How many medals did China get from the Olympic Games this year? 89 so far and definitely more towards the end. How many for the Indians? 3 and probably no more. So which one is winning? Hard to say. Why? They have totally different attitude toward international sports.
As usual, western media indisputably blame the communist party for the achievement of the Chinese athletes and for their suffering during the training courses. But, hey, all the achievements and the sufferings are coming from the same source: the drive to become more like the West, in every way. Unfortunately, the Chinese are still very much in the process of redemption from the national shame to national pride, by ways of competition in the global arena. The logic is quite Darwinian and nationalistic as we see in this event: think about the "project 119"...
So why the Chinese athletes were trained in such a inhumane way? Because they are trying to win games that are essentially not theirs. When Li Xiang won the 110 hurdles, people thought that the genetic curse was magically broken. But sooner or later we will realize that he is a special case. Without harder and harsher exercise, Asians are inherently inferior in many games of the anciet Olympics, particularly men. However, it's a war that we must win to prove our worthiness in the world, not the advantage of communism like the old days, and we have a plan to win it. So there's the result of our military action, many gold medals that dar beyond our average national sports capacity(according to western standard). Then what happened? When we win the national games, the world has moved on to human rights games in which the number of medals doesn't matter that much any more.
One more thing needs to be addressed here. Chinese sports system is no longer a pure Soviet system. The system today is like the Chinese economic system, also a hybrid of state management and market operation. It is a rising industry involving billions of dollars. Athletes are not merely performing for their country, but also struggling for their large sum of commercial income. Liu Xiang and Yao Ming are both successful examples of this changing system. Li Ning is even more significant considering his career as a businessman. Of course there are large numbers of young athletes fail to advance into a higher level and face dire future, but that's a dark reality in the international sports industry, not just China.
India is drastically different from China in this respect. The fundamental divergence lies in the different philosophies approaching the modern world. From the thought of Gandi on, Indians belive that the real accomplishment is not how much you act like the modern West, but how much you are different from it. The uniqueness is the national pride of India and the gold medal of whatever western game simply doesn't matter. If we can do well, fine. If we cannot, fine. Indian culture doesn't promote competition with the West as the pillar to its nationalism, rather it encourages confluence. Why pursue such vanity when you can enjoy your life?
Again, China and India's seperate ways are logical consequence from their long civilizations and their modern encounters with the West. Today, many want to compare China and india in order to showcase either a government orchestrated economic explosion or a western praised third world democracy. In my view, just like their take on the international sports, none is wrong. However, neither is complete in terms of the improvement of national health and fitness. Like so many other aspects. Both nations are still on their way trying to figure out a better future.
One of the things I sugguest they do is to revive traditional games and create more games that are more attractive and suitable to their own people, so that no matter how many olympic medals they got from these western defined games, their people are still happy and joyful.
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