China: human rights at the time of the slalom

(To Gino Lanzara)
04/02/22

Raise your hand who, more or less until the Turin Winter Olympics, could claim to know curling; few. Speaking of snow and ice, the thought invariably ran to skis, impressive trampolines, skates, but seeing that kind of granite steam pot slide on the ice, with two frantically moving brushes, was for many the discovery of a magic. Even geopolitics, when compared to sport, shares something more than the fascination of the mystery of the sliding of stone of curling; often, stealing the sentence from the Assistant Commissioner Schiavone1, the solution you have it under your eyes and you don't see it. In short, the geopolitics of sport does exist; if geography is experienced as a reflection of a socially shared culture, then sport is itself a phenomenon that can shape behaviors and values ​​as an identity element, despite the fact that there have been exceptions that have confirmed the rules: who would have bet even on presence of the Jamaican bobsleigh team in 1988?

Between geopolitics and sport there is competition between actors in common, there is antagonism, there are territories, representations that legitimize opposing actions and cultures. The use of sport is power, soft maybe, but always power: in the past the Olympics have facilitated the resumption of interrupted diplomatic relations or their establishment, or have sanctioned an affirmation of power, or have made it possible to reaffirm the existence of entities otherwise forget2; it is no coincidence that the games are often more representative than the states capable of exercising sovereignty.

Sporting events convey images, political roles, international dimensions, ideologies. In 1968 Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists on the podium, most recently at the football match with Kosovo for the world qualifiers the Spaniards carefully avoided mentioning the name of a country not recognized diplomatically.

After Tokyo, here is Beijing again, capable of hosting both the sweltering summer games and the freezing winters, an area, that of East Asia, where China, Japan and South Korea consider sports events to be the basis of their public diplomacy.

If the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 were functional to a post-war return to society, those in Beijing in 2008 represented the Chinese debut dance, destined to certify the opening of a new chapter in international relations, a process already traveled by other countries in the past.

Germany in 1936, under the mantle of a perfect organization which, echoing classical antiquity, inaugurated the rite of the Olympic torch, managed to hide intolerance and militarism to the extent that the West avoided boycotts or image damage; if you want, in some respects, an anticipation of the acquiescent Munich Accords.

One thing is certain: the propaganda worked so well that the documentary Olympia he taught Leni Riefenstahl; pity that just two days after the end of the Games, Captain Fuerstner, in charge of the Olympic village, committed suicide following his removal from the army due to Jewish ancestry.

History reminds us that the Games are not so adherent to de Coubertin's Olympic spirit, with exclusions resulting from the war, protests such as the Suez crisis and the invasion of Hungary, or for respect for civil rights such as in Mexico, or for the Israeli blood of Monaco in 1972. Taking into account that 2022 will also be the year of the world championships in Qatar, associating geopolitics and geoeconomics with the sporting event is not so paradoxical, given that so many political fortunes have been founded precisely on the pedatory art sung by Gianni Brera.

Could a mention of genetics and scientific remedies be missing? Absolutely not, given that doping continues to be talked about with the sanctions imposed on the Russian Olympic Committee, and with the Beijing Games of 2008 which, even after years and even after having had to put up with the avant-garde scientific technological propaganda, discovered spoiled by the large presence of doped athletes.

In the twentieth century, genetics, pharmacology and sport developed in perfect symbiosis in parallel; in China politics, albeit in alternating phases, gives impetus to science linked to sport, because it is always politics that pervasively decides everything in Beijing and which must necessarily impose itself on a culturally backward vision, with sport as an instrument identified in order to access to the most relevant fora. Even in China, thanks to Deng, the athlete can now compete not only for national glory but also for his own personal fame.

In 2008, China showed the world the results obtained in sport, a strategic tool to re-discuss its international position and to embody nationalism and a spirit of identity, in a combination of interests that sees the care of youth nurseries, the intervention of the Party in symbiosis with private individuals. Who knows what Mao would have thought ...

In 1981 the women's volleyball team enters the legend with the victory in the fifth set against Japan, the antagonist of all time, on the occasion of the Volleyball World Cup held in Tokyo; given the importance attributed to competitive activity, the sporting career is equated to the military one, and therefore the same guarantees are provided at the end of the activity.

In 2008 nothing is left to chance; in the presence of President Hu Jintao, the opening ceremony celebrates 50 years of history in 5000 minutes and presents a new China but with an ancient, imperial, hegemonic heart.

We catch our breath (it takes). Politically, the events of 2022 in China are varied, and the Olympics are one of the settings of the Party's diadem, also from a perspective soft power, or better sharp power3, since the Made in China 20254 it should allow the Dragon to complete the first phase of industrialization.

This is the year of the Tiger, in which it will be possible to both test the validity of the anti-covid measures, and the political reaction of dissent that the elections in Hong Kong could express, which will undoubtedly be influenced by the law on national security and the reform of the electoral system. In the fall, for Xi, the time will come slalom more important, that of the XX Congress of the CCP, which presumably will consecrate it to the leadership of the country, with an eye to the border instability with Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, and to the latent competition competitive with the USA, which they intend to contain by privileging the BRI and approaching Moscow for mere interest; all this while the EU he started a case against Beijing for discriminatory practices against Lithuania, which indicates a tightening of France and Germany. After all, it is the same old game of the balance of power, which has seen our country make use of the use of golden power on semiconductors and 5G.

The domestic political front is no less turbulent, even at the gossip level, with the liaison that involved tennis player Peng Shuai and former vice premier Zhang Gaoli, linked to former president Jiang Zemin, and accused of sexual violence. Beyond speculations not relevant here, the story, true or not, could weaken the consortiums of power opposed to Xi. In short, look for the woman.

Meanwhile, the broadsides of diplomatic boycotts arrive from abroad, which by not providing for the presence of institutional representatives, however, do not prohibit the participation of athletes in competitions, due to the needy (please, adopt an ironic tone) respect for human rights. The US opened proceedings, followed by several other countries5, which was followed by the angry Chinese reply that did not rule out subsequent retaliatory actions. Poor de Coubertin.

It's Italy? Difficult situation; as the next Olympic venue it has renounced any boycott, but certainly, even in the face of the usual EU hesitation, it has dissatisfied its ally across the Atlantic. It is to be hoped that Turin will not suffer from revenge actions.

Meantime all participants in the games will have to download the dreaded app My 2022, wanted by the Chinese government to monitor presences, but which has multiple vulnerabilities such as to induce many Western countries not to use it. Italy excluded.

But what is the sporting induced worth? Very, very much. The government has favored economic subjects linked to both consumption and advertising promotion. The Chinese industry, in the sports field, thanks to the successes obtained on the field, is no longer just emerging, and by 2035 it will reach a value of 696 billion with the creation of a trend useful for the diversification of investments.

2022 will therefore be characterized at the beginning and end by very little sport de Coubertinian: Beijing and Qatar give shape to a more complex geopolitics of sport than the bipolar one characteristic of the Cold War, which has in any case given way to a binary interpretation but which too simplistically separates democracy from authoritarianism.

If China's lack of attention to human rights is undeniable, the disputes regarding the profits made by Western companies, which in any case have not given up sponsorships, affected by forms of more or less forced labor, a problem similar to that concerning the Cup, remain in the shadow. World Cup 2022 in Qatar. In any case, that the moment for China is delicate to say the least is evidenced by the attention paid to the pandemic explosion that started in Wuhan, which is added to the Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong question.

Let us not delude ourselves: the Olympic truce, after all, has always been a chimera, also in the light of today's dialectical balancing act of the IOC which, for example, fails to mediate valid solutions regarding the meetings between Israeli athletes and Arab athletes, systematically renouncing.

Romantically, to close, after starting with granite, we end with the wings of Jesse Owens, however little appreciated at home, despite everything, and above all with the class and the immense heart of his antagonist, Luz Long. Spearhead of the German athletics team in 1936, Long did not hesitate to help his rival who then won gold.

Shortly before dying in the war, in Sicily, Luz wrote to Owens, asking him not to forget his son, and to tell him who and what the father had been. Are there still people like that?

1 Unbeatable Roman character created by Antonio Manzini

2 See Taiwan

3 More than the soft power but less thanhard power, i.e. the use of military coercive means to influence and / or subject

4 2015 industrial reform plan

5 We remember among others Australia, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom

Photo: Xinhua / Bundesarchiv / web