Chinese Government: No Anti-Japanese Hate During Olympics
According to the Washington Times (via Foreign Policy), the Chinese government is taking measures to ensure that locals attending next year’s summer Olympics will not embarrass their country. Shouting obscenities, booing during opposing countries’ national anthems, and banners with insults on them, all of which have been pretty common at smaller scale international matches held in China prior to the 2008 Olympics, are being discouraged in favor of official government sanctioned cheering styles:
At a field hockey test event this summer between Argentina and Australia, hundreds of middle-age women were bused in to add atmosphere ・the kind of instant numbers only China can muster. The women tried to imitate cheers in Spanish but got it wrong.
“Ba mao si fen han de di le,” they chanted, which in Chinese could roughly mean: “Eighty-four cents, you’ve offered a price too low.” Nobody could figure out what this had to do with field hockey.
If there’s trouble, it could come in soccer ・or any team event in which Japan participates. Chaos erupted in Beijing in 2004 after Japan defeated China to win Asia’s national soccer title. Japan’s women’s soccer team was peppered with insults three months ago at the women’s World Cup in China, and fans jeered Japan’s national anthem.
Shouting obscenities at opposing players is common in Chinese soccer. Beijing’s top club, Guo’an, plays at the Feng Tai stadium, which is draped with signs urging good behavior. Dozens of closed-circuit cameras have been added in the past few years, and the police presence has increased severalfold.
“Be civilized when you watch the match. Don’t get angry about the results,” one banner reads.
Cameras also will dot each Olympic venue, many looking down on the crowd from the ceiling. Organizers say they may dress police and soldiers in volunteer uniforms to ensure order.
“We are not going to shout profanities in front of foreigners because the Olympics is a show for foreigners,” said Lui Wei, a spectator at a recent Guo’an game.
“The government has told us it’s not polite,” the 21-year-old said. “The government wants to show a good image of the country.”
The rude and hateful reactions of Chinese spectators have offended Japanese sports fans for years now, but the Chinese government is only taking action now because millions of spectators in non-Japanese countries will be watching China/Japan matches on their televisions. Hopefully their new policies will make things cleaner and will last beyond the Olympics.
For a few examples of Chinese crowd treatment of Japan, I googled my way to the Japanese soccer blog soccerundergound.com and found these pictures:
This woman is carrying a sword with an anti-Japanese slogan on it, and she yells death threats at the camera:
A team China supporter shouts that he will kill the Japanese:
The crowd that guy was in starts chanting insults directed at the Japanese:
China blog EastSouthWestNorth has also blogged about the anti-Japanese cheers of Chinese fans during the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, mentioning an extraordinary reaction from the Japanese:
When the Japanese women’s soccer team unfurled a banner of gratitude at the Hangzhou Huanglong Stadium, it belied what had happened for 90 minutes before. Japan, trying desperately to get into the knockout phase of the women’s World Cup, had to endure not only the onslaught by reigning champions Germany on the pitch, but also a chorus of abuse from the almost 40,000 spectators, who had come not so much to cheer the Europeans but to jeer their Asian neighbours.
In this group A finale in the coastal city of Hangzhou 13 days ago, heckling and booing threatened to bring down the roof whenever the Japanese gained possession. A huge German flag was passed around the stands by a mostly Chinese, 39,817-strong crowd. The overwhelming partisan support for the Germans – who won 2-0 – coupled with obscenities directed at the Japanese, certainly raised a lot of eyebrows. “People paid a proper standing tribute to the German national anthem but once the strains of the Japanese anthem set in, most of them sat down and booed,” said a German journalist. “To be honest, it was really impolite.” Yet the Japanese women were undaunted. They returned to the pitch after the final whistle, held up a banner reading “Thank you China” and bowed to the stands in all directions.
[...]
“There is no doubt that Japanese athletes will have to live with the hostility [at the Beijing Olympics],” said Tong Zeng, a leading activist in the campaign to defend China’s sovereignty over the Diaoyu islands. “The resentment is justified and a natural response towards a sports team representing a former invader that denies its tainted past.” Asked whether the goodwill banner by the Japanese women conjured any sympathy, Tong replied: “It’s a heart-warming display of kindness, but again I don’t think it will do much to put an end to the heckling.”
It’ll be very interesting to see how the 2008 Olympics turn out.
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