by Sadanand Dhume

Originally published in the Far Eastern Economic Review

For the world’s second most populous nation, the undisputed show stealer of the Beijing Olympics was not Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt, Nastia Lukin or He Kexin. Rather, it was a bespectacled 25-year-old from the northern city of Chandigarh named Abhinav Bindra. On Aug. 11, Mr. Bindra edged out rivals from China and Finland to win the men’s 10-meter air rifle competition and take home India’s first ever individual gold medal at an Olympics, and the first gold of any kind since the men’s field hockey team triumphed in the boycott-scarred Moscow games 28 years earlier. 

Virtually overnight, Mr. Bindra became one of the most lauded figures in the country. The central government, at least eight state governments, the ministry of steel, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India, among others, showered him with cash awards ranging from 100,000 rupees to 10,000,000 rupees ($2,300 to $230,000). Indian Railways awarded him a lifetime pass to travel (first class, air-conditioned) on its trains. The budget carrier SpiceJet offered the same for its aircraft. Volvo India threw in a sedan. Dozens of Web sites, echoing Mr. Bindra’s mother, branded the Olympian the country’s most eligible bachelor. The national mood was perhaps summed up best by the fan who assured a Wall Street Journal reporter that, “by [the] next Olympics, India will be among the [United States] and China, on the top of the medal tally.” 

Mr. Bindra’s accomplishment is indeed laudable, and the country’s pride understandable. Nonetheless, India’s Olympic performance—it ended the games ranked 50th, behind Mongolia and North Korea—is also a metaphor for the chasm between its self-perception (and projection) and any reasonable measure of its achievements. With a booming economy and stable political system, India is unquestionably stronger than before, a fact reflected by its growing clout on the world stage. But when looked at more closely—or compared with its putative rival, China—a less flattering picture emerges. 

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by Jamie Metzl, Executive Vice President, Asia Society

Originally published in the Far Eastern Economic Review

China is a country run by engineers, and the tremendous success of the Beijing Games can, from the Chinese perspective at least, be seen as a triumph of engineering.

The Chinese central government established a blueprint years ago for how the Games would play out—from how the Olympics venues would be constructed to how many gold medals the country would win—and stuck to their plan with an uncanny tenacity, even in the face of strong criticism, as the Games approached. The rest of the world, with whatever reservations remain, can be nothing less than enormously impressed by how well this plan was realized.

Beijing’s Bird’s NestMost of us in the West are accustomed to organic growth within societies. Cities develop over decades, new industries emerge from the creativity of an open market of ideas, and societal growth represents the sum total of the distributed set of individual choices of an entire population. This system has served us well and continues to deliver.

But there is no denying that the Chinese model of central coordination in the realization of national strategic plans appears to be working and delivering startlingly impressive results, no matter how many times this approach has failed elsewhere. China is maintaining an incredible record of growth, bringing millions of people out of poverty, and starting to tackle some of the enormous challenges it faces with regard to its uneven development. New cities are sprouting up almost overnight from farmland.

From the engineer’s perspective of the Chinese leadership, based on its history of vacillating between centralizing control and decentralizing chaos, this progress could not be made so quickly in a more open and pluralistic society. In fact, rather than accepting the multiple narratives that weave together to create a pluralistic society, China’s leaders are actively seeking to promote a single narrative of the country’s past, present, and future. It is not surprising then that those challenging that narrative, whether seeking greater autonomy for Tibet or applying for permits to raise their concerns at designated protest parks, are being squashed.

It is great, from the Beijing perspective, for architects and engineers to have detailed plans for a building, but it makes far less sense to have carpenters and plumbers making their own decisions.

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Beijingers party as the 2008 Summer Olympic Games come to a close.

Watch the video now to find out why getting gold was so important for the Chinese, what they think about Western media’s coverage, and what the Olympics legacy will be for them.

See more images from the closing ceremony here.

In the latest installment of Asia Society’s special series, A Week in the Life of Beijing During the Olympics, a 7 year-old American visits a Beijing kindergarten–and finds out what kids in China think about the Olympics, learning English, and other issues as “the world is getting smaller and smaller.”

Watch the video now to see Asia Society’s visit to the Chris International Kindergarten.

Beijing college students discuss internet freedom, Olympics pride, cultural differences with the West and how they’re different from their parents.

Watch the video now to view Asia Society’s frank dinner discussion with Chinese youth.

For the second installment of Asia Society’s special series A Week in the Life of Beijing During the Olympics, pop culture and music industry maven Scarlett Li discusses the emerging rock music scene in Beijing.

Watch the video now to discover what’s new and exciting in Chinese rock music, including two of the city’s hottest bands, Xie Tianxiao’s Cold-Blooded Animal, and Jiang Xin’s Super Monkey.

by Deanna Lee, Vice President, Communications, Asia Society

Originally published in the Huffington Post

Deanna Lee, with Alex Farbstein, digital media manager at Asia Society, in front of the National Stadium (Bird's Nest) in Beijing.

Wow…what a feeling to arrive in Beijing in the middle of the Olympic Games.

I was curious to see how much I would really feel “part” of all the fervor. This is my first trip to China in over ten years. Even before, try as I might I never did experience the sense of belonging, of coming home, I longed for. As an ABC — American-Born-Chinese — I had to settle for a less personal sort of honor and pride in “returning” to my family’s homeland.

Beijing 2008 has changed all that, and it started during Zhang Yimou’s stunningly gorgeous, epic opening ceremony. One minute I was, like everyone else, watching in awe; suddenly I felt it in my gut as I never have before: an overwhelming sense of pride–that this awesome spectacular was my people, was me. It was no longer wanting to feel a connection to China, it was just there.

Having hardly watched the last few Olympic Games, I was hooked, and it was about much more than the sport.

That doesn’t mean I’m all rah-rah China. I was on tenterhooks for the US women gymnasts going for the team title, with the heartbreaking close-ups of a stricken Alicia Sacramone -compared to China’s seemingly oh-so-confident and oh-so-young-looking Deng Linlin and her teammates.

And what fun cheering for the all-American, all-diverse men’s team, with Sasha Artemev and Raj Bhavsar fresh off the alternate list, and Chinese American Kevin Tan. What if they could pull off a Cinderella miracle against the powerful and unapproachable Yang Wei?

It’s no surprise that while watching NBC’s coverage I was so taken with the wonderful back stories of these and other American athletes. But here in China, gymnast Yang Wei’s story, and his effect on people here, has warmed me to his legend too. Hugely disappointing was a crushing fall from the high bar at the Athens games. Now, his romance with former Olympic gymnast Yang Yun has endeared both of them to the public; people loved them mouthing “I love you” to each other after Yang’s all-around win Thursday.

And, for all the talk of China’s “gold fever” after years of molding children in the Ju Guo system of hardcore systemized, national training, I’ve been impressed here with Chinese peoples’ affection and respect for American athletes, many of whom have no less than hero status.

So many people I’ve encountered in my first day alone–from my host and her family, to a policewoman, to local journalists–are obsessively discussing every detail about Michael Phelps’ personal story and his physiology, including the fin-like advantages of his long fingers and the spread of his toes. Contrary to what has been reported in the American press, the Chinese papers are obsessed too, with for example exactly how many eggs he has every day, and how he expends energy. All Chinese children, say CCTV Chinese television anchors, look up to him as an idol.

What I’ve concluded is that it can work both ways. My new-found Olympics-inspired Chinese pride is still intact after the opening ceremonies. Rooting for the Americans was of course natural for me as a Chinese American. But in China I feel the excitement as an American Chinese. Like so many of the more than 1.3 billion Chinese people, I was crazy for hurdler Liu Xiang’s first appearance. And like the stunned crowds gathered around the television screens today at the offices of Google Greater China where I happened to be having lunch, I felt crushed when Liu pulled out after a few pained steps at the start of the 110 meter hurdles. Here, he’s bigger than Yao Ming, his legs are valued at 13.5 million dollars, his name means “to soar,” and he got into all of this not through the Ju Guo system but by knocking on the doors of those sports training schools until they let him in…doing it in what we call, the American way.

As part of a special series A Week in the Life of Beijing During the Olympics, Asia Society visits Google Greater China to see how the Google culture is being adapted to Chinese tradition.

Watch the video to see what may be the best and most fun jobs in China, and to hear the secret Google philosophy from Kai-Fu Lee, vice president of Google, Inc. and president of Google Greater China.

by Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society

Originally published in the Far Eastern Economic Review

The most watched event during the Olympic Games may well be an unscheduled one in which China is the only contender. That competition involves Beijing’s struggle over the penumbra of air pollution from dust, cars and coal-fired industries that so often hangs over the city.

Despite the severity, it is nonetheless likely that through the prodigious efforts of Chinese officials the problem will be largely alleviated for the Games, if only temporarily. What will not be alleviated, however, is the overall environmental crisis that besets China.

Millennia of abuse coupled with the more recent overexploitation of its natural-resource base to keep growing over 10% a year have put enormous pressure on China’s natural environment. Indeed, Beijing’s air quality only hints at the far broader problem of algae-choked lakes, toxic rivers, rapidly expanding deserts; degraded marine habitat; poisoned agricultural land; vanishing wildlife; and changing weather patterns. Fortunately, these resources exist in the visible world which allows us to be more aware of their state of health.

However, there is another critical natural resource that remains largely invisible, incapable of sounding its own alarm. This is the earth’s atmosphere. It has become the dumping ground for escalating amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, mainly oil and coal. And China, which is almost 80% reliant on coal for the generation of electrical power, has just recently become the world’s largest emitter of these gases. However, the U.S. is still the largest historical and per capita emitter, producing four to five times more per capita than China.

If Chinese are not to be unfairly penalized and to enjoy some of the same benefits as the “developed” world, but at the same time not to tip our planet’s climatic equilibrium out of balance, the U.S. must take the lead in working out a system of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (as the U.N. Framework on Climate Change puts it) in the struggle against global warming. Alas, we are still a long ways from accomplishing this critical goal.

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