For those of you who read this blog, you might be asking (but maybe not), “Why hasn’t he been writing about the torch? He followed it through the heat of Muscat and the heavily secured stadium in Islamabad. But what happened to New Delhi, Bangkok, KL and Jakarta?”
Well, frankly, it was getting boring. Bangkok and KL were fine and New Delhi and Jakarta were, again, heavily secured, hand-picked side shows. Canberra just finished and I haven’t heard much concerning the showdown between the dueling security forces, but if any blood was drawn I haven’t heard about it yet, though I guess I can go to a supermarket and see if they’re clearing the shelves of Aussie cheese and butter. I think I’ll wait until tomorrow, since the spin is still being spun on this one. Thankfully Pyongyang’s on the upcoming pilgrimage path. They’ll pull through where all those others have not. Friends, indeed. There are some things you can bank on, and Mr. Kim is one. But if anything does go wrong there, it would be very difficult to predict which DPRK product could possibly be boycotted.
In other Olympic news, China Daily is reporting today that Horizon Research Consultancy Group, an independent survey company, shows that in a recent poll as many as 60 percent of respondents “registered a growing dislike for France”.
Horizon’s telephone poll between April 18 and 20 covered 905 residents, aged 16-65, in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. [That’s 900 out of 50+ million.] The respondents said the French attitude toward the Beijing Olympics had severely dented their impression of the country. The survey also suggested that Canada, Britain and Germany also dropped in the rating, with 64.8 percent, 57.2 percent and 58.1 percent saying they had more negative feelings now.
Oh, poor Canada! You tanked without even getting The Flame! What’s the deal? Perhaps you can boost your numbers back up by providing a week-long Whistler junket for some of the …well, you know where to send the tickets. Clear the slopes!
Though Germany didn’t get the sacred flame either, we all know why they fell in the rankings. Their official guest list wasn’t first submitted to Beijing for approval, and in the world of tit-fer-tat, that means your numbers go down. We’ll wait and see if Siemens will bear the brunt of the lowered ranking. I can smell a boycott on the horizon.
Though maybe what I’m smelling on the horizon is not a boycott at all, but the rotten fruits of an embargo: the An Yue Jiang returning home. Instead of sending the munitions ship, An Yue Jiang, to help Ole’ Bob Mugabe count votes in his bid to secure the best election results, I would think a visit from Jiang Xiaoyu with his spit-shined head and the Most Holy Flame in the History of the World with its Blue Dozen Apostles would help do the trick. Who wouldn’t vote for the side that they’re on?
With all the bad feelings and plunging approval numbers for both France and Germany, one has to wonder how that will affect the relationship between Airbus and Tianjin. Realistically, probably not at all, since, as we all know, it’s not about anything but the sports.
PS: Jin Jing, I really like you, and I’ll be rooting for you in September. And take that free trip to France, despite how the dogs are barking. The thug who tried to grab the torch from you in Paris got everything he deserved. Unfortunately, some of your countrymen believe that you were better seen than heard: a female paraplegic on the ground struggling to keep the torch fits their idea of the half of the sky that women should be holding up; the other half – that speaking your clear mind part – is better left to the nationalist boys, the ones who are seriously promoting the motherland by taking jobs away from struggling Chinese workers. They know how to take things from here. If it means anything to you, I don’t think that they really meant all those terribly gender-specific profanities they fired your way. After all, they call all women that. Probably even their own mothers.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Matthew Stinson // Apr 24, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I’m guessing Canada is France-by-association thanks to Montreal. Check the link to the poll, though, it seems to be broken.
2 jg // Apr 24, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Thanks, Matthew, the link was broken, and it was the China Daily. Tks for pointing it out.
3 Bill // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:14 am
Thanks to Harper who is not going to the openning ceremony as Canadian tradition dictates, Canada have this low rating. And French is one of the official languages of Canada, with one third of French speaking population, the association with France gave Canada much more complexity and richness of culture. Montreal is way to “English”. Try Quebec City, where the English and French armies dueled.
4 Lindel // Apr 25, 2008 at 4:45 am
No mention of the US of A. I wonder if the behavior of the european tourists in China is a contributing factor? I am not an old china hand, but have been 3 times, once in 2002, and twice in 2006. Could not help but notice that there was a little bit of a putting on airs amongst the european tourists towards the chinese. With the exchange rate and the numerous service oriented chinese and all the 5 star hotels it is rather easy for paupers like myself to get confused into thinking your royalty when vacationing in China. Noticed a tendency amongst europeans to do this. Most americans tend to behave like everyone is in the same middle class and have a natural aversion to acting upper crust.
5 dwain // Apr 25, 2008 at 5:17 am
I suppose none need look back to 1894, nor Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin in Paris re-founding the Olympic Games? Nor to his statement : “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.”
How is xenophobia fighting well…on either side?
6 Lindel // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I have been thinking about the 200M internet users in China. That means there are 1.1B without internet access. So for every one netizen there are 6 or 7 non-netizens.
I suspect most of the people partipating in the protests are predominatly among the 200m netizens and they are also the ones who have benefited the most from the open door policy and all the economic development.
Also I bet most of the people stressed out and doing all the hard work to get Beijing ready for the olympics are among the 1.1B non-netizens.
I suspect one problem with the current “nationalism” wave and the protests in front of those french grocery stores is that the 1.1B disenfranchised non-inetizens are already resentful of those 200m doing all the protests.
For every netizen 20 something with nice clothes, a computer, a cell phone, no job, but nice allowance from their wealthy parents in the street protesting there are 6 or 7 others trying to get past them to go to their crappy job to buy their daily bowl of rice, dumplings or noodles.
The government is concerned that those 1.1B might decide they have some issues they would like to protest also and might ask “What right do those spoiled netizen’s have to complain?”
If it is okay for the netizens to go into the street to complain about CNN, then maybe the non-netizen should be allowed to complain about not getting paid last week by the goon or thug they work for.
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