Jacques
Rogge, International Olympic Committee President
Olympic boycotts
Previous boycotts
Spotlight on grievance
Olympic Games Boycotts and Politics
25 years later, Olympic boycott gnaws at athletes
Steven Spielberg boycotts Chinese Olympics
Olympics a soft target for A-list hypocrites
US Presidents and Olympic boycotts
Europe muttering on Tibet: Olympic boycott?
Further information
See also
The 1956 Melbourne Olympics were the first Olympics that were boycotted by the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, because of the repression of the Hungarian Uprising by the Soviet Union; additionally, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon, boycotted the games due to the Suez Crisis.
In 1972 and 1976, a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott, to force them to ban South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand. The IOC conceded in the first 2 cases, but refused in 1976 because the boycott was prompted by a New Zealand rugby union tour to South Africa, and rugby was not an Olympic sport.
The countries withdrew their teams after the games had started; some African athletes had already competed. A lot of sympathy was felt for the athletes forced by their governments to leave the Olympic Village; there was little sympathy outside Africa for the governments' attitude. Twenty-two countries (Guyana was the only non-African nation) boycotted the Montreal Olympics because New Zealand was not banned.
Also in 1976, due to pressure from the People's Republic of China (PRC), Canada told the team from the Republic of China (Taiwan) that it could not compete at the Montreal Summer Olympics under the name "Republic of China" despite a compromise that would have allowed Taiwan to use the ROC flag and anthem. The Republic of China refused and as a result did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name "Chinese Taipei" and used a special flag.
In 1980 and 1984, the Cold War opponents boycotted each other's games. Sixty-five nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but 16 nations from Western Europe did compete at the Moscow Olympics. The boycott reduced the number of nations participating to only 81, the lowest number of nations to compete since 1956. The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania) countered by skipping the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, arguing the safety of their athletes could not be guaranteed there and "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States".
The 1984 boycotters staged their own Friendship Games in July-August.
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Martin Jacques March 17
2008
Events
in Tibet expose China's achilles heel: its inability to recognise and
respect ethnic difference
About this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday March 17 2008 on p32 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:05 on March 17 2008. The Beijing Olympics are a huge occasion for China. Ever since the opium wars, the country has experienced what it describes as a "century of humiliation". Extraordinarily, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 was its first major foreign policy success since the early 19th century.
Western countries are thoroughly accustomed to being the centre of global attention, which they have come to regard as their natural birthright. Not so China. It was thwarted in its attempt to hold the 2000 Olympics, which, as a result of American-led pressure, was awarded to Sydney. For China, therefore, the 2008 Olympics assume a huge importance as its first opportunity to command the global stage. The fact that the games also coincide with China's emergence as a global power only serves to enhance their significance. These Olympics, not surprisingly, have been long in the planning, with nothing left to chance.
But the global spotlight not only provides the Chinese government with an opportunity to show its wares to the world: it also offers those with a grievance against the government to do exactly the same. The fact that the games symbolically mark China's global "coming out" only serves to make them even more of a target for opposition causes.
The unrest in Tibet, then, is hardly unexpected. It would appear to have been sparked by a march of Buddhist monks to coincide with the 49th anniversary of China's military intervention in the autonomous region. With significant numbers dead - reports vary from the official Chinese version of 10 to as many as 100 or more - this is exactly the kind of event that the Chinese authorities have been dreading.
The other main attack on China in recent months has been for its policy on Darfur. Whatever the criticisms on this score, and whatever the future may hold, Chinese policy in Africa is certainly no worse than that of the west, and, historically speaking, is hugely better than the latter's miserable legacy. Tibet, on the other hand, raises much more troubling issues for China's standing in the world and how it is perceived by others.
The question is not whether Tibet should be independent but the extent of the autonomy that it is allowed. Tibet has been firmly ensconced as part of the Chinese empire since the Qing dynasty's military intervention in Tibet in the early 18th century. The Qing was responsible for a huge westward expansion of Chinese territory, adding lands populated by peoples, albeit relatively small in number, who had no natural affinity with the Chinese. One of the unique features of China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of 1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such as India, the US and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse. China, of course, was once the same, but because it is at least two millennia old, it has experienced a remarkably long period of assimilation, melding and mixing.
The result is that China has little conception of difference. The Chinese think of themselves as one race. Their historical experience is one of slow and steady assimilation and absorption, with population settlement often a crucial instrument in pacification. In this light, the Han Chinese migration to Tibet and Xinjiang province in northwest China is nothing new: on the contrary it has been an age-old characteristic of Chinese expansion (a large majority of those who now live in Mongolia and Manchuria, for instance, are Han).
Tibet and Xinjiang, however, are distinguished by two important differences from other Chinese regions and provinces. First, in both cases their populations are ethnically very distinct from the Han Chinese. And second, their effective incorporation into China is relatively recent (though still more than two centuries ago). What is clear from the demonstrations and clashes in Lhasa and elsewhere is that the traditional Chinese policies of absorption have singularly failed to suppress the Tibetan sense of identity and desire for autonomy. Even though Tibetans have experienced major improvements in their living standards, this has not diminished their desire for religious and cultural freedom. It would seem, furthermore, that the huge wave of Han Chinese settlement has only served to heighten their sense of resentment and fear of loss.
Tibet and Xinjiang aside, it is unlikely that China will face anything like this kind of unrest in the next few months leading up to the Olympics. But events in Tibet have served to expose the achilles heel of modern China: its inability to recognise and respect ethnic difference within its own borders. As it emerges as a major global player in a world characterised by exactly such ethnic diversity, this seems destined to cast China in a rather more negative light, not least in the developing world.
Martin Jacques is visiting research fellow at the Asia research centre, London School of Economics
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topendsports.com
1956 Melbourne Lichtenstein, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden boycotted the games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq also boycotted as a result of the Suez crisis. The People's Republic of China refused to participate due to the inclusion of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
1964 Tokyo
South Africa was banned by the IOC from taking part due to its oppressive apartheid regime. This ban lasted until 1992.
1968 Mexico City
In Mexico City, 10 days before the Olympics began, students protesting against the government were surrounded by the army who opened fire, killing 267 and injuring more than 1,000. During the Games, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were expelled for raising their fists in a "black power" salute on the winners' podium.
1972 Munich
11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists 'Black September', to protest against the holding of 234 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The terrorists murdered two of their captives, then, as the result of a bungled rescue attempt by the authorities, the remaining nine captives were killed alongside three of their captors.
1976 Montreal
26 African countries boycotted the Games in response to New Zealand's inclusion. Earlier that year a New Zealand team had undertaken a three-month rugby tour of segregated South Africa, but the IOC refused to ban them. The Republic of China (Taiwan) team was also barred from entering the country, then allowed to enter if they agreed not to compete as "the Republic of China"; the Taiwanese considered this unacceptable and withdrew.
1980 Moscow
Due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter called upon the U.S. Olympic Committee to boycott the Games. The Olympic Charter requires such committees to "resist all pressures of any kind whatsoever, whether of a political, religious or economic nature," but theory and practice diverge. The Americans stayed home, and in total 62 countries including West Germany and Japan refused to attend. In all, 80 nations participated in the Games, down from 122 nations in Munich. The USSR won 195 medals, but allegations of cheating tainted this astonishing result.
1984 Los Angeles
14 countries, including the USSR, boycotted the Games in what was widely seen as revenge for the Moscow Games four years earlier, though the official line was that they had security concerns. Ironically, China chose this year to return to the Games after a 32-year absence.
1988 Seoul
After failing to be recognized as co-host of the Games, North Korea (which was still technically at war with the South) boycotted the Games, with Cuba and Ethiopia joining them in solidarity. However there were no widespread boycotts for the first time since 1972.
1992 Barcelona
It was a rare Olympic games with no boycotts. The Soviet Union had broken up, and the new Russian republics competed under one banner. The Berlin Wall had been torn down - so East and West Germany competed together as a united country. South Africa returned to the Games after the end of apartheid and 32 years of sporting isolation.
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usatoday.com 4/13/2005
They are in their 40s now, the age when people tend to start celebrating anniversaries, if only this were one to celebrate. Why would they want to remember this? Why note the anniversary of something they were prevented from doing, the anniversary of the worst moment of their athletic lives?
Twenty-five years ago this week, the U.S. Olympic Committee's House of Delegates, facing withering pressure from the Carter White House, voted by more than 2 to 1 not to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. President Jimmy Carter ordered the boycott after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Viewed through the prism of international history, you tend to forget that there were people hurt by this decision, hundreds of young athletes, torn between supporting their president in an international crisis even as they wondered how their lifetime dream had been shattered by an invasion on the other side of the world.
Some U.S. athletes sued the USOC over the decision but lost. There was nothing more they could do. The Games went on without the Americans and athletes from 64 other countries that joined the U.S.-led boycott.
"People forget what happened in 1980," said Craig Beardsley, a New Jersey kid who set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly 10 days after his Olympic race went off without him. "You meet people, and once they find out you were a swimmer, they usually ask, 'Did you go to the Olympics?' It's never an easy answer, and there's always a footnote. When they ask, 'Oh, did you get a medal?' it's kind of hard to tell them that I was not there because then you have to go into the whole story, and the last thing I'm looking for is sympathy. I just try to avoid the question and change the subject. Kind of like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. ... What do you think of Michael Phelps?' "
You've probably never heard of Craig Beardsley. How could you have? As he says, "1980 was one of those aberrations in time that we just happened to get stuck in." He didn't go to the Olympics, never won the gold medal that certainly could have been his, never reaped the benefits that could have been coming to a U.S. swimmer winning a big race behind the Iron Curtain. He says there is no way to know if he would have won an Olympic gold medal in Moscow on July 20, 1980, the day his race was held, but we do know that on July 30, 1980, he set the world record at the U.S. nationals, swimming a second and a half faster than Sergei Fesenko of the Soviet Union, who won the Olympic gold medal in Moscow.
Beardsley kept training, graduated from the University of Florida, waited four years for another chance at the Olympics. Then, at 23, he missed making the 1984 Olympic team by .36 of a second. "I was devastated," he said. "I felt I owed it to so many people who had stuck with me." During the Los Angeles Games, when so much of the nation tuned in, he and his family went on vacation to Hawaii and didn't turn on the TV at all.
Years later, he would meet U.S. Olympic hockey star Mike Eruzione at a dinner in New York. "We definitely have different memories of 1980," Beardsley said with a wry laugh.
To this day, Tracy Caulkins Stockwell says when she thinks of the boycott, she feels sorriest for U.S. teammates like Beardsley, "those who didn't have another chance" in the Olympics. Caulkins, now 42 and living in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband and four children, was the USA's most dominant swimmer when she was prevented from attending the 1980 Games. She hung around for four more years and met with great success, winning three gold medals in L.A.
"What really hits home to me about the boycott was the Soviets didn't pull out of Afghanistan for nine years," Caulkins said. "Did it put any pressure on them? No, it was just a missed opportunity for many athletes. It just doesn't seem fair."
Said Beardsley, 44, who went on to work on Wall Street, "If it was going to do some good, then we could sacrifice. But as time went on, as we realized what little impact it had, I became angry for what the boycott did to all these people, my friends and teammates, and people in all those other countries too."
The Soviets and East Germans returned the favor in 1984, boycotting L.A. and lessening the competition at the 1984 Games. In a 1991 interview, Russian swimming legend Vladimir Salnikov said he still lamented not facing the Americans in Moscow in 1980, and again in L.A. in 1984. The matching boycotts robbed an entire generation of athletes on both sides of the Iron Curtain of their greatest competition on the world's grandest stage.
But time does move on, and few if any remember the anniversary anymore. "You can sit around and 'if' all day," said world champion gymnast Kurt Thomas, who would have been a favorite at the 1980 Olympics, "but eventually, you have to learn to live with it."
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By Robyn Powell 26/02/2008
Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg has pulled out as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese government's policy towards Sudan and the conflict in Darfur.
"I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual," he said in a statement.
"At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in the five-year conflict between Sudan's Arab-dominated government and Darfur's ethnic African rebels.
Human rights activists have accused China of being partly responsible for the trouble in Darfur because of its diplomatic backing of the Sudanese government.
Spielberg said: "Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes, but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing suffering there.
"China's economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change."
China is the biggest customer of Sudan's oil, and there have been complaints by officials the Games were being politicised after China was the target of Darfur advocates.
Last year the Hollywood director sent a letter to Chinese president Hu Jintao urging greater action in Darfur. The move comes after campaigning from other celebrities such as Mia Farrow, who welcomed Spielberg's withdrawal.
British Olympic badminton player Richard Vaughan, who competed in the 2004 Athens games, said it was vital athletes challenged the Chinese government to use its trade links to put pressure on the Sudanese government over Darfur.
His comments follow a "gag" on athletes after the British Olympic Association announced team members could be sent home if they spoke out about China's human rights record.
Mr Vaughan said: "I appreciate it's a difficult position for the British Olympic Committee, but it's very difficult to keep a polite silence about a conflict that continues to cost so many lives.
"In the spirit of the Games, I would ask China as all nations to help Darfur so that athletes can compete safe in the knowledge that everything is being done to stop the conflict."
Outside the Chinese Embassy in London, protesters called on China to use its power in Sudan to call for an end to atrocities in Darfur.
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The Times Mar 15, 2008
Tear
chunks out of the sleaze bags
In January, it was Prince Charles. Last month, it was Steven Spielberg. This month, it’s George Clooney. Next month, bet on Quincy Jones.
At issue is the Olympic Games, more specifically China providing weapons to Sudan and buying up most of its oil.
Prince Charles is matey with the Dalai Lama, so he declined an invitation to the Beijing Olympics.
Spielberg, who was artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies, resigned after taking heat on the Darfur issue, most pointedly from actress Mia Farrow. She calls the coming Olympics the “Genocide Games”.
Clooney advertises Omega watches, who happen to be Olympic sponsors. He says he’s put pressure on the company to use its influence to help e ffect change.
Jones, meanwhile, is doing the musical score but insiders say he’s getting jumpy and considering his options.
Darfur aside, the other 200kg gorilla in the room is China’s appalling human rights record. Despite the US State Department this week down- grading China as a human rights abuser, it remains a scary place for free-thinking journalists and human rights activists. Not to mention criminals, who accounted for a big chunk of the 6000 people executed there in 2007, according to the Dui Hua Foundation. These numbers are an estimate — the real figure is a state secret.
Given all this, you would have to agree that giving the Games to Beijing was a tad unfortunate. China never bid out of pure Corinthian ideals, but rather to use them as a platform to display its burgeoning economic power.
The International Olympic Committee didn’t award the Games to China because its bid was best. Politics, money and opportunity were at its core.
We’ve since had Britain and New Zealand impose gagging orders on their athletes, warning them not to speak out against China’s policies, although these have since been rescinded.
The stage is thus set for some powerful grand-standing, € la Tommie Smith and John Carlos performing their black power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
It’s absurd to say sports and politics shouldn’t mix, but the hypocrisy over China is staggering. Take Prince Charles, whose sense of morality doesn’t extend to Saudi Arabia, whose royal family he enjoys a strong relationship with. Human rights aren’t big in Saudi Arabia; public executions are.
Spielberg is little better. He withdrew over the issue of Darfur, yet he and many others say nothing about the massive trade links between China and the free world. Indeed, Michael Jordan and his Nikes have become iconic images in downtown Beijing, where the basketballer’s handsome face looms large on billboards.
Clooney is as ridiculous as his goofy smile. Hollywood’s leading man is quite happy to lean on Omega to take issue with China over human rights, but his indignation evidently has its limits.
A more powerful message would have been to tear up his Omega deal in protest at their links with Beijing. That would have really got the pot cooking. But it would have also have put a dent in poor George’s pocket.
Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu warned that China could face an international boycott if it did not move to end the atrocities in Darfur. Which begs the question: why is Darfur suddenly China’s problem? What has the African Union done to help end the conflict on its doorstep?
It’s naive to believe the Beijing Games will be just about sport but, equally, they can be used to encourage cultural understanding. Boycotts and heavy-handed speeches may draw attention to China’s problems, but they won’t lead to fundamental changes. Which Olympics ever did?
Sport, as Clooney, Prince Charles, Farrow and Spielberg have demonstrated, is simply the soft, high-profile option to attack.
Their protests would carry real weight if they were directed at the multinationals, conglomerates and first-world governments who blithely continue to do big business with China.
But raging against them isn’t sexy or convenient — unlike the Olympics.
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bestofbothworlds. Feb 15,
2008
George Bush to BBC's Matt Frei todayFrei: Yesterday, Steven Spielberg - the Hollywood director - pulled out of the Beijing Olympics over Darfur. He said the Chinese aren't doing enough to stop the killing in Darfur. Do you applaud his move?
Mr Bush: That's up to him. I'm going to the Olympics. I view the Olympics as a sporting event. On the other hand, I have a little different platform than Steven Spielberg so, I get to talk to President Hu Jintao. And I do remind him that he can do more to relieve the suffering in Darfur. There's a lot of issues that I suspect people are gonna, you know, opine, about during the Olympics. I mean, you got the Dali Lama crowd. You've got global warming folks. You've got, you know, Darfur and... I am not gonna you know, go and use the Olympics as an opportunity to express my opinions to the Chinese people in a public way 'cause I do it all the time with the president. I mean. So, people are gonna be able to choose - pick and choose how they view the Olympics.
Which, besides sounding like the easy way out, is not in that Reagan tradition that every Republican always says they're a part of. Reagan supported Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
UPDATE:
Here's more on Reagan's rationale (and note the plus ça change aspect in the questioner). May 14, 1984, Q&A with reporters
Andrea [Andrea Mitchell, NBC News]? And then I'll come across -- --
Q. Mr. President, you have said in the past -- in 1980 you said that you supported the boycott. This year, you're saying that politics have no place in an Olympic boycott. Why have you changed your position?
The President. Well, let's remember the different situation. The Soviets have now announced that they are not going to come because they don't believe that we can offer protection to their athletes. And, as I say, we have been given -- we've given them chapter and verse on what we have done, and there had never been anything like it.
Now, in 1980, the reason for the boycott that was given by the then administration was because the Soviets had invaded -- openly invaded with their own forces -- a neighboring country, Afghanistan, that hadn't done any thing to them or lifted a finger against them.
I think this was a completely different situation. It is true, however, that I went through several stages of thinking then. It wasn't just an automatic accepting of the politicizing of that. I was as angry as anyone, I'm sure, as we all were, and as disapproving of the invasion of Afghanistan -- and still am. But at the time, I did voice a question as to -- I questioned our government setting a precedent of denying the right of our own citizens to leave our borders and go someplace else.
I then thought in terms of shouldn't this decision be made by the free American citizens, the Olympic Committee, the athletes themselves? I went through a stage of thinking in which I said it wasn't so much of their not participating as, I said, shouldn't we -- since the Olympics traditionally were born in and exist on the basis of trying to provide peace between nations -- they, the host nation, having done what they did, should we not consider removing the Olympics from that country and staging them someplace else? And from that I went to exploring what so many have and are exploring now: possibly having the Olympics from now on be in the home of their origin, Greece, and not have them move around the world.
Of course, this exchange caught Reagan when the 1980 boycott had come back to bite the USA, in the boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
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Ed Morrissey March 17, 2008
As the situation in Tibet turns from bad to worse, the latest crackdown by Beijing on nationalist protesters in Lhasa and elsewhere has some wondering how the West should respond. Der Spiegel reports that some Europeans have begun dusting off the Jimmy Carter playbook. Suggestions for a humiliating boycott of the 2008 Olympics in China have come into the mainstream, at least as a last option.
First, though, the Washington Post reports on China’s escalation against the protests and their spread to neighboring provinces:
Vowing a harsh crackdown, Chinese police conducted house-to-house searches in central Lhasa Monday and rounded up hundreds of Tibetans suspected of participating in a deadly outburst of anti-Chinese violence, exile groups and residents reported.The large-scale arrests and official promises of tough reprisals suggested the Chinese government has decided to move decisively to crush the protests despite calls for restraint from abroad and warnings that heavy-handed repression could taint next summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Tibetan regional governor, Champa Phuntsok, said detainees who show remorse and inform on others who were part of the week-long unrest would be rewarded with better treatment. But Buddhist monks and other Tibetans who participated in Friday’s torching of Chinese-owned shops and widespread attacks on Han Chinese businessmen would be “dealt with harshly,” he told a news conference in Beijing.
In a widely broadcast announcement, the government had given rioters until midnight Monday to turn themselves in, after which they were threatened with arrest. But Urgen Tenzin, executive director of the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, said he was told by telephone that about 600 Tibetans had been arrested before nightfall by a police sweep that lasted most of the day.
That’s quite a deal offered by the Tibetan governor. Inform on your fellow Tibetans, and the Chinese authorities won’t mistreat you to the same extent as your former comrades. Actually, one has to also show the proper “remorse”, which one could fairly translate as “beg for our mercy”. Apparently, China has opted out of positive reinforcement as a means to gain cooperation from Tibetans.
China has its hands full now, and the problem has gotten worse with their crackdown. Instead of remaining localized to Lhasa, activists report that the riots have spread to neighboring regions. Since Tibet borders on Uigher territory on the north, any unrest on its eastern border hikes concerns of radical Islamist terror. The Uighers in al-Qaeda could see this as an opportunity for their organization to create its own, more violent events in areas bordering Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Meanwhile, the increasing violence of the Chinese authorities have some in Europe second-guessing the IOC’s award of the Olympiad to Beijing. Opinion leaders warn against a boycott — for the moment:
“I don’t see any use in an Olympic boycott,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the mass-circulation daily BILD. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee said Monday it was not its job “to take the lead in addressing such issues as human rights or political matters.”
German commentators have been just as cautious on Monday morning, piling criticism on Beijing but stopping short of a call for a boycott. Most think the Games will just reveal China’s true nature to the world — though one writer argues, a bit controversially, that Beijing’s refusal to negotiate with its peaceful dissidents has promoted terrorism.
The IOC should never have agreed to stage the Olympics in China in the first place. However, now that it has made that decision, a boycott would do nothing to help the Tibetans or the oppressed Chinese, either. It would anger and embarrass Beijing, but it would settle nothing, as our boycott of the Moscow Olympics proved in 1980.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe for a moment that the Olympics are anything but political. I’m not arguing that a boycott would be wrong because it would inject politics into sport — that happened decades ago and hasn’t stopped since. It’s just an ineffective way to press for political change, as history has demonstrated repeatedly. Hitler failed to impress people with fascism in 1936, the East Germans failed to prove the inevitability of communism by poisoning its female athletes with hormones, and both the US and the Soviet Union failed to change the trajectory of the Cold War a single degree with their reflexive boycotts in 1980 and 1984.
If the world wants to change China’s behavior, they can start by locking them out of economic markets. It will cost everyone a fortune, and with today’s market instability, it may be the worst possible time to try. However, that would be a lot more effective than defaulting at a sports meet and would show real commitment.
Further information
Olympic Watch
Boycott 2008
See also
Olympic Games the Chinese way
China unleashes guns and tear gas as Tibet protests turn violent
2008: The year a new superpower is born
Corruption in Burma
Scottish sport to lose £55m to help pay for London Olympics
The Great Leap backward
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