Who decides whether the Beijing Games were successful? Is it the Western press, human rights activists, the host government, or Beijingers? Or is it the athletes and the fans? As usual, where you stand on that issue depends on where you sit.

Most of the Western media, and certainly human rights activists, seem to believe that the real victor of the Games is China’s authoritarian Communist Party, and that the “supine” IOC cravenly allowed the Chinese government to renege on all its human rights-related promises. Perhaps the best embodiment of this view can be found in the Aug. 22 New York Times editorial “Beijing’s Bad Faith Olympics.” Surprisingly, the editorial does not mention how much much better things are now on just about every level than they were when China was awarded the Games in 2001.

The Chinese government of course thinks the Games were a huge success. The logistics were handled extremely well, the facilities were excellent, most of the world was shown a very positive face of China, no major protests or other embarrassing events occurred in Beijing, and China won the most gold medals by a large margin. It was a real propaganda coup for the Party, and today the official Xinhua News Agency called the Beijing Games a “New Starting Point For National Revival.” Possibly the worst thing that happened was the Liu Xiang’s withdrawal from the 110m men’s hurdles.

For most Beijingers, and Chinese in general, the Games are deservedly a source of tremendous pride. Beijingers, some of the funniest and cockiest people you will ever meet, think Beijing has always been a world-class city like New York, London, Paris or Tokyo, and the success of these Games now makes much of the world agree. While many aspects of the preparation and holding of the Games were inconvenient, Beijingers ended up with a much better transit infrastructure, including new subway lines, freeways and trains, as well glimmers of hope for the improvement of Beijing’s normally atrocious air quality. (A Beijing official said Saturday said that some of the temporary measures to ease pollution will now be made permanent.)

From a fan perspective, the Games were a huge success — from great competitions and amazing performances to dazzling facilities to, with the exception of the first few days, terrific weather and clean air. The biggest fan complaints were the difficulty in obtaining tickets to almost-empty events, and the horrible food selection at the venues. Those two issues certainly could have been handled better, but I think most fans got past them.

The athletes also appear to be very satisfied with the Games. The facilities were excellent, by all accounts the Olympic Village was the best ever built, and the weather was much better than most expected. Given the pressures they have from their teams and the IOC to remain politically correct while in China, we may not find out how they really feel until they are back in their home countries, but my understanding is that things went swimmingly.

There are a couple of points I would like to leave with you:

First, wherever you sit on the spectrum of views about a rising China, please remember that the U.S. and other Western nations have intermittently tried for almost two centuries to “change China.” The West could not do it when China was relatively weak, and it certainly can not do it when China is strong and getting stronger. But Western nations can and need to work to influence China, and to do that they must be able to provide a positive model for the Chinese people.

Second, the beacon that the U.S. should be is flickering, due to issues such as the rot in the financial system, institutionalized corruption, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and torture. The world needs a credible moral and ideological balance to a rising China, and the U.S. needs to get its house in order.

Thanks for reading this blog over the last 16 days.

Al-Jazeera is not a network most Americans watch, want to watch, or in way think is “legitimate” media. But Americans’ attitudes, especially about what constitutes “legitimate,” are increasingly less relevant in much of the world, and Al-Jazeera’s Arabic and English channels have growing influence. Al-Jazeera’s English channel has its own YouTube channel, and has a team in Beijing covering the Olympics. Anyone can watch their Olympics coverage via YouTube here.

One interesting interview is of a young Chinese man explaining why he joined the Communist Party. It is worth watching; click here.

I wonder if he now regrets his decision? The air quality continues to be excellent, and the forecast for Sunday morning’s marathon calls for temperatures in the low 70s.

The Beijing organizers deserve huge kudos for the success in cleaning up Beijing’s air during these Games. Everyone in Beijing hopes the improvements continue after the Games, but I don’t think some of the more extreme measures can continue indefinitely. An article (Read the English version here) in the the previous issue of Cajing magazine provides some details on how Beijing cleaned up the air.

You can read most of it over at Danwei.org, but I will quote a few passages from the author’s introduction:

“A boy once asked his mother where he came from, and his mother explained that in the beginning, hundreds of millions of sperm stood at the starting line like Olympic athletes. When the gun sounded, they sped off trying to be the first to reach the egg … the boy said, ‘Oh, I get it. So I’m the winner!’”

This story says that by being born into this world, you’re already a champion. It also says that from the first, life is a marathon where all of the competitors are defending champions, each one proud, skilled, and full of ambition. No wonder life is so tough …

However, the athletes who met with defeat on the field stand for the great courage and competitive spirit of the eliminated majority, in a symbolic reenactment of human life: you will inevitably fail, yet you continue onward. Lu Xun wrote about this truth in “The First and the Last,” encouraging people to “not be ashamed to be last.” His final lines are quoted most often: “When I watch a sports meet, I often think: of course praise is due to the victors, but it is those competitors who press on to the finish line despite having fallen behind, and the spectators who do not laugh at them, who are the future backbone of China.” The lesson of Liu Xiang is that when you have done your utmost, then even if you do not make it to the finish line, you will still gain the world’s understanding and blessing. And in doing so we bless ourselves, too.

Back to human life: no matter how far you run or how good you look doing it, the finish line for everyone is the grave. So, in this competition, will you run faster, or slower? If I am not mistaken, I’d guess you want to come in last place!”

China will achieve its goals of winning the most gold medals at these games, and it is good to see some discussion in the mainstream Chinese press about the virtues of competing whether or not you win gold. I assume the next leg of China’s plan for Olympic dominance will to win not just the most golds at the London Games but the most medals overall, to put to rest once and for all any debate over how to calculate the medals league table.

The Chinese gave the IOC her passport showing her being born in 1992, and the IOC took them at face value and declined to investigate. But other documents that have recently come to light suggesting she was born in 1994. The Times of London has a good article
today on the controversy.

In a previous post, I had suggested General Administration of Sport of China (GASC) “got” the Web, but in this case the Web may have “got” them. Documents left on search-engine accessible servers appear to be the evidence that pushed the IOC to act. A U.S. blogger uncovered the documents using the cache search function of Baidu. Google, interestingly, no longer had the original documents even in its cache search function. This is his original post and a followup.

The excellent China Media Project analyzed and translated some pre-Olympics Chinese press coverage of some of He Kexin here. The  highlighted reports, including one by the Communist Party’s official newspaper People’s Daily, all list He Kexin as being 13 in 2007. Sports bureaucrats have already said the reporters were mistaken.

A Chinese blogger has a very different take, translated here. He argues that in fact the birth dates in question in those documents from the GASC website may be incorrect, but that they intentionally made the gymnasts look younger so they could participate in certain domestic competitions.

I have no idea how you can prove with certainty someone is 16 vs. almost 14 years old. And I don’t know how the IOC is going to find any official documents or credible sources in China that don’t support He Kexin being old enough to compete. And if it does uncover solid evidence contradicting the official Chinese position,  how will it deal with the politics of such an embarrassing decision for China? Whether the Chinese team cheated or not, the U.S. team should not be holding its breath awaiting a favorable IOC investigation.

Because of the rainy weather the stadium volunteers passed out free rain ponchos. Unfortunately they were yellow, giving the impression that most of the spectators supported Brazil. Even more unfortunate, they actually did. There was no booing for the U.S., but there were more cheers for the Brazilian team, although the 10-year-old in front of me had the foresight to be waving an American flag and cheering for team USA. What a nice kid.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Chinese are very dissatisfied with both their men’s and women’s soccer teams. The crowd started a chant that went on intermittently through the match and continued even as people were filing out, calling for the head of the Chinese Soccer Federation to resign. I think everyone assumed he was sitting in the VIP section, along with Pele, who briefly popped up on the video screen.

The U.S. team scored in extra time to win 1-0. It was a great game, and the MVP, if there are MVPs in the Olympics, was definitely the U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo. She was amazing.

Lang Ping is the coach of the US team, and she is now a controversial hero to many Chinese. She led the Chinese women’s team to a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and to several world titles, and in the mid-90s coached the Chinese national team (you can read about her background here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Ping). At the end of the CCTV broadcast of the USA-Cuba semifinal, the CCTV announcer congratulated Lang Ping on getting back into an Olympics championship game.

Before the Olympics, some Chinese bloggers and netizens accused Lang Ping of being a traitor for coaching the American team. Lang Ping, interviewed by CCTV after leading the US team to a 3-2 win over China in the preliminaries, I think said it best. She said, and I am paraphrasing, that she hopes Chinese people are actually proud of her, as her leadership of the US team shows the strength of and the respect that other nations give the Chinese volleyball program. She said that there are five Italian nationals coaching national teams around the world, and she hopes that more and more Chinese coaches go out into the world and lead other teams.

Some names had already been taken, but domains like lixiaopeng.cn (men’s gymnastics gold medalist Li Xiaopeng) and guojingjing.cn (Women’s diving superstar Guo Jingjing) were available and registered by GASC. This is in contrast to 2004, when many of the domain names for China’s gold medalists were taken by domain squatters.

The sports bureaucracy understands that the eponymous domain names are crucial for the marketing of their champions, and the Chinese government has as a stated goal “informatization”. Clearly the Sports Administration is focused on that goal, as well as the money.

Compare that to NBC’s almost $900 million rights payment, with advertising revenues for these games I believe projected to be just over $1 billion. It was a good deal for CCTV, struck almost a decade ago when China was still a developing nation in every aspect, including sports.

The IOC said today that it expects to charge CCTV over $100m for the rights to broadcast the next games. That is a big increase, but it still seems like a bargain compared to what NBC pays. NBC gets a lot for its $900 million, reportedly including the power to force the IOC and Beijing to hold the Games a week earlier than Beijing preferred ( http://english.caijing.com.cn/20080807/77101.shtml ), as well as influence the start times of some events like swimming to make prime time U.S. broadcasts.

The true power shift at the Olympics won’t come through the gold medal table. It will come when someone other than a U.S. broadcaster gets to dictate scheduling to the IOC, and even with China’s coming price increase, that still appears to be far away