The Beijing Travel Guide: The Excitement of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

With over half the world’s population expected to watch, the 2008 Olympic Games have created an uproar across the globe. We in the West can't talk about the stock market, climate change or human rights without mentioning Beijing 2008. Still our interest pales in comparison to the excitement over the Games in China.

Since China won the right to host the Games in 2001, the whole country has been counting down the minutes (literally, and on big digital clocks in places like Tiananmen Square) until 8 pm on August 8, 2008. Today, you're guaranteed to see the Olympics rings and Fuwa prominently displayed in almost every city. Multiple programs lauding the accomplishments of Chinese Olympians run every night on CCTV Olympics, formerly known as CCTV-5 the nation-wide sports channel, but renamed for the Games. Daily newspaper headlines wonder aloud how great the Games will be. And here in Beijing, the 2008 “One World, One Dream” slogan shows up on billboards, t-shirts, bumper stickers and even in flower arrangements. It's overwhelming. But why do the Chinese care so much about the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

There are many ways to think about this. Here's one that puts the Beijing Olympics in the context of recent Chinese history.

The Chinese journey to Olympic glory began in the second half of the Late Imperial Period. In the late 17th and early 18th century, China was the most powerful nation in the world and its population already numbered close to 300 million (the population of the US today). The Qing, China's last dynasty, presided over an economy that accounted for 1/3 of the world’s GDP (the US currently accounts for 20% of world GDP), a territory that included Taiwan and Hong Kong and a peaceful society that allowed technological innovation and the development of culture. China was at the height of its power

In the 1700’s, China was developed, cultured and proud and didn’t care to interact with the outside world. As they paid less attention to other countries, the ruling Qing became increasingly despotic and corrupt. Refusing to believe that foreigners could produce anything of value, China did not participate in the industrial revolution, and it failed to modernize with the West.

Isolationism worked for China until a trade dispute with the British brought about the Opium Wars. In the 1840's and '50's, steam powered gun-ships sailed up Chinese rivers, and forced China once again to pay attention to the rest of the world. China’s losses to the British in the Opium Wars were the beginning of the Middle Kingdom's downward
spiral. For the next 90 years, the colonial powers of Britain, Germany, France and Japan took turns beating up big, backward China. No longer even an economic power, by the late 1930’s China had lost both Taiwan and Hong Kong, it’s once proud culture had turned in on itself and challenged everything the Chinese had traditionally held close to heart and society was on the verge of civil war. It was a humiliating fall from greatness.

A long march and a bit of luck brought Chairman Mao to Tiananmen Square where he founded the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Although many Chinese, swept up in the communist sentiment of the time, brimmed with hope that they would soon return to their place of greatness in the world, they would not see this change under Mao. A series of ill-conceived attempts to modernize the economy and improve society ultimately left China, by the mid 1970's, right where it started under communist rule – poor, backward and culturally bankrupt. Things began to change in 1978.

“No matter if it’s a white cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice it’s a good cat.” With these words, Deng Xiaoping initiated in China one of greatest economic transformation that the world has seen in modern times. In test cites, specialized economic zones in southern China, Deng applied pragmatic, market-based reforms to China’s planned economy. The success of these zones, like Shenzhen, encouraged the government to spread the reforms across the country.

August 8, 2008, will mark the 30th anniversary of Deng’s jumpstarting China’s economic engine. In this time, China’s economy has grown at better than 8% per year, and in the process it has pulled roughly 400 million people out of poverty. Beijing is now one of the most important political centers in the world, and Chinese culture influences people everywhere, from Europe to Latin America. The Summer Olympics will affirm to the Chinese and the rest of the world that China is back.

This is why the Olympics are known as China's "coming out party" to the world. This is also one reason why the Chinese are so excited for Beijing 2008.

Michael Collins is the founder of Bridge Media LLC and author of The Beijing Travel Guide (www.beijing-travel-guide.com). A graduate of Princeton University, he works for an American law firm in Beijing. He speaks Chinese.

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