Olympic Fatigue

Posted August 15, 2008

Last Friday, perhaps the biggest television audience in history saw the rapture on the faces of Chinese citizens during the four-hour opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Reports, in both domestic and foreign media, say that the Chinese people overwhelmingly support the Games and the authoritarian government now staging the 17-day extravaganza.

Yet last week, long-term residents evicted from their homes clashed with neighborhood guards near Tiananmen Square, and two men in western China killed 16 paramilitary troops. There were reports, still unconfirmed, that a bomb exploded on a bus in the Chinese capital on Wednesday, near the route for the Olympic torch relay. In late spring and summer, there were bus bombings, police killings, and large-scale demonstrations across China. One protest attracted an estimated 30,000 citizens. In March, an ethnic insurrection scarred Tibetan areas in the southwest. Restive Muslims then took to the streets in the northwest.

In light of the antigovernment turbulence in the country, should we believe that the Chinese people are enthusiastic about the Games? Of course, nobody knows what some 1.5 billion Chinese really think. Organizations conduct opinion surveys in China, but polls are strictly controlled by the government and are inherently unreliable on sensitive topics. It is true that state media for months has been chock full of stories of flag-waving Chinese cheering on the nation’s athletes and even pot-bellied officials as the Olympic torch made its way through each of the Mainland’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and provincial-level cities.

Yet access to the torch relays, whether in reviewing stands or alongside roads, was severely restricted in many locations with spectators carefully screened and closely watched. This was especially true for the gathering in Tiananmen on Aug. 6 as the Olympic flame finally arrived in the capital. That crowd was composed of people from select groups, such as Olympic sponsors, and transported to the site by organizers of the relay. Ordinary Chinese were turned away from the orchestrated torch events, both in Beijing and elsewhere.

The Chinese people, whether permitted to watch Olympic events or not, feel genuine pride that their country is hosting the event. Yet what we see today is nothing like the spontaneous jubilation that swept the entire country the night the award was announced in July 2001. Then, millions of people in Beijing surged through streets, yelling, crying, and high-fiving, blaring car horns and waving Chinese flags. That night, there was a party in Tiananmen, the spiritual heart of the country, and celebrations in hamlets across the country. Last Friday, however, the giant screens in Beijing’s public areas were turned off and restaurants and cinemas were closed so crowds would not gather in the city center.

Today, no permitted gathering in public is unrehearsed, and joy is expressed on cue. The Olympics are definitely not the galvanizing force they once appeared to be. What happened to China in the interim? The Communist Party has employed mass-mobilization techniques and reimposed strict social controls, the hallmarks of totalitarian governance, in order to stage the Olympic extravaganza. Along the way the cadres have worn out the people they are leading. As a well-known fund manager in Beijing told me in late June, “There is now an Olympics fatigue.”

My wife and I traveled around China’s coastal cities in June and last month, and we were surprised by how little enthusiasm for the Games we saw, even in Beijing. “The Olympics are for the government,” grumbled one middle-aged resident of the capital, echoing views we heard elsewhere during our visit. “We ordinary Chinese still have to earn a living.” There appears to be even less interest in other parts of the country, especially in areas further from Beijing. Many Shanghainese, even into this summer, did not know that their city would be the site of Olympic competitions.

We did not meet people who were genuinely jazzed about the Games—until we went to Hong Kong. China’s Special Administrative Region appears genuinely proud to host the Olympic equestrian events. Of course, the residents of the former British colony did not experience communist rule there and are, as a consequence, less cynical than their Mainland compatriots.

Inside China, Communist Party leaders seem increasingly insecure. Once they expected 125 million tourists to come to their capital this year. They built the world’s largest airport terminal—which at nearly two miles long is also the world’s largest building—and over a hundred new hotels to handle the expected influx.

Yet if the dreams of officials were big, their fears were bigger still. Sometime this spring, in the face of all the disorder in Chinese society, they reversed course, denying visas to businessmen and tourists holding Olympics tickets, ejecting long-term foreign residents, and preventing Chinese citizens from visiting their own capital. Today, there are three rings of checkpoints guarding Beijing. Over 400,000 troops, police and volunteers patrol Olympic venues and nearby sites and neighborhoods.

Chinese citizens are not the only victims of Beijing's enhanced police state. A British journalist was recently detained while trying to cover a pro-Tibet protest near an Olympic venue, and journalists from Denmark and Norway left the country after they were harassed by Chinese authorities while trying to report a story about Beijing’s clampdown on migrant workers.

We should not be surprised that the Communist Party is hosting the “No-Fun Olympics.” Communism, whether hard-line or reformed, never celebrates the individual. As a result, it has managed to ruin a national celebration for the great people of China.

Mr. Chang is the author of “The Coming Collapse of China” (Random House, 2001).