Sleeping with the Enemy

To become globalized is still, for the most part, to become americanized. And this hasn’t been any different for China, which has slowly been opening itself to the outside world. You can’t talk about its recent history without mentioning the inauguration of the first McDonald’s in 1992. Today, its cities are full of McDonald’s and KFC’s, among other fast food restaurants. The young people who eat there speak English with more ease than their elders; they have contact with it at school and on the internet everyday. And more and more often they can be seen on the streets wearing t-shirts with expressions written in the language of Hollywood.

And there’s more. A chain of sporting goods stores called Li-ning (named after the owner) found in the large Chinese cities, imitates the Nike logo almost literally. Singers copy the sounds and mannerisms of their American inspirations. The greatest star of contemporary Chinese art is called Andy Warhol. And the most curious thing: almost all the young Chinese ladies have English names. Our interpreter, Aimeng Li, was renamed Grace by her teacher. She says the most common names are Lucy and Lily. Ni hao Lucy. Ni hao Lily.

All of this can be seen in one city, Beijing, which today will have a grandiose opening ceremony for its Olympic games in the presence of George Bush II. In the final grumblings of his term as president, which has been marred by images from the Abu Ghraib prison among other things, Bush has been irritating the Chinese authorities with his declarations about human rights, just like the American cyclists caused some bad feelings when they landed at the airport wearing anti-pollution masks. The Chinese reacted lightly, in the “Olympic spirit,” but they don’t hide the fact that they would really like to end the games with a greater number of medals, breaking the American hegemony. Sports are always metaphors, for better or worse.

Yes, the world is no longer bipolar, and the love hate relationship between the U.S.A. and China cannot be looked at through the eyes of the past. But the rivalry between the two definitely exists—and the Olympics translate that rivalry in some form, although it has not been reduced entirely to it. The cover of yesterday’s China Daily said it all with a photo of Yao Ming, the basketball player and national idol of a sport in which the U.S.A. has always been so superior, holding the Olympic Torch with a portrait of Mao Tse-Tung in the background. The giant wants to win. And it says that it wants to play fair.