Aug
27
2008
This will be my final post as I will be returning to Yale later today. I would like to acknowledge and to thank my editors Catherine Cheney and Katharine Kendrick of The Yale Globalist for giving me this opportunity and for helping me get through it. They did a great job editing my ideas and my grammar—except for in the last few posts, in which any mistakes are solely my own because in the interest of time I published without their editorial input. Some of my Olympic pictures follow at the end of this post.
A reporter once asked former-Communist Premier of China Zhou Enlai what he thought was the impact of the 1789 French Revolution, to which he replied: “It is too soon to tell.”
We are all in a similar boat vis-à-vis the impact of the Olympic Games on China. The Games, which were incredible to attend and which the Chinese hosted almost flawlessly, ended four days ago. The city has slowly drained of festivity and tourists. The Coca-Cola pavilion in the mall The Place has been dismantled to its metal skeleton and the red and blue BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) volunteers have evaporated by the hundreds of thousands. Never mind that the Paralympic Games are about to begin, there is a clear sense that the Olympic Spirit has come and gone. But absent perspective, we can still ask: what might be China’s post-Olympic prospects?
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Aug
23
2008
A specter is haunting Beijing—air pollution. Beijing’s air pollution, some of the worst in the world, was a concern from the beginning for Olympic organizers. The Chinese government enacted initiatives in preparation for the Games, but skeptical media outlets were quick to disparage China’s efforts. In the days on either side of August 8, the New York Times and the South China Morning Post published articles about China’s failure to reduce pollution. The decision of Ethiopian marathoner Haile Gebrselassie to not run in the Games was held up as proof of the China’s shortcomings. But Beijing saw more clean days these last two weeks than anyone can remember, and no one is reporting this success.
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