Thread: Xi Jinping and his gold-meddling flunkies

You’ve probably noticed which country has more Olympic gold medals than any other. China was basking in the glory reflecting from 24 gold medals by Monday, compared with the US with 20 and the third-ranked nation, the host, Japan, with 17. Australia, ranked fourth, had 14.
For some more perspective, China had as many gold medals as the top six European countries – France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland – combined.


But have you noticed which country has revealed itself to be the most insecure and prickly and downright cantankerous during the Games? Also China.
When the Reuters news agency published a photo of a Chinese weightlifter winning the gold medal for the women’s 49kg category, a Chinese embassy spokesperson issued a stinging complaint. Why? Because, said China’s embassy in Sri Lanka, “white Westerners” had chosen an “ugly” picture of the athlete, Hou Zhihui, as she strained to achieve her title. The Chinese official rebuked Reuters: “Don’t put politics and ideologies above sports, and call yourself an unbiased media organisation. Shameless.”
It turned out that a number of Chinese Communist Party-owned media outlets had published near-identical pictures of Hou during her lift. But in its haste to find offence and lash out, the embassy hadn’t noticed. That’s just one example.
China attacked the US host broadcaster NBC for displaying an “incomplete map” of the country that didn’t include Taiwan or the South China Sea. This “hurt the dignity and feelings of the Chinese people”, according to China’s consul-general in New York.



Chinese officials also castigated CNN for mentioning a Chinese gold medal win and COVID-19 in the same headline. And Chinese officials lashed the Japanese national broadcaster NHK for using the word “Taiwan” for the self-governing island that China claims as its own territory, instead of Beijing’s officially approved “Chinese Taipei”.
Writing in Canada’s National Post, journalist Sabrina Maddeaux remarked: “China has long been sensitive to criticism, but wolf warrior diplomacy has turned the nation into a living incarnation of the Michael Jordan ‘And I took that personally’ meme. Anything that can be perceived as a slight will be taken as one. Minor incidents are treated as existential threats and grave offences.”
So far, these are all Chinese officials’ attacks on foreign media outlets. But for its own citizens who dare differ from the party’s definition of China’s Olympic dignity, the consequences are more severe.



Woe betide the Hong Kong man who stood in a shopping mall watching the broadcast of Edgar Cheung Ka-long winning the gold medal for fencing – and booed when the Chinese national anthem was played. The police examined CCTV footage from the shopping centre, identified the offender and arrested him. He faces up to three years’ jail for “insulting the anthem”.
How should we reconcile China’s impressive athletic dominance of the Games with its officials’ adolescent hypersensitivity to offences, real or imagined? Does Beijing realise how silly it looks?
The paradox of the party’s great power with paranoid characteristics has its origin in the earliest days of modern China, says Peter Martin, author of a new book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, published by Oxford University Press.
“It’s been a continuous struggle from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to get right its message to the world – a world that’s suspicious of its founding principles,” Martin tells me.
After decades of civil war, foreign occupation, turmoil and revolution, the new republic was shaky and impoverished. Martin writes that the template for the PRC’s diplomacy was set by its first premier and foreign affairs minister, Zhou Enlai, in 1949.


After purging the entire diplomatic corps from the old regime, Zhou assembled China’s newly recruited diplomatic staff of just 170, a miscellany of fresh uni graduates, peasant revolutionaries and local administrators. Most had never been overseas. Zhou told the group: “Armed struggle and diplomatic struggle are similar. Diplomatic personnel are the People’s Liberation Army in civilian clothing.” This sense of a militant vulnerability in a hostile world lives on despite China’s ascendancy.
“We see this huge economy and this increasing military apparatus that’s very formidable; we see something intimidating, but they do feel under attack on all fronts,” explains Martin, a Bloomberg reporter in Washington. “On their human rights record, their industrial policy, on Taiwan, they hear Joe Biden talking about democracy’s competition with authoritarianism as an organising principle. They see all this and they see a world that’s hostile to them.”
But surely many of China’s professional diplomats can see the country more objectively? And surely they can see that their tactics are backfiring badly? One of China’s diplomats recently posted a single emoji as a tweet to convey how China will treat its critics: a raised middle finger. They cannot be serious.
Peter Martin says that, for the individual Chinese diplomat, there is a very human factor at work: “At the individual level they see Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign that has punished 1.5 million officials, they see Xi’s experiment with re-education camps in Xinjiang, they see him abolishing term limits for himself, and they recognise the signs from China’s own history.” In other words, they see Xi for what he is – a ruthless authoritarian bent on absolute power.


“There’s a very strong sense that officials need to prioritise their personal security in the political system. Xi has taken down former Politburo committee members – no one is safe. To protect themselves they know they need to sound like Xi himself, with a much more aggressive international posture. Their behaviour is rooted in fear and ambition.”
So there’s a good reason why China’s diplomats seem oblivious to how obnoxious their tactics appear to the world. It’s not their priority audience. Because, as Martin says, “They are performing primarily for an audience of one.” Xi Jinping.
And he’s not in a conciliatory mood. Xi said in a speech on Friday, “We must persist in strengthening the overall planning of war and make preparations for military struggle.” It demanded the commitment, he said, of the “entire party and entire country”.
Could this be the Olympic spirit with Chinese characteristics?


Olympics 2021: Xi Jinping and his Chinese gold-meddling flunkies

When the Reuters news agency published a photo of a Chinese weightlifter winning the gold medal for the women’s 49kg category, a Chinese embassy spokesperson issued a stinging complaint. Why? Because, said China’s embassy in Sri Lanka, “white Westerners” had chosen an “ugly” picture of the athlete, Hou Zhihui, as she strained to achieve her title. The Chinese official rebuked Reuters: “Don’t put politics and ideologies above sports, and call yourself an unbiased media organisation. Shameless.”

What a pathetic twat.

We already have a Chinese feelings hurted thread, and funnily enough the above incidents have already been posted.

Actually I think the author of that diatribe, a hack called Peter Hartcher, is a bit unhinged. So Google him, if you wanna read more of his stuff.

Originally Posted by sabang

Actually I think the author of that diatribe, a hack called Peter Hartcher, is a bit unhinged. So Google him, if you wanna read more of his stuff.

Are you trying to claim that the chinkies did not whinge about the photo of their weightlifter?

We should start a Moanolympics thread. Yanks are moaning about something, aussies are moaning about something else. Blaaablaa.

But ain't it great that Taiwan beat PRC at badders.