2008 Olympics Information

China, America, and the Olympics:
Two Countries, One World
By Susan Brownell
Fulbright Research Scholar with Beijing Sports University

Part I:  Coming-Out Parties:  The 1904 St. Louis Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics

There may be no two countries in the world that have been tied together through the Olympic Games as closely as the U.S. and China.

So far historians have uncovered no evidence that China was invited to the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.  Nor did China take part in the 1900 Paris Olympics.  While China did not take part in the third modern Olympic Games – which were held in St. Louis in 1904, alongside -- the Qing dynasty sent its first ever official delegation to an international exhibition to attend the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (world’s fair), held at the same time.  The delegation made quite an impression on the citizens of St. Louis.  The 1904 Olympics were also apparently the first Olympics to be reported in the Chinese press.

The world’s fair was America’s coming-out party as a world power.  It had just acquired the former Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam as a result of the Spanish-American war in 1898, and it presented itself as an expanding power at the world’s fair.  That the Old World was not completely happy about the emerging New World is evident in the European criticism of the 1904 Games.  International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Pierre de Coubertin did not attend, said that awarding the Games to St. Louis had been a “misfortune,” and complained about “utilitarian America.” 

Historian Mark Dyreson has observed that after the St. Louis Games, it became clear that American notions of what purposes Olympic sport should serve differed quite dramatically from that of the European nations that made up the core of the IOC’s leadership.  The conflict would continue to the present.

The first published calls for China to host the Olympic Games appeared in two YMCA publications: a 1908 essay in Tientsin Young Men, and an item in the report to the YMCA’s International Committee.  The latter stated that since 1907 a campaign had been carried on to inspire patriotism in China by asking three questions:
1. When will China be able to send a winning athlete to the Olympic contests?
2. When will China be able to send a winning team to the Olympic contests?
3. When will China be able to invite all the world to come to Peking [Beijing] for an International Olympic contest, alternating with those at Athens?
These three questions are now famous in China because it has taken almost exactly one hundred years for China to realize this Olympic dream.

Olympic sports were introduced into China in the late nineteenth century by the YMCA and missionary-run schools and colleges.  The YMCA continued to play a major role in China’s sport system, and its influence was still being felt until recently since many sports leaders were YMCA-trained. The last of these leaders have passed away in recent years.  The IOC co-opted* the first Chinese member in 1922; he was C.T. Wang, who was active in the YMCA and a Yale University graduate.  The third IOC member in China, Dong Shouyi (Tung Shou-yi) (coopted in 1947) attended Springfield College, the YMCA’s college in Massachusetts. 

China learned from its experience in St. Louis. In 1910, the Nanyang Industrial Exposition in Nanjing was China’s first attempt to organize an international exposition on Chinese soil.  It was held in conjunction with YMCA-organized sporting event that later came to be known as the first national athletic games of the Republic of China (founded in 1912).  Over time, the Olympics surpassed the world’s fairs in global attention, but Shanghai will be hosting the World Expo in 2010.

One hundred four years after the U.S. "coming-out party" with both the St. Louise world’s fair and Olympic Games, China will host its own "coming out party," the Beijing Olympic Games.  As the U.S. did over a century ago, China will try to display its wealth through monumental architecture and exhibitions of economic wares.  In 1904, train stations were one of the major ways of displaying wealth – the St. Louis Union Station completed in 1902 was one of the largest and most opulent train stations in the world.  In 2008, sports stadiums have replaced train stations, and China will have its Bird’s Nest Stadium.  The St. Louis world’s fair was the biggest of all time, just as the Beijing Olympic Games may well be the biggest Olympic Games of all time.  As happened to the U.S. over a century ago, there will be grumbling from the existing powers about the newcomer in their midst, and suggestions that Chinese views about the purposes of Olympic sport conflict with the prevailing Western views. 

In sum, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are the latest version of a 100 year-old model for promoting a national image to the world.  China first learned it mainly from the U.S. and secondarily from Europe.  What we will see in Beijing in 2008 is what that original model has evolved into after a century in China.

The Olympic slogan “One World, One Dream” expresses this ideal, which originated at the turn of the last century: we are all part of one world, and we share the dream of prosperity and strength.

* “Co-optation” is the IOC’s word for its process for selecting its members.

Further Readings:

Susan Brownell, Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China (Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2008).

Susan Brownell, ed., The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race and American Imperialism (University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming)

Mark Dyreson, Making the American Team: Sport, Culture and the Olympic Experience (University of Illinois Press, 1998).