The Beijing Olympics will be remembered as the largest, most
expensive, and most widely watched event of the modern Olympic era.
But did China present itself as a responsible host and an emergent
international power, much like Japan during the 1964 Tokyo Games
and South Korea during the 1988 Seoul Games? Or was Beijing in 2008
more like Berlin in 1936, when Germany took advantage of the global
spotlight to promote its political ideology at home and abroad?
"Beyond the Final Score" takes an original look at the 2008
Beijing games within the context of the politics of sport in Asia.
Asian athletics are bound up with notions of national identity and
nationalism, refracting political intent and the processes of
globalization. Sporting events can generate diplomatic
breakthroughs (as with the results of Nixon and Mao's "ping-pong
diplomacy") or breakdowns (as when an athlete defects to another
country). For China, the Beijing Games introduced a liberalizing
ethos that its authoritative regime could ignore only at its
peril.
Victor D. Cha--former director of Asian affairs for the White
House--evaluates Beijing's contention with this pressure
considering the intense scrutiny China already faced on issues of
counterproliferation, global warming, and free trade. He begins
with the arguments that tie Asian sport to international affairs
and follows with an explanation of athletics as they relate to
identity, diplomacy, and transformation. Enhanced by Cha's
remarkable facility with the history and politics of sport, "Beyond
the Final Score" is the definitive examination of the events--both
good and bad--that took place during the Beijing Olympics.
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