Here we go with the déjà vû all over again, only this time it’s China.
Right on schedule, it’s time for Olympic-style FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Stories about how big, bad and awful it’s all going to be at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games — especially for the dogs and mongrels of the working press — are going to be the norm from here until the opening ceremony on February 4.
Didn’t we just go through this? In Tokyo and the Summer Olympics? Where the hue and cry was that the Games were going to infect the city (didn’t happen) and that the Japanese people were against the Games (they just re-elected, comfortably, the very same majority political party to office).
Now Beijing, and the Winter Games.
The closed loop! The bubble! A “level of control never before seen at the Games,” a New York Times headline decried in a late-September story in a deliberate attempt to set the tone for Beijing 2022 coverage.
Let’s be blunt: this narrative is absurd and more. It not only shapes perceptions but feeds malicious preconceptions. And that’s inappropriate.
Indeed, it might entirely be reckless if not dangerous.
Snowmaking machines going full speed Monday at China’s National Ski Jumping Center, nicknamed 'Snow Ruyi', for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in Zhangjiakou, // photo by Wu Diansen/VCG via Getty Images
Are there going to be restrictions? Sure.
Are the Chinese serious about containing and controlling COVID-19? Sure.
To that point:
Aren’t the Australians? What about New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has all been but lionized in the western press for her handling of the pandemic?
Dr. Anthony Fauci? Pretty sure the answer is affirmative.
For goodness sake, until this week, if you were a foreign tourist from 33 countries (including China), for the past 18 months you couldn’t even fly into the United States. Did the New York Times call that “a level of control never before seen?” Uh, no. But on Monday, when the ban was formally lifted, it noted that the American tourism industry had been “devastated,” with “losses of nearly $300 billion in visitor spending and more than one million American jobs,” citing the U.S. Travel Association.
So in this instance, it’s not about the level of control imposed on them — it’s about us.
Oh.
Yet when things involve the way things operate in China — where they lock down Disneyland over one COVID-19 case — it’s different.
That is, the perception of how things are done is different.
Because, let’s see, we’re superior in every way? That’s a good one.
With China, it seems, it’s always different.
Let’s see how.
And ask why.
A South China Morning Post column offers an instructive story on the Disney episode, where — as it notes — a whole lot of nothing happened. Because, as the headline to columnist Alex Lo’s piece correctly says, the episode “exposes media bias.”
The Bloomberg report on what transpired Oct. 31 opted for this headline and note the key word: “Shanghai Disneyland Lockdown Shows China’s Extreme Covid Tactics”
Extreme?
“Staff quietly sealed the amusement park,” the Bloomberg story says. “People in hazmat suits streamed in through the gates, preparing to test everyone for COVID-19 before they could leave for the day.
“Nearly 34,000 people at Disneyland underwent testing, which ended close to midnight, long after the festivities at the park are usually finished.”
Compare and contrast with the report from Caixin Global, which as Lo’s column says, “most China watchers agree is among the country’s most independent financial news outlets”:
Headline: “Shanghai wins applause for its handling of Disneyland COVID emergency” — Lo then editorializing, “Well, an emergency that wasn’t!”
“When tens of thousands of visitors were waiting to take nucleic acid tests at the Shanghai Disney Resort Sunday night, to their surprise, fireworks planned for the Halloween celebrations illuminated the sky, making the COVID-19 test a ‘romantic experience,’” it said, Lo opining, “Note the word, ‘romantic.’”
Next paragraph: “It continued: ‘After being notified that a confirmed COVID case had visited the resort, Shanghai quickly responded, closing the attraction temporarily, conducting mass testing and sending people home in shuttle buses and taxis.”
Next: “The city reported early Monday morning that more than 33,000 people had been tested and no positive cases were found.”
This same sort of bias is at work in coverage of the Beijing closed loop system.
It needs to stop.
In Tokyo last summer, all of us who were accredited (working journalists, athletes, coaches, officials, IOC members, everyone) for the Games:
— were effectively quarantined for 14 days
— our movements were restricted for those two weeks to Games-only venues
— had to agree to have a GPS tracker on our mobile phones the entire duration of our stay
— had to check in daily on those phones with the authorities
— were surveilled virtually everywhere we went by an incredible array of cameras
— checked in to venues using facial-recognition technology
— had to submit to spit tests daily or at the least on a frequently recurring basis
— which means the Japanese authorities collected a fascinating DNA database of some of the world’s most interesting people.
Because Japan, unlike China, projects internationally —let’s say — way more of Hello Kitty- or Super Mario-style affect, virtually no one has said boo about these incredible intrusions into individual civil liberties. (Consider this such an observation.)
But China?
See the NYT September story: “it is already clear that Beijing Olympic organizers and the Chinese government will attempt to implement a level of control … beyond anything seen before at the Games.”
How about we all take a step back and a deep breath?
Is the Beijing system complicated? Yes.
Will there be glitches? Probably. Maybe even likely.
Are the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing authorities still negotiating guidelines and policies over certain access points — like what’s going to be what in Olympic Park, for those who remember being around the Bird’s Nest or the Water Cube (now the Ice Cube) in 2008? Yes. Will those negotiations likely carry on for the next several weeks? Probably.
Trying to manage this “closed loop” is like the NBA bubble in Orlando two Finals ago but spread over three distinct regions — ice and then two ski and skate parks.
If we can appreciate that complication, and understand the probability of glitches, then we can appreciate, too, that the closed-loop system in its way will almost surely prove more liberalized — maybe not a word but a word — than what went down in Tokyo. It promises, for instance, to feature considerable access to certain restaurants, particularly hotel restaurants. Why? It has to. If you’re going to keep thousands of people in a bubble for nearly three weeks, you have to offer them, you know, food options.
As for vaccination: if you’re not vaccinated, why would you consider going to an Olympics? Especially a Winter Games, where people are indoors (at ice venues, press centers, more) and breathing all over each other all over the place and get sick all the time. That’s just dumb. Don’t even argue. There’s no point.
Big picture:
One of the things we in the West typically do not appreciate fully, if at all, is Chinese pride — and the accompanying notion of face.
Plus, anything the Japanese can do — the Chinese figure they can do better. And maybe more graciously.
If you know your history, you know full well the significant tension and conflict between these two great societies.
These 2022 Games are a full-on effort in China. Beijing will be the first city — ever — to stage the Summer and Winter Games. Plus, early 2023 will mark 10 years as president for Xi Jinping.
For China, a successful 2022 Olympics is no small thing. It will make history. The written history of China runs to well more than 3,000 years. We need to keep these things in mind. Really, we do.
“To me,” said Christophe Dubi, the IOC’s Games executive director, “the way we should see these Games is that the Chinese are very proud and are taking a lot of pride in hosting their guests in a friendly and thoughtful manner — doing everything they can within the closed loop, as they call it, to make these Games a memorable experience.”
Can we all maybe consider that instead of, you know, FUD?