A year before the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing, China is pulling out all the stops to knock the United States from the top medal slot and cement its clout as an international superpower. But is it going too far?
In a hard-hitting newspaper editorial, a Chinese academic has lambasted politicians and media for poisoning the Beijing games with excessive nationalism and propaganda.
"The Olympic spirit is about universality, not about national differences, and it should be free particularly of political overtones," writes Professor Jing Kaixuan, of the prestigious Nanjing University's department of Chinese literature. He claims China's approach to the games is better characterised by chest-beating than international friendship.
Under the headline 'Gold medals do |
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Critics say China’s zeal for gold medals could poison the 2008 Games. By
gary jones |
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not equal the Olympic spirit', Jing insists in the Southern Metropolis Daily that the overt politicisation of the coming games "translates into the aberrant idea that 'victory is patriotism and defeat is treasonable'. You cannot suppose logic of this kind is merely fanciful - this was exactly what Saddam Hussein's son Uday did when the Iraqi soccer team lost international matches, bringing out the whip after [the players] returned home."
In what is an unusually self-critical article for a state-run newspaper here, Jing continues, "Very few countries in the contemporary world are like us... lending [sporting events] a kind of grave nationalistic significance, so that only the winning of gold medals has importance, and silver and bronze medals are considered defeat.
"We often see that when foreign athletes win second and third 
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