Prologue

Beijing 2008 – The Mixed Messages of Contemporary Chinese Nationalism

Bibliographic Data

ID12220106
AuthorsJulia Lovell (Hogan Lovells (United States), corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume25
Issue7
Pages758-778
Publication date2008-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of the History of Sport (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-3367 • E-ISSN: 1743-9035
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09523360802009131
OpenAlexW2027844969
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited18

Within China, Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics has been celebrated as proof of the country's confident resurgence in world politics and culture. Chinese analysts have seized upon the Olympic Movement's stated universalistic aim of ‘promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity’ to underline the benignity of China's own ‘peaceful rise’; to assert that China's new power and influence will be a force for international harmony rather than of partisan nationalism. Closer examination of Chinese discussions of the Beijing Olympics, and of the history of Chinese nationalism, however, indicates that contemporary China's reassertion of a globally dominant position is a less straightforwardly saccharine enterprise than official rhetoric would have us believe. Taking as its starting point an examination of public discussion (in academic and mass media) of the forthcoming Games, this article will place China's Olympic and global aspirations in the broader context of China's imperial and modern history. It will analyse China's powerful yearning for the Olympics as the latest phase in the country's troubled national quest over the past century to recover a central position in the international political, economic and cultural realm

Beijing · China · Harmony (color · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

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