Bias against Chinese athletes?

The West is jealous of China’s Olympic success, said the Global Times (China) in an editorial. Our athletes’ triumphs are met with suspicion and derision in the Western press. When Ye Shiwen, the 16-year-old swimming sensation, shattered the women’s 400-meter individual medley world record by swimming the final lap even faster than the men’s winner did, she was immediately accused of doping. Even after those charges were definitively disproved, media coverage was overwhelmingly negative. She was called a robot, and the Chinese training system that separated her from her parents at a young age was denounced as inhumane. “If Ye were an American, the tone would be different.” She would be celebrated as a heroine, her sacrifice and hard work lauded. “The West still judges China with an old mentality, and is petty about the progress China makes.”

The Chinese have a point, said Anna Chen in The Guardian (U.K.). After the drug charges didn’t stick, Western sportswriters decided to “get them on child cruelty.” Story after story came out about the “sports factories” where Chinese coaches force children to train for hours with no time for play, allegedly beating them or otherwise torturing them. Much was made of Wu Minxia, the gold medalist in synchronized diving, who wasn’t told of her grandparents’ death a year ago or her mother’s cancer until after her events so she wouldn’t be distracted by grief. In truth, while most Chinese athletes train hard, their lives are “not the Dickensian nightmare” that’s been described. The demonization of China’s athletics program is motivated by Western countries’ jingoistic distress at “being knocked off their perch by the rising superpower.”

It’s not just the media that’s prejudiced, said Wang Yong in Huanqiu Shibao. Olympic judges have applied a blatant double standard. China’s women’s doubles badminton players, for example, were expelled for losing a match on purpose in order to draw an easier opponent in the next round. But when a British cyclist took “a deliberate dive” to get a race restarted, his team was rewarded with the gold medal. No wonder the Chinese public is “outraged and bewildered.” Why is one action an example of the clever use of rules while the other is unsportsmanlike? Couple that with the numerous dubious calls against Chinese athletes, and you come up with a pattern of bias that goes against the Olympic spirit.

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Can we please rid ourselves of this “victim mentality”? asked Cao Lin in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao.In the last Olympics, China proved it could be an excellent host. This time around, our maturity as “an audience with mental composure” is being tested. “Sport is not war, the Western world is not our enemy, patriotism does not mean covering up flaws, and criticism does not mean selling out one’s country.” If we want respect for our athletes and for our nation, we have to learn how to ignore the naysayers.