With the 2012 London Olympics in full swing, it is hard to miss articles like this one, exposing the brutality of Chinese athletic training.
As much as it disturbs me to see those pictures of young athletes being subject to what can easily be called torture, the context(s) attached to the pictures suggest a combination of government-supported mind-conditioning and inhuman treatment, which, though possible, seems quite presumptuous.
To begin, a perspective on China: China is governed by a communist party that allows selective capitalism. While private enterprise exists, the all-pervading 'State' overrides all policy matters. On the one hand, this brings immense prosperity to China, developing infrastructure at a breakneck speed. On the other hand, it also cripples socio-economic mobility, since the government controls migration to cities, among other kinds of freedom. Everything is optimized to gain a macroeconomic advantage.
In this brutally utilitarian system, the idea of personal entitlement is unrealistic, and expressing any form of dissent is dangerous. People in China know this, and while many of them may not like it, they have, over generations, come to tolerate and even embrace it, catalyzed somewhat by the tremendous growth China has seen recently. The popular emotion in China is positive (similar to other fast-growing economies like India), even though the average standard of living does not quite match the western world just yet.
Consider, in today's day and age, the parents of these young Chinese athletes. They were born during or after Mao's Cultural Revolution, which valued class struggle over individual discourse; strength in numbers over free thinking. Like most parents, they wish the best for their child and the family as a whole. Compared to their own stagnant jobs, sports is a high risk venture, but also their only shot at glory in a fate otherwise in the hands of Beijing.
It is entirely possible, then, that Chinese parents actually willed these hardships for their kid, trusting him/her to fanatic coaches, hoping for one of the few achievements that remain individual in China: an olympic medal. The human cost of this large-scale selective training is admittedly immense, but that does not make the pursuit less lucrative, or its results less fulfilling.
Even outside China, such behavior in the lower to lower-middle classes is not unheard of, regardless of the political environment. In Soviet Russia, the pooling of math and science talent was widely practiced, separating the smartest students into special 'elite' groups - where most of the teaching and testing effort went (I am not aware if this practice still exists). Clearly, this pushes aside the 'right' of the remaining students to a quality education, while also diluting the competition among the majority. In India, a similar, albeit less deliberate system exists in higher education, where preparation for entrance tests to a few highly-selective schools (medical and technology majors) overwhelms students' pre- and post-high school life. Among the Gorkha ethnic group in Nepal, physical endurance is highly valued, with a majority of children conditioned towards a combat position in the armed forces. Creating and honing 'elite' groups is not always politically motivated. It can become a part of the culture itself, and with it come the characteristic 'sacrifices'.
Where do you draw the line between competition and outright inhumanity? The simple answer is - "wherever you think proper", respecting the individual's opinion. But individualism, widely taken for granted in the West, is a by-product of sustained human development and relative abundance. In the rest of the world, it is still a kind of privilege available only to the better off. To state simply: there is not, and has never been, that much place for individualism in world societies. It is only when people have enough for themselves that they begin to explore options regarding the more subtle choices in life such as : what do I want to be, what defines ME, what I believe in...etc. .
In all other cases, swearing allegiance to a group (a family/ethnicity/language/nation) is the best decision, since it entails collective security, and eventually shapes the public opinion itself. People in these groups, although clearly deficient in resources and rights, often score higher on pride and conviction. As for the children, they never make decisions for themselves, they simply grow to value what others around them value.
Now compare Mao's agrarian China to the West: the latter, in its formative years, had an abundance of resources: vast tracts of sparsely populated land west of the Atlantic and thriving colonial empires east of it, all of which made it easy to express and define individualism in the western world. The last generation in the United States that endured considerable poverty (by U.N. standards) was the Great Depression generation of the 30's. In Europe and Japan, this generation was comparatively recent (late 40s, around WWII), but only slightly. Since then we have had the baby boomers and the reconstruction of Europe. Over generations, not only has this near-continued prosperity (by third-world standards) justified a sense of entitlement (think, the Occupy movement) but has also skewed the perception of incentives under which the less-privileged 'world' operates, without possessing the luxuries that the west today considers necessities.
It is no wonder, then, that China's training program appears barbaric in intention, rather than just in appearance. Who in their right minds can subject their own kids to such torture? "Obviously, they were either pressured by an evil government that does not care about its citizens, or they do not wish the best for their own children.", we say. However, it is perfectly possible that while the Chinese people will certainly like to have their own personal comforts, they do not really expect to get those from the government. They are perfectly committed (or maybe, resigned) to having their kid go through extreme torture if the ends justify the means, and of course, partly, due to lack of any greater aspirations. This is what drives them; this is what conditions them to honestly defend China's training policy. In the end, they are deriving great pride from this. This pride, of course, does not justify the 'brutality' as seen from a western viewpoint. But everywhere, citizens only grow to believe what they are repeatedly told from childhood. And it can be argued that China has cultivated the acceptance of conformist thinking much deeper in its citizens than the free world has of free thinking.
Then there is the inevitable parallel being drawn between China and Soviet Germany. There is a very common (and often unsubstantiated) tendency to demonize institutions by comparing them to Nazi/Soviet Germany, who participated in eugenics and genocide. Although there is no denying the evils of these totalitarian states, China's single-minded pursuit of sport superiority is benign in comparison. That China's athletes have been forced into a prison-esque situations and reared like horses against their wishes in a manner identical to East German athletes is a strangely reassuring perception, because it provides consolation against the ongoing Olympic subordination. It also seems hypocritical, implying: "We will not stoop so low as those people, even if doing so gets us more medals. However, we still care about getting more medals than them."
This article does not suggest where to draw the line between competitive conditioning and inhuman torture. It does, however, raise the possibility that China's success in sport arises not from a draconian administration, but from a clever management of incentives over several generations that makes Chinese society take pride in manufacturing Olympians, regardless of the individual costs involved. One is free to decide whether the correct term is 'managed incentives' or 'restricted opportunity', but this conditioning among children is not sustained by political will, but rather by social/peer pressure, unlike East Germany. Nor is it peculiar to China alone.
As much as it disturbs me to see those pictures of young athletes being subject to what can easily be called torture, the context(s) attached to the pictures suggest a combination of government-supported mind-conditioning and inhuman treatment, which, though possible, seems quite presumptuous.
To begin, a perspective on China: China is governed by a communist party that allows selective capitalism. While private enterprise exists, the all-pervading 'State' overrides all policy matters. On the one hand, this brings immense prosperity to China, developing infrastructure at a breakneck speed. On the other hand, it also cripples socio-economic mobility, since the government controls migration to cities, among other kinds of freedom. Everything is optimized to gain a macroeconomic advantage.
In this brutally utilitarian system, the idea of personal entitlement is unrealistic, and expressing any form of dissent is dangerous. People in China know this, and while many of them may not like it, they have, over generations, come to tolerate and even embrace it, catalyzed somewhat by the tremendous growth China has seen recently. The popular emotion in China is positive (similar to other fast-growing economies like India), even though the average standard of living does not quite match the western world just yet.
Consider, in today's day and age, the parents of these young Chinese athletes. They were born during or after Mao's Cultural Revolution, which valued class struggle over individual discourse; strength in numbers over free thinking. Like most parents, they wish the best for their child and the family as a whole. Compared to their own stagnant jobs, sports is a high risk venture, but also their only shot at glory in a fate otherwise in the hands of Beijing.
It is entirely possible, then, that Chinese parents actually willed these hardships for their kid, trusting him/her to fanatic coaches, hoping for one of the few achievements that remain individual in China: an olympic medal. The human cost of this large-scale selective training is admittedly immense, but that does not make the pursuit less lucrative, or its results less fulfilling.
Even outside China, such behavior in the lower to lower-middle classes is not unheard of, regardless of the political environment. In Soviet Russia, the pooling of math and science talent was widely practiced, separating the smartest students into special 'elite' groups - where most of the teaching and testing effort went (I am not aware if this practice still exists). Clearly, this pushes aside the 'right' of the remaining students to a quality education, while also diluting the competition among the majority. In India, a similar, albeit less deliberate system exists in higher education, where preparation for entrance tests to a few highly-selective schools (medical and technology majors) overwhelms students' pre- and post-high school life. Among the Gorkha ethnic group in Nepal, physical endurance is highly valued, with a majority of children conditioned towards a combat position in the armed forces. Creating and honing 'elite' groups is not always politically motivated. It can become a part of the culture itself, and with it come the characteristic 'sacrifices'.
Where do you draw the line between competition and outright inhumanity? The simple answer is - "wherever you think proper", respecting the individual's opinion. But individualism, widely taken for granted in the West, is a by-product of sustained human development and relative abundance. In the rest of the world, it is still a kind of privilege available only to the better off. To state simply: there is not, and has never been, that much place for individualism in world societies. It is only when people have enough for themselves that they begin to explore options regarding the more subtle choices in life such as : what do I want to be, what defines ME, what I believe in...etc. .
In all other cases, swearing allegiance to a group (a family/ethnicity/language/nation) is the best decision, since it entails collective security, and eventually shapes the public opinion itself. People in these groups, although clearly deficient in resources and rights, often score higher on pride and conviction. As for the children, they never make decisions for themselves, they simply grow to value what others around them value.
Now compare Mao's agrarian China to the West: the latter, in its formative years, had an abundance of resources: vast tracts of sparsely populated land west of the Atlantic and thriving colonial empires east of it, all of which made it easy to express and define individualism in the western world. The last generation in the United States that endured considerable poverty (by U.N. standards) was the Great Depression generation of the 30's. In Europe and Japan, this generation was comparatively recent (late 40s, around WWII), but only slightly. Since then we have had the baby boomers and the reconstruction of Europe. Over generations, not only has this near-continued prosperity (by third-world standards) justified a sense of entitlement (think, the Occupy movement) but has also skewed the perception of incentives under which the less-privileged 'world' operates, without possessing the luxuries that the west today considers necessities.
It is no wonder, then, that China's training program appears barbaric in intention, rather than just in appearance. Who in their right minds can subject their own kids to such torture? "Obviously, they were either pressured by an evil government that does not care about its citizens, or they do not wish the best for their own children.", we say. However, it is perfectly possible that while the Chinese people will certainly like to have their own personal comforts, they do not really expect to get those from the government. They are perfectly committed (or maybe, resigned) to having their kid go through extreme torture if the ends justify the means, and of course, partly, due to lack of any greater aspirations. This is what drives them; this is what conditions them to honestly defend China's training policy. In the end, they are deriving great pride from this. This pride, of course, does not justify the 'brutality' as seen from a western viewpoint. But everywhere, citizens only grow to believe what they are repeatedly told from childhood. And it can be argued that China has cultivated the acceptance of conformist thinking much deeper in its citizens than the free world has of free thinking.
Then there is the inevitable parallel being drawn between China and Soviet Germany. There is a very common (and often unsubstantiated) tendency to demonize institutions by comparing them to Nazi/Soviet Germany, who participated in eugenics and genocide. Although there is no denying the evils of these totalitarian states, China's single-minded pursuit of sport superiority is benign in comparison. That China's athletes have been forced into a prison-esque situations and reared like horses against their wishes in a manner identical to East German athletes is a strangely reassuring perception, because it provides consolation against the ongoing Olympic subordination. It also seems hypocritical, implying: "We will not stoop so low as those people, even if doing so gets us more medals. However, we still care about getting more medals than them."
This article does not suggest where to draw the line between competitive conditioning and inhuman torture. It does, however, raise the possibility that China's success in sport arises not from a draconian administration, but from a clever management of incentives over several generations that makes Chinese society take pride in manufacturing Olympians, regardless of the individual costs involved. One is free to decide whether the correct term is 'managed incentives' or 'restricted opportunity', but this conditioning among children is not sustained by political will, but rather by social/peer pressure, unlike East Germany. Nor is it peculiar to China alone.
