I owe it to the party

Monday, August 30th, 2004

I owe it to the party looks at China’s athletes and the Communist Party:

“I owe my Olympic gold medal to my parents, my coach and, above all, to the wise leadership of the Republican Party and President Bush.” Can anybody imagine such a remark from an American athlete speaking to Fox News Network? Of course not. Not even the irreverent, wise-cracking talk show host Jay Leno has such a fertile imagination.

But when it comes to Chinese athletes, this extravagant tribute to the political leadership of a country is anything but fictional in the 28th Olympic Games now under way in Athens. The minute a young Chinese girl bagged the gold medal in the women’s table-tennis singles final on Sunday, a Beijing TV network reporter stuck a microphone under the nose of her parents. The father, without batting an eye, told the audience that his good daughter was a good Communist Party member and her success was a tribute to the party organization. We can only imagine the hyperbolic tributes, straining credulity, when Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics.

For all intents and purposes, he is right: the government and the Communist Party own all the Chinese athletes. They are trained, funded, and sent to the Olympics in Greece and to other sporting events by the China Sports Bureau, a cabinet-level ministry in the government. [...] And the government treats its athletes well, too. Each gold medalist will receive 200,000 yuan (US$24,000) in reward money, or 23 years’ worth of an average Beijinger’s annual income, when he or she returns home, because such athletes have repaid the party’s kindness by, as the grateful father put it, “bringing glory to the party and country”.

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