Amidst the usual nonsense in China’s annual head feint toward participatory democracy, CPPCC celebrity watchers have enjoyed gaping as the likes Song Zuying (whose political credentials so far as we know mainly revolve around her — ahem — presidential services during the Jiang Zemin administration) and TV host Yang Lan play politician for the masses.
And of course there is also hurdler Liu Xiang, taking a much heralded leap into politics. Now the mixing of athletes and politics is a long standing tradition in the US, and something of a religion in places like the Philippines, and Americans who were expecting their unemployment checks this past Monday can attest to just how dicey a match up this can be: For every Jack Kemp there is also, unfortunately, a Jim Bunning.
Unlike Senator Bunning however, Liu Xiang kept to his mandate — athletic eye candy for the masses — and in this capacity delivered the basic message that China’s youth should exercise more and that “a healthy body is everything.”
It’s not the worst way to start a political career. The earliest incarnation of Mao Zedong thought was a rather archly literal interpretation of “national strength” by the future Chairman: a call for Chinese youth to strengthen their bodies. In a 1917 essay, “A Study in Physical Education,” Mao urged his fellow youth to take long hikes and vigorous exercise to strengthen both body and will. Young people, particularly students, were too soft and pampered. If the Chinese no longer wished to be the so-called ‘Sick Men of Asia’ then they must “be able to leap on horseback and shoot at the same time; to go from battle to battle; to shake the mountains by one’s cries, and the colors of the sky by one’s roars of anger.”*
This past week, the president of the Beijing Sports University, Yang Hua, took up Liu Xiang’s suggestion with one of his own, a veritable clarion call of alarmist rhetoric sure to please the pickled sub-cockles of the Chairman’s heart:
“It is time for the Chinese nation to improve the physical fitness of our next generation,” said Yang. “If we miss the next three to five years a whole generation will be next to useless.
“If there was another war against Japan, would the younger Chinese be able to fight the Japanese one-on-one?”
Trends all suggest that Chinese youth in urban areas are suffering an epidemic of obesity; a combination of the One Child Policy, a love of video games, pressure to study, and the rising popularity of processed meals and American fast food has done a number on the waistlines of China’s little emperors.
What’s striking though is how much the rhetoric surrounding this problem still fixates on ideas of “national strength” rather than the more mundane benefits of exercise and healthy habits, such as living longer and avoiding chronic illness.
In the same article, Jiang Xiaoyu, a senior member of the organizing committee for the Beijing Games, was quoted as saying:
“A survey has shown that Chinese teenagers are behind their Japanese peers in almost every indicator it measured…The physical fitness of the young is a matter of strengthening our country and our Chinese race.”
Racialist “logic” and the “science” of eugenics were very popular among Chinese intellectuals of the early 20th century and while these ideas have long since been discredited in the rest of the world they seem to be thriving here. Concerns over the “quality” (素质) of babies, and subsequent calls to raise the number of “quality” births, are troubling signs that government officials remain mired in a 19th century worldview that does little to address 21st century problems.
That Chinese youth, like young people around the world, could benefit from more exercise is beyond question, but the reasons should have more to do with health, happiness, and the teaching of concepts like sportsmanship and teamwork rather than the kind of anachronistic, muddle-headed, and tin-eared calls for racial strengthening being made this past week.
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*Jonathan Spence. The Search for Modern China, 2nd Edition. (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999), p. 317.
If only we could all be like Liu Xiang…then we'll REALLY be ready for the Japanese next time: http://bit.ly/dpT3a2