Beijing’s Olympics: A Marriage Of Corporate And State Abuse
By Joseph Grosso
20 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It is a safe assumption that most of the universe of tourists that flock to New York this time of year will find a moment to feast their eyes on the giant tree that annually adorns Rockefeller Center; it’s equally safe to assume that the folks ice-skating and snapping photos are making merry on essentially stolen property. Before Rockefeller acquired the property in what was then considered an “underdeveloped” part of Manhattan, the area was a zone of working class saloons and squeak-easies; Rockefeller, a strong supporter of Prohibition, razed over 200 structures to build his Mecca of commerce.New York of the 21st century also has its share of robber barons. Bruce Ratner is currently hoping to use eminent domain in the heart of Brooklyn to build a basketball arena and surrounding luxury trimmings at the expense of private homes and business owners. For certain eminent domain has almost always been a weapon against the poor. A study released earlier this year by Dick M. Carpenter II and John K. Ross titled Victimizing the Vulnerable: The Demographics of Eminent Domain Abuse reveals that the areas targeted nation-wide for eminent domain in recent years follow a predictable pattern: 58% of the targeted areas include minority residents, compared with 45% in surrounding communities, 25% live at or below poverty, compared to 16% in surrounding communities.
The abuse of the poor by the wealthy is a tradition that extends back many an epoch; however the world is now witnessing perhaps the most grandiose expression of the age old marriage between corporate and state power. The city of Beijing is preparing for its official coming out party in the form of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Beijing won the honor of hosting this latest version of the Olympics after the usual intense competition between potential sites- the competition consisting largely of wining and dining spoiled “International Olympic Committee” members and unveiling massive building projects to accommodate the games.
For present day Beijing, urbanizing at a rate unprecedented in human history, this means a combination of cutting edge, and grotesquely vain, architecture designed by international superstars of the field with unlimited exploitation and displacement of the planet’s largest workforce. One wonders about the streak of envy that would swell within Rockefeller to know that since Beijing was awarded the Olympics on July 13th 2001 hundreds of thousands have been displaced or had their homes demolished to make room for Olympic infrastructure. The Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction estimates that by August 2008 the number of displaced will be 1.5 million people.
By the time the torch is lit the price tag of Beijing’s investments will reach about $40 billion, more than the combined amount of all the summer Olympics since 1984. Among the venues to be up and running by next summer include the $350 million National Theater, a $100 million, 50,000 square meters National Swim Center, the $543 million Beijing Wukesong Cultural and Sport Center (whose facades are made of giant LED screens to also be used for advertising), and the centerpiece National Stadium made from fifty thousand tons of steel rods sewed into a basket-like structure with the capability to stand without a single vertical pillar- the price: $423 million. An extension to Beijing’s international airport will feature the largest building in the world, a $1.9 billion gateway shaped as a kilometer long dragon.
As is always the case at major sporting events corporate sponsorship will be fierce and expensive: Companies wishing to be a partner in the 2008 Games will have to fork over $62 million. Coca Cola has proclaimed it will hand Beijing $1 billion (double its usual sponsorship commitment) in the hopes of expanding in its fastest growing market.
Unfortunately none of this rampant spending and multi-national business dealings reaches the people whose homes and possessions were demolished to make way for the façade. Given the state’s ability to confiscate land under the authoritarian pretext of “public interest”, residents are given far below market value for their land and threatened with violence for protesting (and there have thousands of protests that have taken different forms including numerous public suicides), Beijing’s lavish show is in a sense actually put out on the cheap.
In her essay Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis, Anne-Maria Broudehoux explains:
Local party and government officials use their power to
exploit provisions in the Chinese legislation that allow land
confiscation, and then make a fortune leasing this land to private
developers…Demolition companies hired by developers to
clear prior to redevelopment routinely hire eviction squads to force “stubborn nails” or recalcitrant residents to leave…Some of their tactics include disconnecting utilities or deliberately damaging parts of a house so as to render it uninhabitable…Residents who resist are also sometimes physically threatened and beaten by demolition squads.
Exploitation of China’s 140 million floating army of migrants is a related way for the government to hold down costs while building grandly. For years migrants, mostly farmers working in construction and the service economy living in makeshift camps often on construction sites have been fought for unpaid wages, the official amount as of last year stood at a staggering 20 billion Yuan ($2.7 billion). While China has become the dream of foreign investors, a modern day Victorian city whose exports supply the world’s commodities, the toil and pollution in the lives of its laborers resemble the world of Dickens’ Coketown: “a town of machinery, and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never get uncoiled”; black canals and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there is rattling and trembling all day long.If the plight of China’s masses isn’t enough to shaken a conscience, it mustn’t go unnoticed that the Chinese government influence extends far beyond its country’s borders. A brief glance around the globe will reveal the striking fact that China’s government plays the patron to many of the planet’s worst regimes. It is the main economic partner and diplomatic cover for the military junta in Burma that has long imprisoned that beautiful country and ruthlessly crushed this year’s pro-democracy protests. China has also long been the protector of Kim Jung Il’s government in North Korea, arguably the world’s worst dictatorship (an aspect of this support comes from the treatment of refugees; Amnesty International estimates that Chinese authorities arrest and deport 150-300 North Korean refugees every week without ever referring cases to UNHC, the UN refugee agency), and until recently blocked the approval of a UN force to protect the victims of genocide in Darfur all while being the Sudanese government’s main weapons supplier and customer for its oil exports. The Chinese government has also never ceased its oppression of Tibet and in recent times has become a source for what’s left of Robert Mugabe’s awful rule over Zimbabwe.
Of course Americans shouldn’t forget for one moment that the U.S. historically has a long list of support for dictatorships and client states that includes its present sponsorship for dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine (not too long ago this list included China). However this is just another way of stating the obvious, that such statecraft is unacceptable and that coupled with the Chinese government’s exploitation and displacement of its own citizens, an international boycott of the coming Olympics would be quite a noble cause.
Joseph Grosso is a librarian and writer living in Brooklyn, NY
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