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.”
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