Never Forget The Olympic Games Are Big Business, Really Big Business, And When The IOC Talks With China Next Week Not Ruining The Business Will Be Top Of The Agenda

Philip M. Stone March 28, 2008

Human rights groups, press freedom organizations and the like are really putting the screws on China to keep promises made back in 2001 when awarded the Olympic Games, and the Chinese had given an outward appearance of loosening things up a bit, but then came Tibet to prove the sham of it all. The western media also criticized the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of squandering an opportunity via its “quiet diplomacy” to pressure China into the 21st century, but it’s not too late. The IOC President is in China next week and now the two sides really need to get down to the business of business.

There are many sides to this -- embarrass China at the Games and the West might lose a necessary diplomatic and political friend when needed in the UN and elsewhere, and there’s the debate on whether sports should be a platform for protesting political purposes, or should the IOC, in trying to separate sports from politics, turn away from publicly talking and pressuring China’ about its continuing repression … the various issues and words goes on and on.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) representing 18,000 newspapers in 102 countries, plus 12 news agencies and 11 regional and global press groups has written IOC President Jacques Rogge urging that his “‘silent diplomacy’ becomes voluble and public if the Chinese government does not immediately release from jail all those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

Letters are one thing but the old saying, “money speaks louder than words” applies equally here, too. So it’s time to really approach this from the business angle the IOC and China understand real well – there are billions of dollars at stake here in holding an Olympic Games that the world can be proud of; do it wrong and not only will it depreciate the Games’ value in the future, but it will be a permanent black eye, financially and diplomatically, for China, too.

Are companies like General Electric, that paid $200 million to be a new global Olympic sponsor , Coca-Cola, Visa, Kodak, and McDonalds really going to want to be affiliated with a badly stained sporting event? Will they be getting their money’s worth and positive PR by being worldwide sponsors of a huge sports event that has become so tainted? Sponsors usually like to keep a low profile when things politically get difficult, but you don’t pay the kind of money they have to keep quiet if things are going really wrong, and the protesters will surely be targeting them at some point. That sponsorship money speaks very loud and the IOC up to President Jacques Rogge listens  

Nobody ever really talks about the Olympics as a huge sports business, but that is what it is. The IOC doesn’t want anything to lower the financial value of these Games, and the sponsors can be very powerful in getting their views across, if they raise their voices; after all they have paid big-time for the privilege.

Then there’s NBC that paid $1.5 billion for the 2006 Turin Winter Games and these Beijing Games and then there are the millions more paid by TV organizations around the world. The talk now is of dignitaries such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy boycotting the opening ceremonies; what if the world at large decided to boycott the TV broadcasts and the web streaming? That would make for really happy sponsors!  

And the last thing China really wants is television drifting away from the Games and drawn to political events on the sidelines. That’s probably why Tiananmen Square is said now to be off limits – too much opportunity for protesters to gather as the Today Show broadcasts live and stand-ups from the world’s media are shot, and the police beating on those protesters is not exactly the image that China wants the world to see.  Of course the Chinese could surround the square with police and soldiers, huge as it may be, to make sure no-one unauthorized gets in but that, also, is not exactly the type of TV picture they want transmitted, either.

China will hope, of course, that once the Games actually begin that all of this ancillary “nonsense” will just go away and TV viewers the world over will be caught up with what happens in the sporting arenas. But the human rights groups and the press freedom groups are very savvy in such things and they will ensure that each day drawing up to the Games and then during the Games there will be serious activities “off-court” to gain the world’s attention.

What really seems to have annoyed the world’s media so much is not only that China clamped down on Tibet coverage but how efficiently they did it, stopping journalists in Beijing from traveling to Tibet. Correspondents told of colleagues who tried to catch planes going to places near Tibet hoping to sneak in under the ban, but they were stopped cold – not allowed on the planes. All of this, of course, in what appears to be in violation of Chinese commitments that Beijing-based correspondents could now travel anywhere in China to cover a story, a right that was to end a couple of months after the games, not  five months beforehand. Journalists arriving for the Games were also to be allowed to travel anywhere in China, too. They’ll be needing charter flights to Tibet to handle that capacity!

And with the Olympic torch being paraded across the world before arriving for the Games in China May 4 that leaves another five weeks for daily protests outside China that will reach global television screens daily – well, probably not in China --  and Rogge is obviously worried about those daily protests. He told the media, “I would hope that common sense would prevail and I would hope that the potential protesters would understand that public opinion would not like such a symbol to be tainted by political protests.” Some hope!

That’s why the gloves must come off when Rogge meets the Chinese next week. Rogge speaks often of “quiet diplomacy” – sounds like a leaf out of Condoleezza Rice’s book, but even she publicly states when things are bad – and if the IOC remains steadfast to “quiet diplomacy” then it now needs to tweak that to “quiet, firm diplomacy”. Rogge must make clear all of the Chinese smokescreens of the past few years are now blown away for all to see. It’s come clean time as China promised when awarded the Games. Does the IOC have any teeth and willpower to enforce its agreements?

The IOC says repeatedly that sports is sports and politics is politics, but it made a political and business decision when it awarded the Games to Beijing in 2001 that the Chinese would clean up their human rights act – and it wouldn’t have insisted on that if it didn’t understand the global fallout of awarding the Games to what was seen then as a repressive China. Perhaps the IOC believed the Games would provide the Chinese with a good excuse to make changes in their system, but it seems the Old Guard prevails. 

The WAN/WEF letter to Rogge lays out the case in asking him to get the Chinese to respect their freedom of expression promises made when they were awarded the Games. Their letter states, “The government crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression has intensified in recent months. At least 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents are currently held in Chinese prisons for peacefully expressing their views.

“Following the recent violence, foreign journalists have been banned from Tibet since 12 March and reporters in Tibet and across China have been arrested, harassed and had video recordings confiscated. Although the government introduced new regulations in 2007 to allow greater freedom of movement and access for foreign journalists who wished to travel in the country, these regulations have never been fully respected.

“Chinese journalists continue to be subject to the censorship of the Publicity Department, and the government and party continue to use authoritarian laws, including subversion, disseminating state secrets and spying, to control news and information. Self-censorship is the rule in domestic news organizations, while independent Chinese-language media based abroad are routinely blocked, harassed or jammed.

“We respectfully remind you that the Organizing Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games guaranteed in 2001 that foreign media would have ‘complete freedom to report when they come to China’. Furthermore, the Committee¹s Beijing Olympic Action Plan’ of 2002 promises: ‘In the preparation for the Games, we will be open in every aspect to the rest of the country and the whole world. We will draw on the successful experience of others and follow the international standards and criteria.’

“In accordance with these pledges and numerous international conventions, declarations and agreements ­ including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ­ we call on you to urge the Chinese authorities to end censorship and stop violating the right of all people to access information.

We also ask that your ‘silent diplomacy’ becomes voluble and public if the Chinese government does not immediately release from jail all those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

The IOC and the Chinese need to understand this is an issue that protesters will not allow to slip away. The Chinese showed with the product safety scandal that it can act swiftly to correct problems and make them disappear from public view. The authorities still have a few months to do the same to save the Beijing Olympics from the embarrassments sure to come.