Attending the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics on Friday night was an exhilarating experience. It also provided us a rare opportunity to think about how we each perceive China and its rapid re-emergence as a global player.
An unscientific survey - conducted by me talking to neighbours in the stadium during the ceremony and later to others watching on big screens or on television at home – revealed some key observations.
First, China – like the Opening Ceremony itself – is hard for anyone to sum up in one statement. Many observers, including myself, appear mostly awed by the technical wizardry and sheer human endeavour of the spectacle – the Ceremony that is, but equally the country. The precision and coordination required for so many human beings to come together to create a single wave of motion or arc of colour was inspiring.
Yet the comments of some western observers who had – on viewing earlier rehearsals - dismissed sections of Zhang Yimou’s choreography as akin to North Korea’s Mass Games were in my view way off mark. The emergence of hundreds of waving and grinning performers from beneath what were apparently soulless grey columns brought an instant human touch to the performance – and revealed I think the challenges for anyone trying to ‘define China’ with a broad characterisation.
Second, China provokes a wide range of emotions and opinions. While many western observers of the Ceremony enjoyed the historical themes including China’s innovations in paper making, seafaring or gunpowder, as many Chinese observers found the performance “too Chinese”, “backward looking” or “lacking in emotion”. The fact that no consensus exists on what China represents – to Chinese themselves or to observers from overseas – is precisely the reason why China will remain such a dominant topic in the decades ahead. China is changing, but opinions about China – from number one polluter one week to tragic victim of natural disaster the next – change even faster, and less predictably.
The Olympics has intensified this contradiction – at once emphasising the unquestioned importance of China, and the difficulties in assessing what this means for us all.
Duncan Clark is chairman of BDA
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1 comment:
The idea that China is amassing significant "soft power" is specious at best - far too early in the game to suggest that China's ideas and vision create huge attraction worldwide. Nonetheless, the ceremonies demonstrated that China is quickly building the production skills (at the high-end, anyway) to deliver those ideas and visions when they eventually come.
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