As anyone with access to the internet, television, or a newspaper knows, these summer Olympic Games have put the city of Beijing under an international microscope. From the city’s pollution, to China’s record of human rights abuse, to the somewhat bizarre public facelift the city has undergone in preparation for the Games, nothing remains unscrutinized in the world media. Coverage of the Chinese athletes themselves is no exception, or more specifically, their performance, and the intense pressure from family and country to succeed. From the highest levels of government to the poorest provincials, the Chinese are in it to win it, for pride, for history, and for the Glory of the nation.

A brief Olympic history, as regards the Chinese: during the Mao Zedong years, China sat out every international sporting event, refusing to share a stage with ideologically opposite Western nations, not to mention the Taiwanese. After China opened its doors in the late 1970s, sports were not a high priority, with a bankrupt communist economy to fix. The first Olympic medal ever for the Chinese came in 1984, and they haven’t looked back, sharply increasing their medal count at each Olympiad.

Not only was it victory on an international scale, it was a signal to the world that China was shedding its isolationist past and ready to progress with other major nations. In Athens in 2004, the Chinese were second only to the Americans in the gold medal count, and third in overall medals behind the US and Russia.

How has a nation undergone such a massive change in such a short time? Simple: they decided they were going to. Read More »