Fill Me in on Beijing Olympic Thing... (boycott, companies, ratings)

[Liza54]

I'm embarassed to ask, but was more embarassed when I couldn't really give the reasons to boycot the olympics when others were discussing it at work.
Tell me in simple terms all the reasons people are 'against' China holding the games. Thanks in advance for filling the clueless in!

[tablemtn]

If you go by the TV ratings, nobody boycotted the games anyhow, and it's now a moot issue.

[jtur88]

Because we're afraid of them. We're afraid of terrorists. We're afraid of immigrants. We're afraid of our shadows. We're afraid of everything. A great nation that was once motivated by moral values and progress and quality of life is now motivated by fear and intimidation and terror. A great nation that was once pro-active to do what was right is now re-active to snarl at anything it can fear in the darkness or under the bed. The world has now become the passing car, and America the dog that chases it and barks at it, with no clue what it would do if it ever caught it.

[karfar]

I think it's two things: one, because of their human rights issues. However, I think for the majority of people complaining about China, that's not it. Two, the fact that their economy is going well & people are scared they're going to surpass the U.S. as a world power. I have a problem w/their human rights issues, but as far as their economy, I say good for them.

[JTraik]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Because we're afraid of them. We're afraid of terrorists. We're afraid of immigrants. We're afraid of our shadows. We're afraid of everything. A great nation that was once motivated by moral values and progress and quality of life is now motivated by fear and intimidation and terror. A great nation that was once pro-active to do what was right is now re-active to snarl at anything it can fear in the darkness or under the bed. The world has now become the passing car, and America the dog that chases it and barks at it, with no clue what it would do if it ever caught it.

*bark! bark!*

[MIKEETC]

I don't think it would have been possible to boycott the Beijing Olympics even if one wanted to. Boycotting is a means to affect change by hitting someone where it hurts: in the wallet. But the Chinese didn't host the Olympics in order to make money, they did it to make a statement - one that is hard to ignore. They used "public" money (mind you this is a Communist state we're discussing here) to build and/or upgrade a lot of the infrastructure, facilities, etc. I don't think they expected to recover their costs under any circumstance (certainly not in 2 weeks).

If you want/ed to express your displeasure with the host country, the best way to do it would be to boycott the supporters of the Beijing Olympics, i.e. those who as sponsors were endorsing China and ignoring whatever negative things about China that you could think of.

Unfortunately, and I've referenced this before, but 1.3 billion Chinese amounts to a lot of customers. Even if every American refused to buy products from Coke, Nike, McDonalds, or whatever ever again, that many Chinese, newly empowered economically, offset the 300 million or so Americans. Then there is the rest of the world who do not necessarily see the world the way we do.

All of these companies most likely have done their cost/benefit analyzes and concluded that it was worth the risk of upsetting some people. Besides, how angry can you be at all of the companies that sponsored the Games, and for how long?

Conveniently for the Chinese, one of its most vocal critics (the US) is now, as in right now, focused on China, the Olympics, its aftermath, China's dark side, etc. etc. A good portion of the country is now tuned into the Democratic National Convention which began hot on the heels, more or less, of the Olympics. And for the remainder of the year, we're going to thinking about the upcoming election.

The Chinese raised their head just enough to say what they had to say and then slipped right back under the radar.

Good timing, eh?