Europe
October 2008 
Big Brother versus YouTube
Posted on Jul 31st, 2008
by 
Albert
Albert
Mark Leonard, Executive Director of European Council on Foreign Relations, considers in an article, originally written for the Spectator, the Wetern ambivalence and imsecurity about the Chinese behavior around Olympics 2008.
Big Brother versus YouTube
17.07.08 - Mark Leonard
This article was published in the Spectator on 16 July, 2008.
‘For years we couldn't wait for the Olympics to start. Now we can't wait for them to be over.' That is how a Chinese friend described the horrible limbo in Beijing as a control-freak state tries to anticipate and eliminate any possible challenges to its glorious coming-out party on the 8th of the 8th, 2008. It is clear to any visitor to the Chinese capital that while China hopes to clean up the medals tables, the sporting contest is at best a sideshow to the real Olympic competition - the battle to define how China is seen by its citizens and the world outside
.For the Chinese people the Olympics are the final proof that China has reclaimed its rightful place in the global premier league; putting behind it two centuries of humiliation at the hands of foreign invaders. For the world outside, the Games are meant to embody an official narrative of China as a ‘harmonious society'. The organisers had promised the trin-ity of a ‘green Olympics', a ‘high-tech Olympics' and a ‘people-centred Olympics', designed to show off China as a beacon of economic prowess and modernity that has traded pariah status for global respectability. But as China ricochets from one PR disaster to the next - with stories about sweatshops combining with Tibet and Beijing's choking pollution - the authorities are now trying to manage expectations downwards with a focus on the more modest goal of a ‘safe Olympics', flooding the city and its environs with security forces primed to thwart potential terrorist attacks.
Read More.
Big Brother versus YouTube
17.07.08 - Mark Leonard
This article was published in the Spectator on 16 July, 2008.
‘For years we couldn't wait for the Olympics to start. Now we can't wait for them to be over.' That is how a Chinese friend described the horrible limbo in Beijing as a control-freak state tries to anticipate and eliminate any possible challenges to its glorious coming-out party on the 8th of the 8th, 2008. It is clear to any visitor to the Chinese capital that while China hopes to clean up the medals tables, the sporting contest is at best a sideshow to the real Olympic competition - the battle to define how China is seen by its citizens and the world outside
.For the Chinese people the Olympics are the final proof that China has reclaimed its rightful place in the global premier league; putting behind it two centuries of humiliation at the hands of foreign invaders. For the world outside, the Games are meant to embody an official narrative of China as a ‘harmonious society'. The organisers had promised the trin-ity of a ‘green Olympics', a ‘high-tech Olympics' and a ‘people-centred Olympics', designed to show off China as a beacon of economic prowess and modernity that has traded pariah status for global respectability. But as China ricochets from one PR disaster to the next - with stories about sweatshops combining with Tibet and Beijing's choking pollution - the authorities are now trying to manage expectations downwards with a focus on the more modest goal of a ‘safe Olympics', flooding the city and its environs with security forces primed to thwart potential terrorist attacks.
Read More.
Access: Public