An athlete skies past the Olympic Rings at the biathlon venue, in Zhangjiakou, China, on Feb. 1.JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
A certain amount of bafflegab is to be expected at any Olympic briefing.
But in their first opportunity to address the world with most visitors in situ, the organizers of Beijing 2022 raised the bar to new levels of official impenetrability.
“We are an Olympic family full of love,” spokesman Zhao Weidong said as part of his introductory remarks. Beijing 2022 “is a present of love and dedication that China presents to the whole world.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s a lot of love from someone we just met. Maybe we’re rushing things? How about we do a few more casual news conferences before we decide to go steady?
Having never before been to a briefing by Chinese technocrats, but having now sacrificed more than an hour of my life to one, I think I get the basic principles.
Everyone gets a chance to talk. When they talk, they should lavishly praise the person who has just talked. All answers should be long, tedious and amount to very little. Use as much useless detail as possible.
Like, how much do you want to know about cutting-edge refrigeration technology? Because I suddenly know a lot (more than I want to).
Boring and a near-total waste of time and oxygen – not all that different from every work Zoom meeting you’ve ever been on.
The difference in this context is that the obfuscating use of courtesy is also taken up by the questioners. If there are any local Bob Woodwards in Beijing, they must have taken Tuesday off. Every softball lobbed up at the dais managed to be doubly excruciating – both in its tendency to lead the respondent toward a desired outcome and its banality.
Zhao selected the questioners, bypassing all the obvious malcontents in the crowd.
(There was a brief moment of panic when one oblivious American reporter misunderstood what was going on, walked up to the mic and began talking over Zhao. Fortunately for whoever was in charge of microphone security, his question did not involve re-education camps).
Zhao’s ringleading led to a sameness in the inquiries.
Example question one: Why are your venues so great?
Example two: Why is your COVID plan so great?
Example three: Why is the torch design, which incorporates many elements of Chinese history, so great?
Around the time someone on the panel began a long meditation about Beijing 2022′s embrace of the “spirit of sustainability” (China is far and away the world’s leading emitter of carbon), you began to sense this loving family doesn’t like talking about its problems. It happens sometimes. My people are Irish. I get it.
Someone did eventually slip through the net and get to ask an actual question: Do you support the IOC’s Rule 50, which provides all athletes with “the opportunity to express their views”?
The answer, from China’s first-ever Winter Olympic gold medallist, Yang Yang, was a beautiful example of bureaucratese. I would quote from it here, but there were so many logical switchbacks in it that the up-until-that-point reliable Mandarin-to-English interpreter lost her way through most of it.
The upshot, as best I could tell: Yes. And no. But yes. Also no.
“The athletes need to be responsible for what they say,” Yang concluded.
Whereupon Mr. Zhao ended the news conference 20 minutes early because of “time constraints.”
So along with being the new Cold War Olympics and the COVID 2.0 Olympics (Proposed motto: “A little less COVID, a lot more fear”), China would like this to be the just-not-talking-about-it Olympics. Good luck with that.
Things will probably be fine until Friday – opening ceremony. China’s initial charm offensive (even the media have become “our dear friends in the media”) has bought it that much time. It’s impolite to start throwing a fit at the dinner table before the host has started serving.
But once events begin in earnest, things go unscripted in a hurry.
If Tokyo 2020 made any lasting impression, it was as the Olympics of Speaking Your Truth. Every outburst was tolerated. Most were encouraged. The only participant really penalized for wigging out was that German pentathlon coach who punched a horse. She got a whole sport turned upside down. Kids, never punch a horse.
When star gymnast Simone Biles said competing at an Olympics wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life, the IOC found itself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with her. Not just in some airy-fairy general sense that being happy is more important than being successful, but in a very specific way.
Biles became a bigger story through her conscientious objection than she would have by winning another pile of golds. That represented a seismic shift in Olympic power – away from bosses and toward workers (at least for the three weeks every two years when the workers are top of mind).
Biles made this change in real time. Her colleagues have now had six months or so to absorb it. What happens when a whole bunch of people suddenly feel empowered to air their grievances in public? They do so.
One strongly doubts that by asking politely (with a slight undertone of menace) Beijing 2022 is going to get that chatty genie back in the bottle. Asking people to pipe down may make them more likely to speak truth to power. That’s the moment we’re living in.
That may end up being the featured match here – China’s self-interested, apolitical reticence versus the new tendency of Olympic athletes to treat media availabilities like a soapbox.
Who’s going to be the first to cause problems for the hosts? More interestingly, how long will the hosts be able to keep up their initial strategy – pretending that things they don’t like talking about aren’t happening?
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