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Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: The Paris Summer Olympics generate a surge of interest and public discussion in China, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wraps up a visit to Beijing with an aim to relaunch relations, and a nationalist influencer is censored after comments about the Chinese Communist Party’s third plenum.
China on the Olympic Stage
Chinese state television commentators were left dumbstruck during the opening ceremony for the Paris Summer Olympics last week—apparently unaware of the inclusion of LGBTQ themes in the event and thus unable to censor it in time. They remained silent or mumbled a few uncertain words during same-sex embraces and drag performances.
The ceremony set social media abuzz for a day before the censors managed to quash the discussion. In China, authorities have enforced an increasingly homophobic stance in the last decade despite growing acceptance toward LGBTQ people among the Chinese public. But the surge of interest also raised wider questions about the Olympics and China’s relationship to the world.
The Olympics are strongly associated with China’s national restoration and path toward modernity. Although China has participated in the Games since 1932, it didn’t win its first gold medal until 1984, for marksmanship. But China quickly moved up the tables, coming first in the gold medal count at the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008 and taking second or third place each time since.
The Olympics are also closely correlated with ideas of masculinity, nationalism, and strength that go back to early 20th-century reformist nationalists in China, who linked the supposed physical weakness of the Chinese people with the country’s failings on the global stage.
The Olympics obsession has sparked wider public discussions in China. Does the national sports system abuse and discard athletes? Is the intense focus on individual events such as diving or shooting a mistake? Why does China perform so well at the Olympics, but so poorly at popular team sports such as soccer? The Chinese press often fixates on stories about why kids are supposedly unfit or young men are too “feminine”—the latter linked in turn to homophobia.
These issues can be discussed with relative ease, but others run up against the red lines of censorship. Sexual abuse of athletes is an almost untouchable topic in China; it bubbled to the surface in 2021 when tennis player Peng Shuai accused a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) figure of sexual assault before disappearing from public view. Discussion of cheating is also taboo, including China’s underage gymnasts and doping swimmers.
Although some sports have been the target of highly publicized anti-corruption investigations, the country’s Olympic training system has remained largely untouched, as closely as it is linked to China’s international image.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other sports bodies allow China to investigate its own scandals, producing inevitable but unconvincing proclamations of innocence. To some degree, international organizations have little choice: China would likely stymie outside investigations with refusal to cooperate, as has happened with more serious questions. The IOC, which has its own rampant corruption, doesn’t have the courage to confront as important a participant and funder as China.
Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way. The Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008 were intended to be a moment both of national unity and power and to signal opening up to the world. Once-censored filmmaker Zhang Yimou directed the choreographed masses at the opening ceremony, which were matched with the slogan “Beijing Welcomes You” and the hope of a freer and more diverse China.
But that didn’t materialize. By 2022, when China hosted the Winter Olympics, the event had become an exercise in authoritarian power. February 2022 proved to be an opportunity for China to show that it could hold a massive event while maintaining strict zero-COVID rules and muting criticism of its ongoing atrocities against the Uyghur Muslim minority and others.
Unfortunately for Chinese authorities, the rest of 2022 didn’t turn out so well, as the zero-COVID system collapsed under the dual pressures of omicron outbreaks and public protest. The images of the Winter Olympics, with its tightly sealed environments and teams of enforcers, now evoke a time that the Chinese government would likely rather forget than celebrate.
The Chinese public wants to be proud of the nation, including on the athletic field. But it also wants a thriving economy and more openness to the world—neither of which looks likely in the era of late Xi-ism.
What We’re Following
Meloni visits China. Far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni just wrapped up a visit to China in which she promised to “relaunch” relations and the two countries outlined a three-year joint plan. Meloni pulled Italy out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) last December, having criticized Chinese influence while campaigning for office. Italy was the first G-7 country to join the BRI in 2019; it became the first country in the world to pull out.
But even China has increasingly deemphasized the BRI, a hodgepodge of different programs with little geopolitical or economic impact. As a result, Meloni’s withdrawal didn’t have much actual impact, and she has now effectively replaced it with other cooperation programs. It’s common for politicians around the world to campaign against China when trying to win office, but they often end up trying to curry Beijing’s favor anyway.
Bad weather, border worries. The aftermath of Typhoon Gaemi, which hit China last week, sparked record flooding in Hunan province and led to the evacuation of thousands of people and at least 22 deaths as dykes broke. It’s been another wet summer for China, driven by climate change. Flooding along the border with troublesome ally North Korea may be a particular concern: Chinese officials frequently express concerns in private that a natural disaster in the country could spark a refugee crisis.
Tech and Business
Influencer in hot water. Hu Xijin, China’s most famous nationalist influencer, has reportedly had his social media accounts suspended for 30 days after mistaken comments about the CCP’s recent third plenum. Hu seems to have over-interpreted the absence of the usual reference that “public ownership remains the mainstay,” writing in a now-deleted blog post that it represented a breakthrough, and that China had acknowledged the importance of the private economy.
Hu’s comments prompted criticism from other nationalists that he was exulting capitalists and then this slap down by censors. This is hardly the first time that Hu—the former editor in chief of the Global Times—has gotten in trouble. Hu is a classic example of entrepreneurial nationalism in China, where fame and attention depend on distinguishing oneself from the pack with more extreme or daring takes.
That comes with risks: Other nationalists seized on Hu this time because he is their main competitor, not an ally. So what does the omission of the line from the plenum actually mean? Probably not a lot: Chinese regulators have been trying to signal that the country isn’t entirely hostile to private business. But the power of state-owned enterprises has only grown.
New online ID system. China’s central government has published a draft document looking to establish a single unified ID authentication system online, both for convenience and for control. However, it may be some time before the measures are implemented, and they’re unlikely to mean a significant increase in the chokehold that the censors already have on the public.
Real-name ID is already required for almost all services in China, usually through providing one’s phone number, which must be linked to a national ID card. The purpose of the new system is to give users a way to identify themselves without handing all their details over to private companies—while still letting the government trace them.
FP’s Most Read This Week
A Bit of Culture
Feasts are among the most traditional and conventional subjects of Chinese poetry—up there with lakes, mountains, and the moon. But the late-Tang poet Li He (ca. 790-817) tackled the theme in his trademark fashion: It all starts out pleasantly enough, but the colors are just a bit too saturated, the volume just a bit too loud, and out of the corner of his eye Li can see everyone’s faces melting away to reveal the grinning skulls beneath.—Brendan O’Kane, translator
Bring in the Wine
By Li He
Liquid amber,
Crystal glass,
Pearls of crimson beading on the cask,
Boiled dragon and roast phoenix
weeping tears of marble fat,
And a perfumed breeze, all girded round
with curtains of damask.
Sound the dragon pipes!
Strike the alligator drums!
Let white teeth flash in song,
Let slim waists sway,
Seize the spring before dusk takes the day
And the peach blossoms fall in carmine showers —
Drink it all away.
Be dead-drunk all your living hours:
Wine won’t soak through the graveyard clay.
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