e r r i t o r y o f mainland China with a dependent status similar to that of Hong Kong and Macao. Given the huge IOC effort to mediate between China and Taiwan in the decades of China’s exclusion from the IOC (1958-1979), it was significant that no high-profile negotiations were held and five months later it was simply announced that Taiwan would be bypassed – but this can be understood if one realizes that this was actually a peripheral affair by Olympic standards, since no boycott of the Olympic Games was being proposed and that is the central concern of the IOC. The IOC organizes the Olympic Games, but the local organizing committee organizes the t o r c h r e l a y . T h e b a s i c p r o b l e m o f t h e participation of both parties in the Olympic Games had been resolved decades beforehand by the IOC’s 1979 Nagoya Resolution stipulating that Taiwan cannot use any of the national symbols of the Republic of China in Olympic venues, but must compete under the name, flag and anthem of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee. This “Olympic formula” is today the agreement that enables the participation of both Taiwan and China in many other international organizations. The China-Taiwan tension was eased by the March 2008 election of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s President, opening a new page in China-Taiwan diplomacy.
Like all host countries, China attempted to use the Olympic Games to promote its own agendas. The torch relay was intended to symbolize national unity when it announced that the international relay would advance from Vietnam to Taiwan and on to Hong Kong. Taiwan, however, refused to take part in a route that represented Taiwan as a domestic stop (although i t w a s a g r e e d t h a t t h e n e u t r a l w o r d 海 外,“overseas,” would be used to describe the
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
5
relay before the torch landed on the mainland, r a t h e r t h a n t h e p r o b l e m a t i c 国 际 , “international”). In stark contrast to the U.S.’s laissez-faire approach to Okinawa in 1964, the P . R . C . g o v e r n m e n t m a i n t a i n e d a n uncompromising position against any symbols of Taiwanese (or Tibetan) independence and sovereignty. The Parade of Athletes in the opening ceremony provoked minor issues that were mostly missed by the non-Chinese-speaking world. When the first cross-straits sports exchange was to take place at the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, the Chinese translation of the English “Chinese Taipei” became a point of c o n t e n t i o n . T h e m a i n l a n d h a d t y p i c a l l y translated it as Zhongguo Taibei(中国台北), but Taiwan translated it as Zhonghua Taibei(中 华台北), a distinction of one character that makes little difference even to Chinese speakers except that, if one were to split hairs, one might understand Zhongguo as implying “Chinese national territory” and Zhonghua as implying “Chinese people.” The 1989 agreement between the two sides had stated that China would allow Taiwan to use Zhonghua Taibei in official Olympic venues, but China would retain its customary usage in non-official settings, including media coverage and sports announcing in Mainland events. Leading up to the opening ceremony, there had been rumblings in the Taiwanese media that if Taiwan were to be announced as Zhongguo Taibei when it entered the stadium, then Taiwan should boycott the G a m e s ; t h i s w a s b a s e d o n a n e r r o n e o u s understanding of the agreement and actually was never in question. When Taiwan entered the stadium, it was announced in English, then in French, and finally in Mandarin as Zhonghua Taibei. When Chinese Hong Kong entered, it was announced according to Mainland custom as Zhongguo Xianggang. Another problem had been created by the Chinese decision to use Chinese character stroke order in determining the order of the entering nations, because this put Chinese Taipei and Chinese Hong Kong next to each other – China as the host country marched in
last, and so it was not a factor. As with the torch relay, Taiwan refuses to march adjacent to China in the Parade because it would symbolize it as a province of China; this is a problem in English, as well, which has been solved by having Taiwan march with the “T’s.” The problem was solved by inserting the Central African Republic between Taiwan and Hong Kong – since “China” literally means “central country,” the Central African Republic shares the character zhong with them. Ironically, the stroke order placed Japan before Chinese Taipei, but with Taiwan’s former colonial status no longer problematic for Taiwanese identity, this was not an issue.
Chinese Taipei enters the stadium in the opening ceremony. Source
(http://tw.people.com.cn/GB/7636145.html)
As in the lighting of the torch by Sakai in 1964, the incident in the Paris leg of the torch relay, when a Tibetan protester tried to wrench the torch away from a young Chinese female Paralympic athlete in a wheelchair, produced an image of China as a victim that received a great deal of attention in the Chinese media. The victimization function was further carried out by the nine year-old survivor from the Sichuan earthquake disaster area who entered the stadium beside the flagbearer, basketball icon Yao Ming, in the opening ceremony. The small flag carried by the boy was upside down, an international nautical symbol for distress. H o w e v e r , i t a p p e a r e d t h a t t h e b o y h a d
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
6
unintentionally flipped the flag, because no official explanation was issued, and Xinhua news agency requested clients not to use a photo of it shortly after sending it out. While not as forceful as the image of Japan victimized by the atom bombs, within China these symbols did preserve the Chinese narrative of victimization in the midst of the most grandiose Olympics ever.
Yao Ming, flagbearer for China, enters the stadium with Lin Hao, earthquake survivor.
Source (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/0
8/content_9057855.htm)
Looking back on the 1964 torch relay and Olympics from the perspective of 2008, one wonders why the Tokyo Games did not incite a furor as the Beijing Games did. Given the extensive Japanese atrocities associated with colonialism and war and Japan’s failure to make effective apologies and reparations to victims at that time, the key symbols and torch relay seem even more inflammatory than those surrounding the Beijing Games. Tagsold’s accompanying essay argues that the symbolic work was sufficiently subtle to bypass domestic legal and moral arguments, and few Western observers were aware of the ongoing conflicts between
Japan and the nations it had occupied and colonized a generation earlier. But, he argues, more important was the general historical context; in the Cold War era, the effort to delimit the Olympic Games as “apolitical” was stronger than it is now because the international political stakes were higher. I would argue that in 1964 this produced a stronger “will not to know” than was present in 2008. One big difference is that the 2008 Olympics were a media mega-event far exceeding what the Tokyo Olympics were, and this provided a platform for human rights and Tibetan NGOs with a higher level of media savvy and organization than had heretofore been seen in the Olympic context. It was easy to be misled by the heat of the media coverage into believing t h a t p r o f o u n d “ p o l i t i c a l ” c o n f l i c t s w e r e occurring. However, closer examination reveals that there was no serious momentum toward national boycotts of the Games, and more national Olympic committees (204) and national representatives (over 100 “national dignitaries,” of which about 80 were “heads of state”) took part in the opening ceremony than in any previous Games. It was the first opening ceremony attended by an American president outside of the U.S. From my position as a Fulbright Researcher in Beijing with regular contact with the U.S. embassy, I felt that the Bush administration strongly wanted these Games to take place and to be successful. Well-informed observers such as He Zhenliang, China’s senior IOC member and sports diplomat, felt that Sino- U.S. relations had been strengthened through the Games and perhaps had become closer than they had ever been since 1949.
As in Tokyo, soldiers had a large presence in the Beijing Olympics, including the participation of 9,000 People’s Liberation Army soldiers in the cultural performance of the opening ceremony. The Chinese “riot police” (防暴警 , literally “violence-prevention police”), had high visibility during the Olympic Games. This is a category of security personnel whose domestic numbers and functions had been expanded in 2005, at the same
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
7
time that China also started sending riot police on U.N. peacekeeping missions. Clad in black, physically bigger (many are former wushu and judo athletes), and more highly trained and educated than the regular and armed police, they were brought out in large numbers to protect sensitive locations in Beijing. Their training drills were shown on CCTV in dramatic ways that promoted a positive image of them as anti- terrorist police ready to help evacuate a stadium in case of a bomb or to secure the release of innocent spectators taken hostage. The riot police are more frequently deployed to control the local populace than to deal with terrorists – indeed, on the night of the opening ceremony I watched them clear out the crowd that had gathered in the square at the central train station to watch the opening ceremony on the big-screen TV, when the security personnel decided the c r o w d w a s t o o b i g a n d t h e s i t u a t i o n w a s dangerous. However, the effect of the Olympic coverage may have been similar to that described by Tagsold for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces – their image was improved by linking them with keeping the peace at the Olympics.
The author posing with a soldier guarding the VIP lane at the closing ceremony, following the
example of Chinese spectators.
One more point in Tagsold’s analysis is also relevant to Beijing. He observes that the p l a n n i n g o f t h e s y m b o l i s m o f t h e T o k y o
Olympics and the opening ceremonies was led by the Ministry of Education, which controlled most of the interpretation of national symbols from 1959 onward.[9] Masumoto Naofumi has recently brought to the attention of Anglophone scholars the fact that formal educational initiatives related to the Olympic Games were organized outside of the organizing committee for the first time in the context of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games.[10] Building on his work, I have argued that since that time there has been a n “ E a s t A s i a n s t r e a m ” i n t h e “ O l y m p i c Education” initiatives that have surrounded the Games, which has been ignored by Eurocentric scholars.[11] From 1961 to 1964 the Ministry of Education distributed four Olympic readers and guidebooks to primary and secondary schools and colleges nationwide. Two books were produced by the organizing committee for distribution to schoolteachers from 1960-61: 1,000 copies of The Glorious Tokyo Olympics (130 pages) were distributed in Kanto area schools and 1,000 copies of Olympic Facts & Figures for Teachers’ Use (36 pages) were distributed to school teachers. In addition to school textbooks and school activities, the Ministry of Education promulgated the “Citizens’ Olympic Games Movement” aimed at educating the people in the streets about the Olympics, increasing national pride, and improving understanding of foreign countries.[12]
The important role played by the Japanese Ministry of Education is particularly illuminating for a comparison with the Beijing Olympics. With the support of the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission in collaboration with the Beijing Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) organized the largest Olympic Education program ever implemented by a host city. When this effort began, the director of the educational programs for the 1998 Nagano Winter Games was invited twice to Beijing for consultation. Nagano’s “One School, One Country” sister school program was adopted
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
8
(this program has been utilized in every summer and winter Olympics since 1998, excepting the 2004 Athens Olympics). Beijing quickly far exceeded what Nagano had done – a source of pride due to the rivalry with Japan. A total of 200 primary and secondary schools in Beijing City and another 356 schools nationwide were d e s i g n a t e d a s “ O l y m p i c E d u c a t i o n Demonstration Schools,” which were responsible for devoting at least two hours per month to Olympics-related activities, and for conducting “hand-in-hand sharing” activities with other schools and the surrounding community. The third theme of the Beijing Olympics – the 人文奥 运 ( t r a n s l a t e d a s “ P e o p l e ’ s O l y m p i c s ” o r “Humanistic Olympics”) also drew on the concept of the 1964 “Citizen’s Olympic Games Movement” but unfolded it on a much larger scale. China’s effort involved the mobilization of 70,000 college students through the Communist Y o u t h L e a g u e s y s t e m a s “ G a m e s – t i m e volunteers” to help at all official Olympic venues. Approximately 400,000 “city volunteers” were enlisted to …
,
The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 4 | Number 2 | Jan 26, 2015
1
'Only a disciplined people can build a nation': North Korean Mass Games and Third Worldism in Guyana, 1980-1992 「鍛錬 された民のみぞ国づくりに役立つ」ガイアナにおける北朝鮮のマスゲー ムと第三世界主義 1980-1992
Moe Taylor
Abstract: As the 1970s drew to a close, Forbes Burnham (1923-85), Guyana's controversial leader of 21 years, received Pyongyang's assistance in importing the North Korean tradition of Mass Games, establishing them as a major facet of the nation's cultural and political life during the 1980-92 period. The current study documents this episode in Guyanese history and seeks to explain why the B u r n h a m r e g i m e p r i o r i t i z e d s u c h a n experiment in a time of austerity and crisis, its ideological foundations, and how Guyanese interpreted and responded to Mass Games.
I argue that the Burnham regime's enthusiasm for Mass Games can in large part be explained by their adherence to a particular tra
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.