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With the Olympics fast approaching, and anti-Chinese voices rising to a deafening level amongst those in the media, the question has to be asked whether the Beijing 2008 Summer Games will be looked back on in a similar light to the pre-war Berlin Olympic Games of 1936, or are the dissenting voices simply clamouring for an imagined moral high ground? That question therefore has to be: are the Chinese really the new Nazis?

Here at The World’s Greatest Blog, we told you of a perceived anti-Chinese slant in BBC online reporting in the past couple of year’s lead up to the Beijing Olympics, and since that time have been keeping a somewhat close eye on the reporting coming from much of the mainstream media in this period, and latterly its effects on that great embodiment of all that is virtuous: Oscar-winning actors.

It was wonderful to watch as such men and women – and lets not forget they have gone into battle through the ages, they’ve seen great famines and floods: they’ve struggled – clambered aboard their podia, clutching their little golden statue, and pleaded with the good people of the world to “Boycott the Games (sic)”.

Yesterday, or it might have been today (time differences are voodoo), a couple of British students were arrested for unfurling a banner about Tibet from power lines as the Olympic Torch passed. Far be it from me to comment on their message, however, from a point of public safety, it would seem that people who clamber up electricity pylons should be arrested as a danger to themselves and the people around them, particularly when a large congregation is either expected or currently present.

The issue of Tibet requires further exploration though. Ask the man on the Clapham Omnibus about the situation in Tibet and he will likely tell you this: “China done it”. We all know the Chinese are baddies when it comes to Tibet – George Clooney told us so – but how many of us actually understand, to any degree, anything of the situation in Tibet; what has actually happened there; and why, precisely, the Chinese are entirely to blame? Very few, I would imagine.

In actual fact, China’s record in Tibet isn’t as bad as we might imagine – yes, they won’t allow Tibet independence, yes, the Tibetan monks had several grievances with Chinese rule that they protested about, however, much of the subsequent escalation was probably caused by the Chinese overreaction to those protests (arresting monks) rather than anything more malevolent. Much of the public opinion resulting from such events, however, paints China in a far more negative light – and this is due to inaccurate reports stemming from misinformed or biased commentators.

The issue of Tibet is most often (from my experience) cited as the reason why China shouldn’t be hosting the Olympic Games, and why we should “Boycott the Games (sic)” (George Clooney et al). Other reasons range from the following:

1. Human Rights Abuses – only have to be suggested, without any real world examples, however, if accompanied by a hard luck story (videos please), this item will make the BBC front page.
2. Climate Change – Its smoggy in Beijing, therefore China is the worst offender in the world when it comes to Climate Change and Global Warming, also, won’t all the athletes ‘get all snuffly’ while they are running about and whatnot. In actual fact, China cannot import many American cars because they do not come up to Chinese emissions targets. I could go on.
3. Censorship - Western journalists love to try as many websites as they can and see which ones they cannot get. “I can’t get the Amnesty International website. Outrageous. OUTRAGEOUS. OUTRAGEOUS. I am OUTRAGED.”
4. Darfur - Steven Spielberg, another renowned political historian, said he was boycotting the Olympics because of China’s failure to recognise the plight of those in Darfur, and condemn the Sudanese goverment. The issue is complicated, and involves huge tribal balances of power; genocide, and its very definition. Spielberg makes it simple: China must condemn, or I condemn China.

To return to the Berlin comparison, the large question, hinted at above, has got to concern whether public understanding of the issues at hand – and for this the responsibility yet again lies with the mainstream media – is anything like it was in 1936. I would argue that it is not – we have ‘progressed’ from ‘doing news’ and covering events as they happen, or shortly afterward, to doing what I like to call ‘reaction shots’ – where we watch people reacting to situations rather than actually seeing or hearing about the situation itself – to the current phenomenon of hearing about issues through the (obviously much more informed) filter of celebrities, or, rather, watching famous people react to situations. This style of reporting may well be popular, but it certainly isn’t informative.

And so, alas, I must do more than my usual perfunctary research, and draw some direct comparisons between the China of today, and the Nazi’s of 1936, in order to ascertain whether we’ve all been here before…

In the lead up to the 1936 Games, the United States, in particular, considered most meticulously whether or not to boycott the Olympics, however, by a relatively close vote, they decided to go to the Games. Two Jewish Americans staged their own personal boycotts. Despite the fact that this was a Nazi regime which was widely recognised around the world as the perpetrators of massively anti-semitic crimes, the 1936 Summer Olympic Games had the largest international participation to date. The Boycott, though talked about, never materialised: not unlike this year’s Beijing Olympics.

Those in Olympic positions of power maintained that the Games were ‘above politics’ – lets not forget that the 1936 Olympic location was voted in before the Nazi’s rose to power – and had nothing to do with what may or may not be happening in the government of the country. This view, too, is echoed today (and in stark contrast to the Zimbabwe cricketing situation, where it was agreed amongst players that sport was categorically not life or death).

So, to recap, in 1936 we had protests (2008 – check), in 1936 we had threats of boycott (2008 – check) in 1936 those boycotts never materialised (2008 – er, check – I’m beginning to see a pattern) then, three years after those Olympics, when the world had monumentally failed to make a stand due to the sporting vanity of each nation state participating, the world was embroild in the biggest war ever to take place…

And that is where the comparison diverges: We won’t be at war with China in the next three years, or ever, I would imagine. The Chinese are not the Nazi’s: all suggested boycotts are just what they appear to be – an attempt by those making them to boost themselves for having suggested it.

The ‘life or death’ issue I was driving at with the Zimbabwe cricketing comparison is an important one – China, to the best of my knowledge, has not persecuted individuals to the point of brutal murder (Zimbabwe), and is not committing (or about to commit) genocide (Nazi Germany).

To sum it all up: the 1936 Olympics should have been Boycotted, but weren’t, and the 2008 Olympics should not be Boycotted, despite what the reaction shots and pseudo-intellectual A-listers might seem to tell us.