One of the defenses being used by American corporate sponsors of the regime Olympics in Beijing is that there is nothing “political” about them. The Games are just a celebration of the athletes, nothing more.
Chinese Olympians led by speed skater Wu Dajing pledged to “repay the leader no matter what” as part of series of chants Wednesday in Tiananmen Square to show national pride ahead of the opening ceremony next week.
Besides the implication that the athletes owed something to Xi personally, the remark was notable because the word used for “leader” — “lingxiu” — was once reserved for Mao Zedong.
The word carries special weight in China because of its close association with Mao, whose chaotic reign caused the Communist Party to disavow personality cults even while upholding his status as a national patriarch. The term is “bestowed to a leader who enjoys the highest prestige, who is the most capable and who is widely recognized,” the state-run Global Times newspaper said in 2018, citing a professor of party ideology.
But, no, there is nothing political about these Games.
(There are, incidentally, adjectives other than “chaotic” that I would use to describe Mao’s time in power.)
