Presidential Candidates on China

As I have heard both presidential candidates say some pretty uninformed things about China in the past, it is good to see that they have taken the opportunity to explain their thoughts and strategy regarding the world's most populous country. As has been reported by many different China related blogs, McCain and Obama have both written essays for the American Chamber of Commerce in China. It seems that both are sticking to relatively safe positions, but the essays are interesting nonetheless. The "China Rises" blog has posted both essays, along with a succinct summary of both candidates' China strategies put together by the Asia Foundation. Definitely worth checking out (here).

The writer of the blog, Tim Johnson, mentions that there may be some nostalgia for the presidencies of both Bush 41 and Bush 43 in China, as they are both considered "friends of China" (41 was de facto ambassador to China prior to the normalization of diplomatic relations). I would generally agree with his position, but add that when he mentions 'China', it should be thought of as the leadership in Beijing, not the country in general.

Addendum: From the China Law Blog, best summary of the essays so far:

"Anyway, I give you McCain and Obama, in their own words, on China, written for AmCham. The summary of both is that China has done great things (duh!), still has a ways to go (duh!), and the US should cooperate, except where it does not make sense to do so (duh!). Yada, yada, yada. One can hardly blame America for focusing more on Sarah Palin's glasses?"

Who Will Win the Medal Count?

The unfortunate news of Liu Xiang's injury and withdrawal from the 110m hurdles not withstanding, China has a lot to be proud of in this Olympics. According to the most current listing on beijing2008.com, China leads the US in gold medals by a huge margin, 43-26. It would appear that the battle for most golds is safely in China's hands, barring some unfathomable dominance in the remaining events on the part of the US.

Locals Watching an Individual Gymnastics Competition on Changshou Road

However, in the overall medal count, the US still holds a slim lead, 79-76 (the remaining sports would seem to favor the US holding on to its lead). In previous Olympics, I had always thought overall medal count to be of more importance than the gold count. But most Chinese people that I have spoken with regarding this topic have said something to the effect of "of course gold is the most important", and the Chinese media list the medal count accordingly; meanwhile most US sources list the medal count as an overall ranking. Really, I don't think either is as important as people make them out to be, but my personal opinion is that overall medal count is a better barometer of a country's overall athletic culture. But, surely gold medals are still worth more than silver or bronze, right?

Well, some columnists have recently suggested a sort of weighted point system should be used to determine an unofficial overall ranking (ie. Gold = 3 pts, Silver = 2, and Bronze = 1). Well if that were the case, the current ranking would be as follows:
1. China, 176 pts
2. USA, 157 pts
3. Russia, 76 pts
4. Great Britain, 74 pts
5. Australia, 69 pts
And so on down the list. But the problem here for a freedom-loving, sushi-eating American such as myself, is that the Red, White, and Blue still doesn't come out on top.

So, purely for laughs, I've decided to devise my own medal count, which will take into account only sports which I (and my football and baseball loving friends) care about, or ordinarily consider sports. So, with that in mind, the following adjustments will be made: men's diving is out, but women's diving is in (for more, see Guo Jingjing); women's (children's?) gymnastics are definitely out (I don't care whether it's a good rule or bad, but it's pretty clear the Chinese team cheated on the age rule. Also, the Karolyis are a little creepy to me, don't know why.); arbitrarily, badminton is out, and table tennis is in; all shooting is out, (I saw pot-bellies on some of the competitors, and when I see pot-bellies in sports, I expect them to be quickly offset by a crushing tackle, a 400 ft. home-run, or a 97 mph fastball.), though archery remains; goodbye trampoline, your sport is a joke (to me); and finally, women's weightlifting* is out.

So where does that leave us? According to my calculations for the first ever for-entertainment-purposes-only-sports-that-actually-count Medal Count, the rankings now look like this:
Overall:
#1: USA, with 64 medals
#2: China, with 43 medals

Gold medal count:
#1: China, with 24 golds, 10 silvers, and 9 bronzes
#2: USA, 22 golds, 19 silvers, and 23 bronzes
(OH NO! Well, this one should change if basketball comes through, women's beach volleyball continues to roll, and the Track & Field athletes pull their weight.)

Point system:
#1: USA 127 touchdowns (points shall be known as touchdowns if the US is leading)
#2: China 101 TDs

So what's the point of all this? First, medal counts are probably not a good gauge of any country’s collective athletic prowess (if it were so, the Republic of Michael Phelps would be more athletic than approximately 60 medal-winning countries, including a billion plus Indians), or its sporting culture. Second, any medal count should be looked at with a grain-of-salt, and when I make the rules, the US always wins!!

*On women's weightlifting: If the US women had won any medals, I would absolutely be counting them, as there is a thriving amateur culture of US lifters. However, as far as I can tell, women's weightlifting in China goes against many Chinese cultural norms regarding the expectations of a woman's behavior. I could see a young American girl taking up weight-lifting for a love of the sport, and having the support and even encouragement of her parents; however, I would generally say that exactly the opposite would happen were a young Chinese girl to decide that weightlifting was her sport. Basically, I have seen many women in weight-rooms at health-clubs and my schools in the US, but can't remember one instance of the same in China.

The Chinese women that dominated this year's weightlifting competition came from a government athletic program, and for the most part come from peasant, country backgrounds. They were hand-picked by officials at a young age after showing physical promise of some kind, and then their parents signed them up for the elite sporting schools that offered one of the few roads out of their villages. This may not be true for every single competitor, but it is for the majority. This system goes against everything that I see as good about sport in the US (ie. spirit of competition and love of the game). There have been a few different articles about this system lately, but one of the best comes from the Wall Street Journal and can be seen here.

The Most Popular American Team in China??

One of my favorite things about the Olympics is cheering for my country in sports I normally pay little or no attention to. In fact, it seems that once every four years is a perfect amount for me when it comes to the majority of Olympic sports. During my quadrennial obscure sports binge, I'll often just turn the TV on to whatever sport is live and see if it piques my interest: judo, a little; swimming prelims, ehhhh; air pistol, no thank you.

Anyway, tonight I found myself watching the tail end of an early round women's volleyball game between Team USA and Team Japan. I had heard from a few friends that women's volleyball is a pretty popular event over here, but I was still a bit surprised by the sheer volume of the chants of "USA! USA!". I didn't expect there to be that large an American contingent present at such an early match, and the camera shots of the crowd didn't seem to show a whole bunch of Americans (usually quite easy to spot, even in massive crowds). And I definitely didn't think the crowd was anti-Japan enough to be that pro-US. So why the positively Mark Rowswell -ian cheers? (The man know in China as 大山，or Da Shan, is a subject for an entirely different post).

My unasked question was answered soon enough, during the end-of-day wrap-up on CCTV-2. The anchor said that they were going to a brief interview with the US coach, and to my surprise she was a native Chinese speaker (please remember that news regarding this sport does not make it into my normal reading material). In fact, the US coach is none other than "Jenny" "The Iron Hammer" Lang Ping (郎平). Lang Ping, I soon found out, is an iconic athlete in China, nearly as famous as Liu Xiang or Li Ning (the athlete/ entrepreneur who lit the torch). She led the Chinese volleyball squad to a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

I cannot express how great I think it is that the US team has this person coaching for them. For one, the team members' Olympic trip to China is assuredly a different experience entirely from the run-of-the-mill (from my standpoint) trips that most teams will be having. Also, I think anything that gets the home crowd waving the red, white, and blue is very cool.

Still, it may be a stretch to say that they are more popular with the locals than the USA basketball squad.

Update: I was just perusing my usual China related media, and saw that the Wall Street Journal's China Journal just published a similar post entitled "Return of the 'Iron Hammer'". Apparently somebody over there was watching tonight's match as well. While I assume that none of the readers of the aforementioned blog would deign to read this one, for pride's sake I must mention that according to Google Reader, mine was published 2 minutes earlier. If you have time, compare the two entries, and let me know what you think (and remember that they are paid to blog).