Yeah, I know. There’s no way that girl is the competing age the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires for competitors: 16. Sixteen my butt! There’ no way that girl’s sixteen! If anything, I bet she’s barely lived much of her teenage life. (This has probably been all over Progressiveu, but I just saw this article.)
“Controversy over whether He Kexin [the girl in the above picture] is under the minimum age of 16 has surrounded her participation in the Beijing Olympics. The latest challenge over the age of the tiny Olympian comes from the discovery through a cyberspace maze of Chinese official documents listing her date of birth. She may not look as if she has reached the minimum competing age of 16, but China said her passport, issued in February, gives her birthday as Jan. 1, 1992. The International Olympic Committee said proof from her passport is good enough.”
Okay, so the IOC says China provided a passport, and the passport says this girl is 16. That seems good enough. Don’t we have every reason to trust a government to give out the correct information? (Some people may take that as a slam on our American government. It’s not, and I hope the comments on this blog stay on topic: China and the Olympics.)
“The latest unofficial investigation was carried out by computer security expert for the Intrepidus Group, whose site, Stryde Hax, revealed a detailed forensic search for He’s age. First he simply tried Google, only to find that an official listing by the Chinese sports administration that had given her age could no longer be accessed. Then he tried the Google cache, only to find that He’s name had been removed. Finally, he tried the cache of Chinese search engine Baidu. There, he found that Baidu lists two spreadsheets in He's name, both giving her date of birth as January 1, 1994 — making her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete at the Beijing games. The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China. Even before anyone arrived in Beijing, American media investigations accused China of fielding three athletes below the 16-year-old minimum age threshold. Bela Karolyi, the former U.S. head coach, then reheated the issue by claiming that [China’s] flouting of the regulations was so obvious that ‘these people think we are stupid.’…Just nine months before the Olympics, the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency gave He’s age as 13. Officials have since dismissed that report, saying Xinhua had never been given her age and made a mistake.”
The article did, however, go on to say this: “’Much of the coverage regarding Kexin’s age has only mentioned ‘allegations’ of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely," said Stryde, who was later named by Information Week as Mike Walker. "I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state ... rise to a level of evidence higher than ‘allegation.’ “
To some degree, I feel sorry for the Chinese government. Here we Americans go to the Olympics, winning a lot of events and showing to the world (once again) that America is superior in a lot of ways: sports, military, government efficiency, freedoms and rights, things we Americans don’t notice. Then China, a dictatorial communist country has to show to the entire world that it really can be superior to the US. So they do the only thing people can do in the Olympics: win.
The media did a lot to bring out the problems with China’s government and restrictive attitude towards its people. I felt sorry for the Chinese. The little girl who was singing the anthem at the opening ceremony was not that little girl. The girl who was actually singing the song had buckteeth, and as that is viewed to be a flaw in a person, the Chinese decided to have her sing backstage and have an adorable, cute little girl be on the camera side, mouthing the words.
Wouldn’t you feel stupid if you were that girl? I would have a hard time getting over the fact that my own government doesn’t even think I’m “worthy” to get and be in front of a camera, much less my own parents and peers.
In the end, I wish China would just come forward and face its problems head on. When someone admits they are flawed, that is the height of humility, and China fell far short of the mark…
In hopes of putting themselves into a better light in the world, China held the Olympics this summer. They cleaned up their cities, and fine tuned their opening ceremonies. However, they also did a lot of things that disgusted me. I read the article about the underage Chinese gymnasts, and I believed every word. At least 2 of China's women's gymnastics team were under the age of 16. One of them wouldn't even turn 15 within the year. Also, during the taping of the opening ceremonies, they filmed the fireworks going off, however, they could not fit them all into the camera shot. In order to have the correct number of fireworks on film, they doctered the official Olympics tapes in order to show the correct number of fireworks having gone off. Also, there was rumor that many of the taxis within the main Olympic city were bugged, so that if a wealthier American (who are normally the only ones who can afford to attend the Olympics) was sitting in the back seat, talking about business, and possibly discussing secretive material, China could use that information. These and many other things done during the Olympics just disgust me. If the dictatorship and communistic country of China wanted to have themselves viewed in a better light throughout the world, they FAILED in my opinion. They ended up doing just the opposite, and proving to everyone that they cannot be trusted with anything!
Very true...Not to mention - if they wanted to prove that they had a backbone, they could've come right out and said, "Okay, this is not gonna be the best Olympics ever, but we're certainly gonna do everything we can to try."
Read and comment as you like....http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/starving-musician