Guangzhou: The Asian Games and the Chinese ‘Gold-Fest’ – Geopolitical Issues for Australia

At the Guangzhou Asian Games, the performances of China's athletes, the officials and the host city of Guangzhou were outstanding. China's journey to the Asian Games in Guangzhou and the accompanying political and sporting machinations throughout are considered in the initial discussion of this essay. The analysis subsequently focuses on Australia's metamorphosis as an ‘Asian’ nation and the sporting, cultural and diplomatic implications this could have for Australia and China. Would this signal Australia's egress from the Commonwealth Games and the Commonwealth per se, thus cutting the British Imperial umbilicus? The presence of Australia at the Asian Games may also enhance the soft power ambitions China has for its engagement in the Asian Games; succeeding in competitions that include a global sports ‘heavyweight’ like Australia would add kudos to the performances of Chinese athletes. How would Australia benefit from this shift? Considering Australia's geopolitical and economic ties with East Asia would an increased level of sporting engagement with China concomitantly produce cultural, economic and political successes? In the long term, Australia may inevitably become part of the post-colonial East Asian world: the future world of power, wealth and geopolitical influence.     

The ‘inclusion’ of elite athletes with disabilities in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games: An exploratory analysis of British newspaper coverage

The XVII 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester, England, was the first major international multi-sport event to include elite athletes with disabilities (EADs) in its main sports programme and medal table. In this exploratory article we seek to examine some of the complex issues surrounding the inclusion of EADs in the Manchester Games by analysing the coverage afforded those athletes by six national British newspapers. The results suggest that: (1) there was a tendency by the British media to discuss the performances of EADs in terms more-or-less consistent with a medicalized understanding of disability; (2) the inclusion of EADs in the Games signalled the ‘end of a sporting apartheid’ between ‘able-bodied’ athletes and EADs; and (3) that the participation of EADs in the Games was said to reflect the alleged growing ‘inclusion’ of people with disabilities in the wider society more broadly. The paper concludes by discussing some of the unintended consequences of including EADs in the Games, including those brought about by the classification system used to group athletes into events according to their particular impairment. Those which were associated with the supposed need for greater media coverage of EADs in ‘able-bodied’ sports competitions such as the Commonsealth Games.     

Acting global,thinking local: ‘Liquid imperialism’ and the multiple meanings of the 1954 British Empire & Commonwealth Games

Challenging earlier scholarship that has suggested that the Commonwealth Games contributed unproblematically to imperial and commonwealth unity, this article explores the multiple, and conflicting, contemporary local meanings of the 1954 British Empire & Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver, Canada. In addition to emphasising the sporting and economic dimensions of the Games, the article introduces the concept of ‘liquid imperialism’ to highlight the complexity of Canada's imperial connection in the post-war era. By examining not only official pronouncements, but also oppositional voices and the manner in which the Games were appropriated by a number of competing interests, the article argues for a more complex understanding of the Games' cultural influence while examining the nature of Canada's imperial connection during the middle of the 20th century.     

Twitter,Team GB and the Australian Olympic Team: representations of gender in social media spaces

Twitter is used by athletes, sporting teams and sports media to provide updates on the results of sporting events as they happen. Unlike traditional forms of sports media, online sports media offers the potential for diverse representations of athletes. The current study examined gender in social media coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games using a third wave feminist lens. The analysis focused on the Twitter pages of ‘Team GB’ and the ‘Australian Olympic team’ and the sports stories and images posted during the Rio Olympic Games. Despite a number of traditional differences in the ways that male and females were represented being present, such as the presence of ‘active’ images of male athletes accompanying sports stories and the presence of infantalization in the language used to represent female performers, this analysis demonstrated significant strides forward in terms of the quantity of coverage received by women in online spaces. It further highlights virtual platforms as dynamic spaces for the representation of women athletes.     

People's Daily: An Evolutionary Narrative on Asia in Its Coverage of the Asian Games

Amid the complex international situation and entangled interests, news narration is usually conducted by the government, media and the public together by copying mainstream ideas and concepts. In covering the Asian Games, People's Daily takes on a periodical change in its narration about Asia during the history of China's participation in the Games: in the stage of ‘alienation and struggle’, the narration is focused on politics; in the stage of ‘participation and competition’, the narration becomes two dimensional, touching on both politics and sport; in the stage of ‘hosting the Games and taking the lead’, the narration is further diversified and incorporates politics, sport and culture. Such an evolution takes place in a profound international and historical context, reflecting the changes not only in China's sporting events coverage but also in the ‘mindset and insight’ of Chinese media in covering sporting events and Asia.     

Reconnecting Colonial Imagination?: Hong Kong People's Attitude Towards the London 2012 Olympics

A number of Olympic studies focus on the relations of the Olympics with nationalism, globalism, cosmopolitism and Olympism. However, the majority of these ‘-ism’ studies focus on the impact of the Games on national integration in the host countries or cities; its transnational connections contribute to the creation of a transnational society and its global consciousness cultivates cosmopolitism. Most studies do not investigate the ‘colonial (re-)connectivity’ of the Olympic Games, which has the potential to affect people's attitude towards the Olympic Games and the host countries or cities. This study attempts to analyse the concept of ‘imagined community’ by measuring how people in Hong Kong (the colonised) display their awareness, motivation and expectation towards the British community (the coloniser) in hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games at the pre-game level. The results, based on a sample of 312 people in Hong Kong, highlight the multidimensionality of identity among different age groups. The London 2012 Olympics was not capable of creating the ‘imagined community’ to foster a coloniser–colonised reunion, but it somehow provided an identity-neutral platform for Hong Kong people to display situational, conditional or even pseudo-nostalgia for the colonial era.     

从新浪微博看公众对亚运场馆的情感特征

情感是态度的主要组成部分之一,了解公众对亚运场馆的情感,可以更好了解公众对亚运场馆的态度。为了更好研究公众对亚运场馆的情感,特选取了新浪微博这一新兴平台,截取2011年7~8月份新浪微博中所有包含"亚运场馆"的帖子,利用词频分析工具对微博内容进行主题词分析,提取出表达公众情感的高频词汇,引入情感价值论的分类方法,分析网民对亚运场馆的情感,并对网民情感分别与网民性别、网民使用媒介工具类型进行相关性分析。     

Propaganda and Censorship for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games: The Internal Politics of Ceausescu

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the USSR boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games and Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to send the Romanian Olympic team to Los Angeles, from an internal politics perspective. All the existing analyses study the situation from the perspective of international relations but the aim of this paper is to analyze the ways that Ceausescu incorporates this decision into his own ideology and how the Romanian people were informed. The sports news was published in the newspaper Sportul and some in Scanteia (‘The Official Newspaper of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Parti’). We will analyze all the relevant material from January until the end of August 1984 and will focus on the characteristics of propaganda and censorship used to convince the population about Ceausescu’s reasons to participate at the Olympic Games despite the situation. Dominated by the idea of a ‘multilateral developed society’, Ceausescu incorporated sport as part of this ideology and in the case of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, he manipulated the population through the media in a particular manner, centred on his ‘cult of personality’.     

The ‘East Asian’ Olympic Games: what of sustainable legacies?

Sport has proven to be an unstoppable globalising force. The Olympic Movement has come to epitomise modernisation and the extent to which Western sport has become globalised. The philosophy of Olympism, once resting upon just two pillars of Excellence in Sport and Culture has since 1994 been underpinned by a third, the Environment. All of the Olympic Games host cities now have to support a responsible concern for environmental issues and with that the very sustainability of ‘our’ culture, and sport itself. They must do so by bequeathing a holistic positive legacy from their Games. This paper will analyse the three ‘Asian’ Olympic Summer Olympic Games – Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – by looking at the cultural, sporting and environmental legacies each has left.

The discussion of the concept of sustainability as an element of culture will embrace Littig and Griessler’s idea that social sustainability is about the quality of societies expressed through the nature-society relationships and is not merely an economically based notion.1 ?1.?Littig & Griessler, ‘Social Sustainability’, 72. In this paper we consider the three Asian Summer Olympic Games. Each has been related to a specific nodal point in the host country's national history, as a means of illustrating, indeed emphasising, the always unique impacts of context on event and process. Yet we propose that, locked as they are in distinct epochs and differing cultural, political and economic contexts, they are nonetheless marked in common by an Asian discourse heavily reliant upon economic and nationalistic motivations.

The progressive analysis of each Games demonstrates that although each was unique, particularly in regards to the expectations stakeholders had of ‘their Olympics’, all three host nations represented themselves as ‘modern hybrids’ by simultaneously demonstrating their modernised characters and emphasising their ancient cultures. The analysis demonstrates the holistic impact of these events by reference to the wide range of economic, social, cultural and sporting changes that have emerged for each host from each festival. The evaluation of the nature and significance of these legacies reemphasises the impact of the Olympic Games as a vehicle for social change and illustrates the transformative power of sport at national and global levels.     

Guangzhou 2010: Eastern Orwellian Echoes – Yang Shu-chun and a Taiwanese Patriotic Media Offensive

Taiwanese ‘sports stars’ have been receiving national media attention for over a decade. In particular, the so-called Honour of Taiwan has been especially celebrated: for the media they have epitomised the nation's strength, symbolised its self-belief and represented its self-assertion. This essay explores the Taiwanese media reaction to an incident at the Guangzhou Games involving the Taiwanese athlete ‘super-star’ Yang Shu-chun, which reveals another aspect of this media attention and exposes national jealously, distrust and dislike – sport seemingly a surrogate for political point-scoring.     

Examining the impact of integrated and non-integrated parasport events on volunteer attitudes towards disability

Attitudes, and attitudinal change towards persons with disabilities, is an important area of research as it can potentially enable greater understanding of the constraints that may preclude full participation in society. In the realm of sport and recreation mega sporting events have been suggested as a potential catalyst for positive societal change and shifting negative attitudes. Much of the event research to date, however, has focused on able-bodied sport events, with parasport events being largely overlooked. As a result, the impact of major parasport events on attitudinal change towards persons with a disability is assumed by sport practitioners, policy-makers and politicians but not justified by empirical evidence. The current study thus presents a starting point by examining the benefits of hosting mega sport events and in particular focuses on an important event stakeholder group; volunteers. More specifically, the current study addresses volunteer’s perceptions of attitudes towards disability at two major parasport events: the 2014 Commonwealth Games (where parasport was integrated with the able-bodied sport) and the 2015 Pan Am/ParaPan American Games (where parasport was separated from the able-bodied sport). Data were collected at two time points for each event: pre-Games, and post-Games. Results revealed that both events had an impact on volunteer awareness levels of disability and accessibility-related issues, as well as positively impacting attitudes towards persons with disability. Interestingly, the integrated events at the Commonwealth Games appeared to impact attitudes to a greater degree than the non-integrated events at the ParaPan Am Games. Implications are discussed pertaining to the impact of an integrated vs. non-integrated major parasport event on disability/accessibility awareness, and attitudes towards disability.     

Marketing ‘Brand China’: Maintaining the Momentum – ‘The Middle Kingdom’ Resurgent and Resplendent

The multiplicity of manoeuvres that characterise modern China's geopolitical ascendancy and ambition illustrate political ingenuity used calculatedly with the clear intention of becoming invulnerable. Past recent humiliations are not to reoccur. In addition, ‘The Middle Kingdom’ is to be reincarnated: invincible imperialism pursued. The strategic plurality employed in complex compositional patterns is both imperial and historic in nature: the past is to be projected into the present and the future. The once ‘Great Game’ is now ‘The Great East Asia Game’! In the light of the Guangzhou Asian Games Triumphalism, there could be a ‘double entendre’ employed here of sizable significance. This essay considers the possibility.     

The Transformation of China's National Fitness Policy: From a Major Sports Country to a World Sports Power

For most countries with developed economies, the increasing prevalence of a sedentary lifestyle has led to a decline in adolescents' physical fitness and increased risk of chronic disease and obesity. A common solution to this problem has been to encourage greater youth participation in sports and physical activities. However, there is little evidence to suggest that this approach has been successful. Since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the development of elite sports in China has received increasing attention, reaching its climax during the Beijing Olympic Games, where China won the most gold medals. According to a study undertaken by Dong Xinguang, who designed the ‘Outline of the National Fitness Program,’ China's success in elite sports has, to some degree, been built at the expense of the country's national fitness. This study focuses on the sport-for-all policy change, especially the changes to the Peoples Republic of China's (PRC) national fitness policy after an official speech delivered after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by the president of the PRC, Hu Jintao, who, for the first time, mentioned the idea of ‘changing from a major sports country to a world sports power.’ In an attempt to help assess the extent of change in China's national fitness policy, this study adopts the five policy change indicators (comprising organization, statutes, budget, personnel, and the media) developed by Hogwood and Peters and Juang. Furthermore, elite theory is adopted as our analytical framework to explain how the political elites have tackled the difficulties in promoting sports in China. Finally, our findings are presented in three parts: the driving forces behind the policy change, policy change reflected in the five dimensions, and the conclusion.     

Public Diplomacy Strategies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics: A Comparative Study

The various ‘global events’ China has hosted in recent years, most notably the Beijing Olympics, have sparked debate on the country's projection of soft power and invited easy conclusions that China's global public diplomacy has successfully seduced the world via its rich traditional culture and astounding modernisation. A comparison with the London Olympic Games, however, would suggest otherwise. Not only do the two Games differ in relation to the cultural ingredients combined to create overarching themes, they also reveal divergent public diplomacy strategies pursued by the host countries and cities. China's well-orchestrated and nearly infallible debut reveals its adherence to a top-down centre-driven approach that seeks to project the values and messages desirable to the governing authorities. The British approach, in contrast, transcends the elitist tendency by involving a wider set of actors within and without the government for clauses that extend past elites' interests. As a result, although London's Games were less ‘speculator’ than those in Beijing in presentation, the former's public diplomacy legacy may prove more lasting and likely to gain the admiration of the rest of the world.     

An Exploration of the Relationship between Large-Scale Sporting Events and Education for Sustainable Development: The Case of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games

This study explores the relationship between large-scale sporting events (LSSEs) and education for sustainable development (ESD). A case study-based explorative research approach was employed utilising the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games (MCG) – one of only two LSSEs that have taken place in Australia (the other being the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games) which have purposely sought to engage with a sustainable development agenda. The enquiry concludes that the MCG acted as a vehicle for ESD and in so doing impacted, to varying degrees, organisations, groups and individuals across its host community (the State of Victoria). Various factors were identified that impacted the ESD process in this context. Facilitating factors included the presence of an environmental strategy inclusive of ESD elements; a pre-existing commitment by government to sustainable development; and the use of partnerships by the event's organisers to progress its environmental agenda. Constraints on the ESD process were also identified. Central amongst these were the failure to embrace environmental considerations in the MCG's enabling legislation and the limited resources given over to, and lack of emphasis placed upon, the event's overall environmental programme.     

Organizational evolution and the Olympic Games: the case of sport climbing

Abstract

This paper discusses the processes underpinning the evolutionary development of sport climbing in recent decades, with a particular focus on the impact of its inclusion in the Olympic Games. New institutionalism and resource-dependence theory provide an analytical and explanatory framework for this study. The research adopted a qualitative method strategy comprising a series of interviews and the analysis of documents, reports, press and social media. The recent inclusion of the sport in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic programme has created challenges, primarily because of strong values inherent within the sport. The research, however, shows that the values of a sport can expand and develop in order to fit the regulatory legitimacy required by inclusion in the Olympic Games. Nonetheless, the research also shows that involvement with the IOC raises questions about who ‘owns’ the sport.     

Using equity theory to understand non-host city residents’ perceptions of a mega-event

This study draws on equity theory to understand non-host city residents’ perceptions of a mega-event and the corresponding host city. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 residents of the non-host city three years prior to the commencement of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Results revealed that while non-host community residents believed the host city would receive an increased level of funding for hosting the event, they did not perceive this funding as an inequity. Rather, residents of the non-host city compared the two cities on the basis of the tourism product, and stated their belief that the core advantage of their city’s tourism product was that it was less developed. The non-host city residents therefore viewed receiving further resources for development as both unnecessary and undesirable. The findings are consistent with the tenets of equity theory, which suggests that tensions were absent because inequity was not felt.     

The Disappearance of the Perfect 10: Evaluating Rule Changes in Women's Artistic Gymnastics

The 2004 Olympic Games saw a range of judging scandals in the sport of artistic gymnastics that prompted the International Gymnastics Federation to make changes to the sport's judging system. Therefore, following these games, the International Gymnastics Federation reworked the gymnastics scoring system, where the most prominent change was the removal of the ‘perfect 10’ as the highest score possible, to be replaced by an open-ended scoring system. The goal of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of the open-ended system that was introduced in 2006 through examining some of the sport's key values – an approach loosely aligned with broad internalism. It is suggested that the dual purposes of analysing what is achieved and the manner of achieving it are key values of the sport and are differentiated through the way judging utilises two categories known, in gymnastics, as ‘difficulty’ and ‘artistry’. This paper argues that the method of judging ‘difficulty’ is an improvement on previous judging methods. Our analysis of the definition and judging of ‘artistry’ in artistic gymnastics, however, reveals a less certain result.     

Cuba’s Challenges Hosting the 1991 Pan-American Games and the Spectacle of the Revolution’s ‘Soft Power’

Abstract

This paper examines the confluence of global, regional, and national politics in the lead up to the 1991 Pan-American Games hosted by Cuba. Cuba’s contentious selection as host was wholly underpinned by the international politics of the time. Once selected, the preparations for the Games in Havana were surrounded by an unprecedented domestic economic crisis fueled by shifts in global politics. This paper analyzes how international politics informed the hosting of the 1991 Pan-American Games, and shaped the political challenge the Cuban government faced in hosting such an event. The Revolution’s use of sport domestically and internationally came to the forefront in its efforts as host and the results of those efforts proved to be providential given the emerging political economic contexts during and in the ensuing years after the Games.     

The Development of Social Media and its Impact on the Intercultural Exchange of the Olympic Movement, 2004–2012

Abstract

The development of social media, in the form of Internet and mobile platforms, has rapidly flourished in the early twenty-first century. The changes in broadcasting forms of the first three Olympic Games of the twenty-first century, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012, have corresponded and reflected the speedy expansion of this social media. This phenomenon invites not only attention to the historical transformation of the roles of media for the Olympic Games but also reflection on the concept of culture and intercultural exchange based on this phenomenon. This paper studies the relationships between social media, cultural exchange and the Olympic Games in the context of globalization. It argues that the characteristics of social media as ‘participation; openness; conversation; communities; connectedness’ will meet up with the goal of the Olympic Movement and aid the realization of the Olympic Ideal.