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All the tea in China

It's a small world we live in. We've tried to separate sport from foreign affairs, foreign affairs from morals and yesterday Winston Peters tried to even separate foreign affairs from trade.

So where has that got us?

China spent a fair amount of effort to host the Olympics, figuring they can market the country just as well as Nike can flog products made on the back of cheap labour. They got their wish, and have, in efforts to prove how much they are improving on issues of human rights, demolished many homes and summarily turfed out citizens to make space* for the Olympic venues. They have banned factories and cars from operating in days preceding pollution measurements in efforts to assure athletes to leave the air bottles behind. When it comes to making the games go ahead, they exemplify the Nike motto; "Just Do It".

But their biggest problem with the Olympic PR exercise, is that it all seems to be unraveling over the perpetual thorn in their side - Tibet. It's not just the Lama and Richard Gere now, but protesters around the world are disrupting the traditional Olympic Torch relay, and the flame is being snuffed out. With it, the Olympic Brand takes a nose dive, and the separation of sport and politics is no more.

Not that it ever was. Remember Munich 1972? Cricket with Apartheid South Africa? There are numerous examples, but the marketing of "the separation of sport and politics" has always been up there with the "church and state" mantra. Can we agree it's over now?

Now just to change the subject for a moment, somewhere else in this small world of ours Mugabe is struggling to retain control in Zimbabwe. After bankrupting the country a few years ago, he went around the world begging money. He got money from Iran ($25 million) and, wait for it, China.

He got a loan of $200 million from China, and started working on a further 2 billion from them. The $200 million is significant. It was the same amount of money Mugabe spent on military equipment from China a few months earlier.

And speaking of military equipment, France has been lobbying hard (since at least 2004) to drop the EU ban on selling military gear to China. [Incidentally, this has made Taiwan very nervous as Taiwan have long been A-list customers of France military hardware, and relied on China not having detailed access to French technology. Too bad, mes amis.] Anyway, France may have found a loophole around the EU trade restrictions with China by selling their missiles to Pakistan. Pakistan and China are joint developers of the type of fighter planes sold to Mugabe. They share information.

And in France, protesters have just snuffed out the Olympic Flame.

Meanwhile, little old NZ does its best to re-ignite the flame by declaring to the world we want to trade with China. We want to sport with them. We want to chat about Tibet over a nice cup of tea, as trading partners are wont to do. We want to help them save face in these troubling times, just as they have extended the hand of friendship to those other down and out countries such as Zimbabwe.

We like to think we punch above our weight in international affairs. But as Peters says, this is just another trade deal, and we'll stay in our corner when it suits. It looks like that sports might be the bigger political stick. The Olympic brand is all about countries getting together to place sport and camaraderie above politics. It's a brand image that is failing fast. From the streets of Paris, sure to represent only the first of many comes the cry "Sports over Politics?? Not for all the tea in China"

*[There were a series of you-tube videos of this floating around, if some-one has the links please let me know, and I'll update the post]

Comments

  1. "Looks like China may be bidding on Vector's power lines..."


    Well we may aswell sell all our main Airports and shipping ports to them aswell. It'll make it easier for the PLA to come on down and takes us over. Since the PLA actually own a lot of these Chinese Companies and Corporations as subsidiaries, etc!

    ReplyDelete

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