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Brand China is taking a beating. 'Welcome to the NFL'

Michael Hedges April 14, 2008

Without doubt within the Middle Kingdom whispers are whirling. Chinese leaders have misjudged the force of images and symbols. It’s odd, and yet not, for a culture whose language is built on both.

olympicSending the Olympic Flame across the globe is meant – symbolically – to draw one and all to a moment, shared. Yet the passing of the Olympic Flame, person to person, became last week a moment of its own. The intended images were crowded out. The intended symbolism was out of tune; Chinese leaders and Olympic organizers appearing out of touch.

Lo those many years ago, when I was but a pup sports producer, I learned that days had 31 hours and nothing turned out as expected. On one memorable occasion, when my last ounce of energy was sapped and the show was still hours away, I moaned into the headset, 'This is tough.' The famous executive producer drawled, "Welcome to the NFL," the same as every coach reminds every rookie that the Big League is like nothing else. It's painful for a rookie in pain, just up from lower league stardom, to face the all-telling reality that playing in the Big League demands more than you think you've got. And you've got to find it. If China wants to play in the Big League it needs to step up and show what it's got.

As every communications expert and PR executive knows control of images and symbols is no longer top-down. Media is, in its finest moments, democratic. Those who use it create the message. They have all the votes and they vote one by one, moment to moment.

It’s a hard lesson. It may be lost on leaders – and the Chinese are not alone – intent on message management for a variety of reasons. Suddenly discovering schedule conflicts around the time of the Beijing Games opening ceremony is an appealing option – out of sight, out of mind - when all else fails. Hopefully UN Secretary General Bang Ki-moon will rethink his travel schedule and others will follow his leadership.

Chinese authorities have consistently misjudged a media world in which they, as a subject, have no control. Banishing the BBC, buying radio jamming systems, cutting satellite and cellphone transmissions and enlisting more censors serves only to raise the sense that terrible things are happening and they are keeping terrible secrets. Sending thugs to guard the Olympic Flame, bloodying the Free Tibet protestors and jailing journalists serve only to illustrate, boldly, the greater concern about China. If that nation has made its Great Leap Forward to modernity can it make the next leap to post-modernity?

After protests in London and Paris turned bloody IOC President Jacques Rogge dispatched the eminently diplomatic and exceeding objective US Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth to San Francisco ahead of the arrival of the Olympic Flame. Ueberroth’s mission was to manage the torch relay, take the US pulse and report back to the IOC meeting in Beijing. Within hours of Ueberroth’s arrival in San Francisco, Rogge made a statement turning from dismissive of the protests to condemning ‘ lightly’ the Chinese response.

Certainly, Ueberroth heard from the street. Rogge’s statement was a clear message to them: he hears their pain. Equally, it was a clear message to the Chinese authorities: You don’t get it. That ‘Free Tibet’ protests coincident with the Olympic Flames’ journey have been limited to Western Europe and the United States is also a clear message.

And it is absolutely certain all this has left the Chinese leaders confused, at least, or wounded, at worst. For them – and the Chinese people – the Beijing Olympic Games are to be the great, once-in-a-lifetime debutante ball. The modern Olympic Games have served this purpose, more often than not succeeding, though often with unintended consequences. Arguably, the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, meant to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, shocked the Russian people to question the decaying Soviet system. The success of the 2004 Athens Olympics enabled Greeks to move from civil, economic and political disgrace to stature among nations.

IOC President Rogge should be proud of the decision to go to Beijing as should China’s leaders for taking on the enormous risk. Missteps over these next four months will affect the Olympic brand and Brand China. Indecision will be devastating.

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” reads like a Chinese proverb. In fact it is from the 20th century, though quite post-modern, and from the American communications thinker Stephen Covey. Another American once said, “You can’t learn anything with your mouth open.”

Agreements between the Chinese leaders and the IOC on human rights and press freedom, foreign and domestic, are well documented. Both have reiterated those commitments, though the Chinese leaders continue to hesitate and obfuscate. Making the top-down mistake, third parties – representing special interests – have seized upon Chinese hesitation to further cloud communication. Human rights, press freedom, corruption and the environment are serious issues in China and elsewhere. All can be addressed, incrementally, in small steps using the most basic of all communication to “first understand, then to be understood.”

The melodramatic notion, such as put forth by Reporters sans Frontiers General Secretary Robert Mènard, that the IOC can or should “tell” the Chinese authorities anything violates basic principles of diplomacy, not to forget good business. But the strength of diplomacy is also the strength of its language. In its resolution (April 10), the European Parliament urged China “not to misuse the 2008 Olympic Games by arresting dissidents, journalists and human rights activists in order to prevent demonstrations and reports which the authorities view as embarrassing to them.” Experts with recent experience in China agree that the barrage of lambasting will result, not in conciliation and dialogue, but more repression and withdrawal. 

Olympic sponsors are being questioned about their moral obligation in the midst of calls to outrage. Olympic sponsorship is expensive; Beijing sponsorship more expensive than the Athens Games by a factor of five. The money has been paid, marketing, promotional and advertising programs produced. None of it can or should be withdrawn.

2008 marks the 80th year the Coca-Cola Company has been a sponsor of the Olympic Games. For more than 70 years it has been doing business in China. Building enduring relationships in developing countries requires more than platitudes. When the Olympic Torch Relay reaches Dar es Sallam, its only stop in Africa, the cost will be borne in large part by Coca-Cola sponsorship. Chinese authorities have faced criticism over the relationship with Sudan and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. In the last few weeks China has taken visible steps, noted even by US President George W. Bush, to changed policies in Sudan. Another Olympic Games sponsor, Johnson & Johnson, made a US$ 750,000 donation to humanitarian relief in Darfur.

The notion of separating the athletics, the business and the political is both naïve and disingenuous, just as much as saying the Olympic Games are “for the athletes.” At a time when the commonly known shared experience in the developing world is conflict, the Olympic Games remain a pillar of hope. Modern media will share that hope.

Olympic sponsors find themselves in a double-bind. Along with television advertisers, they risk guilt by association, for which they’ve paid considerable sums. The other risk, more foreboding, is the certain wrath of the Chinese government, grantor of access to the worlds fastest growing consumer market as well as its significant manufacturing center. No one doubts the swift and blunt reaction of the Chinese authorities to a sponsor pulling out.  

The least diplomatically skillful can be identified by that all too common trait of ‘talking passed each other.’ No communication takes place, just hot air and rising temperatures. It is good and helpful when negotiating parties are free to express themselves and engage. It is a cornerstone of democracy that interested parties – civil society, in all senses of the term - are afforded both an outlet and respect for their concerns. As it seems from the tone raised in the last week expression and engagement need to go hand-in-hand with respect.

I was at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics, in that global year of protest, my classmates raising high their fists. I was at the Munich 1972 Olympics and heard the legendary Jim McKay say, “They are all gone.” I was at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1976, and danced all night. I was even at the Moscow Olympics, when others were not. I’ve been at them all, summer and winter, through the miracle of modern media.

I will be at the Beijing Olympics, not just because I want to see the action and drama but because I want the Chinese to know this is the one global event, every four years, everybody shares. It will be shared in bits and bytes, some pretty and some not. I want them also to know the media microscope is clearly focused on them. To quote the favorite protest slogan of 1968: “The whole world is watching.”

We will see young people from across the planet rowing, lifting, running, vaulting, swimming, smiling and crying. We will attach to those images as we choose. Hopefully this will lift both our game and imagination, lest “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” (William Butler Yeats)

 

 

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on April 14, 2008 Daniel Warner from Switzerland wrote:

            The Olympic Games represent an ideal. They are supposed to be athletic events that take precedence over politics, war, drugs, money, and all that intervenes in our daily lives. For a short period of time, we are to suspend the daily to admire those who have trained to perform great feats before us. We are neutral admirers of athletic grace and skill; the athletes are devoted to the beauty of sport and the thrill of honest competition.

            All ideals have their place. They are crucial to constructing those myths that are essential to cultures. In Switzerland, we talk of William Tell and Heidi. In the United States, we talk of Paul Revere and the Minutemen. National heroes are part and parcel of ideals and myth creation, all important ingredients in nationalities and state building.

            The Olympic myth does not relate to any particular nation or state. But the creation of the modern Olympic is tied to certain ideals, among which are neutrality and no politics. The ideal athlete, like the ideal viewer, is supposed to function for the love of sport and that sportsman like behavior that it entails.

            How are we to interpret the invasion of publicity, cheating, doping and politics into this equation? How can we suspend our daily preoccupations when we are constantly confronted with the everyday? First, we should reject the idea of suspension and the binary thinking behind it. Deep inside the philosophy of the Enlightenment is binary thinking – sport versus politics, humanitarianism versus politics, etc. The very idea of stopping a war to have the Olympics is as strange to our times as saying that giving the Olympics to China is not a political/economic decision. Politics is everywhere, from the ice hockey rink in Lake Placid, to the boycott of Moscow and Los Angeles, to the black gloves in Mexico City and so on.

            Second, we should recognize that athletics has gone from a sport to a business to entertainment. The ideal of a brilliant student at Oxford taking time out from medical studies to run the first sub four-minute mile is long gone. There are no more Roger Bannisters. Nike, Addidas and world television have made this a lucrative affair. The Super Bowl is the national day of the United States, the Olympics are big business and the athletes are big time business people. The ideal of amateurism is long past.

            Third, with all the money and prestige involved, it is natural that the athletes themselves would look to cut corners, whether by drugs or the latest in swimming apparel. I no longer want to read about Marion Jones or Barry Bonds and their special drug intakes. I no longer want to read about world records in swimming because of a new swim suit. And I certainly do not want to hear about the next Ben Johnson being disqualified. There is just too much of this to keep the ideal afloat.

            In short, the Olympic ideal has been demystified for me. I accept the demystification because I have begun to deconstruct all those myths that I was taught when I was young. There is no Santa Claus, Paul Revere was a kind of terrorist to the British, Heidi is now the star of a tv show, and William Tell never shot the arrow, I, as an adult, can accept all of this.

            So, instead of worrying about the Olympic torch, I am concerned about Darfur and Tibet. If interrupting the torch parade brings greater freedom to the people of China and Tibet and stops genocide in Darfur, I am all for it. We should all grow up and stop dreaming of ideals in the abstract sense. The world here and now can be full of wonderful, real moments. After all, my Giants did win the Super Bowl this year. And there was no suspension of the political or economic. On the contrary, we know what we were expecting, and celebrated the victory in that very real context.

Dr. Daniel Warner is Deputy Director of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva

on April 14, 2008 Peter Stromquist from China wrote:

As a “child of the 60s”, I’m all for protest.  I’ve frequently asked my 20-something daughter why her generation isn’t out yelling about the war (or whatever) and her retort is that often her generation feels they can’t possibly make the same impact mine did.  “You guys changed the world.”  Maybe yes, maybe no.
 
To get Americans out in the street, it apparently takes more than a war and an administration who has ceremoniously stripped us of our rights, I guess.  Although it would seem on the surface that George Bush has broken more laws than Richard Nixon, the youth of America are apparently more moved by what Richard Gere has to say.
 
I wish I could speak as eloquently as some of the anti-China protesters in the West.  I probably could if I worked for Fox.  I could just make up crap.  Or like Fox’s owner, I could just go with whichever way the wind blows in my favor.  I do manage to see US television news a couple times a week; they talk about how the average Chinese doesn’t get to see what’s happening in the West.  But I’m watching their reports, and I’m not seeing coverage of the pro-China demonstrators that have been in every city so far.
 
I digress.
 
China’s situation with Tibet goes back more than a thousand years.  I don’t pretend to understand that much of it.  I do know that both Pakistan and India claim portions of Tibet, and I know that Americans aren’t out demonstrating about that.
 
And I also understand, and was taught enough American history to know we, as a country, have some shameful episodes in our own past, though I don’t recall any statements from Beijing telling us we should give back California or Texas.  I may have missed that, though.
 
The phrase the U.S. so cavalierly uses when it suits us is “human rights” violations.  That phrase interested me; I wasn’t really sure what that meant.  So I checked Wikipedia for their idea:
 
To wit: 
 
Human rights refers to the supposed "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.
 
Is that the definition we are using when we are carping about other country’s violations?  China’s?
 
If so, let’s talk about that, from my perspective, that of a white, educated, middle-class, 55 year old male, who has spent 35 of those years living in various cities in the U.S., and the balance of his life living on three different continents, and having had work experiences in more than sixty countries.
 
In the U.S., I question my political rights.  I have the right to vote for whomever I want, but not directly for the President; nor do I have much of a say in the selection process, of choosing who gets to run for President.
 
Freedom of expression.  From my perspective, this seems to be diminishing and selective.  Certainly the right of Muslims living in the U.S. to express themselves is held in check; apparently if you’re a follower of a certain branch of the Mormon faith, you can’t express yourself very freely either. 
 
Equality before the law.  We all know the fallacy of that concept in the U.S.  One has equality as long as they can throw money at lawyers. 
 
The right to food.   Well, I have a right to it, I can afford it.  Lots of starving people in the U.S.,  don’t think anybody would argue that.
 
The right to work.  In the U.S., at my age, I can’t get a phone call returned when I am looking for a job; in most other cultures I have experienced outside of the U.S., longevity and  experience is valued.  One could argue at home I have the right to say “Welcome to Wal Mart,” I guess it’s all in one’s perspective.
 
The right to education.  Kind of parallels the law thing, doesn’t it?  In the U.S., one can get as much education as they can pay for.
From some other sources, I have heard raised that a “human rights” issue is the death penalty.  In the U.S., we (apparently) want the right again not to kill fetuses, but we can fry criminals with abandon.  I don’t get the difference.  I guess that comes under “right to life”, except for you, pal.
 
My last permanent home in the U.S. was in New Orleans.  I am not sure if I ever felt like I had the “right to life” there.  It always seemed like it was in somebody else’s hands.  I know I didn’t ever feel (as I do in many major cities) the freedom to walk down the street, or drive down a freeway, without wondering if someone was going to pull a gun on me.  That doesn’t feel particularly “free.”  I never have that fear in China.  Nor have I ever been ‘randomly checked” in China for anything, but I have at home.
 
The U.S. administration, in this issue, and others globally, has carped about “respecting the borders of sovereign territories.”  Especially those that aren’t apparently doing any harm to the people doing the incursion.  Seems I have some slight recall of an incident or three in the last 30 years of U.S. history……well, I must be mistaken.
 
I consider myself a patriot.  I’m not Anti-American.  I wouldn’t want to call any other place home.  I am so proud of so many of the things we do as Americans.  Having lived through Hurricane Katrina, I witnessed, and received the love and kindness of many civic and religious groups, friends and neighbors; it made me proud to be an American.  But not very proud of how my government acted.
 
As I am not these days, when Americans and their elected officials are griping about China and Tibet.
 
It’s the pot calling the wok, black, in my opinion.
 
Peter Stromquist
(Living and working in China for the third time since 1992, and a person who will never purport to understand a culture thousands of years older than our own, a culture that has contributed so very much to the science, invention, and the arts of the world).

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