For what it’s worth, I have a feeling that the simmering controversey over whether or not the Chinese “women’s” gymnastics team has underage members is going to build into something much bigger, and possibly devolve into something ugly. The “why” was provided by Zhong Hongliang, a spokesman for the gymnastics team, who had this to say to the AP when questioned about a 2007 Xinhua story claiming that one of the Chinese gymnasts is 13, and not 16, as required by international rules, and claimed by China:
“It’s definitely a mistake,” Zhang said of the Xinhua report, speaking in a telephone interview. “Never has any media outlet called me to check the athletes’ ages.”
Asked whether the federation had changed their ages to make them eligible, Zhang said: “We are a sports department. How would we have the ability to do that?“
[UPDATE: David Bandurski at China Media Project provides a solid round-up of the Chinese media coverage of the strange case of He Kexin.]
How indeed? Rarely, if ever, has a Chinese government official spelled out the rules of the hunt so clearly: if, in fact, somebody manages to prove that the gymnasts are younger than the Chinese team claims, then we’ll also learn that Chinese government departments not involved in sports (but certainly involved in passports and birth certificates) participated in what can only be described as government-directed institutionalized cheating.
With that in mind, what’s amazing to me is that the Chinese government, the Party, whoever, would be so careless in covering tracks. After all, today’s AP story is not the first instance that somebody has uncovered of the Chinese media reporting an age at odds with the one claimed for the gymnasts by China’s sports authorities. And, as the portfolio of Chinese state-generated stories accumulates, the case becomes stronger and stronger. If one needed further proof of institutionalized bureaucratic incompetence on the part of the Chinese Communist Party, this would be it.
A final, random thought: if there was fraud, the number of people who know the truth has to number in the low double digits, at least. What are the odds that one of them breaks? It wouldn’t be unprecedented: according to the NYT, Yang Yun, a bronze medal gymnast for the Chinese Olympic team in 2000, recently told state-run television that she was 14 – and thus, underage – when she competed. Despite the IOC’s cowardly insistence that it needs documentary evidence to open an investigation into the Chinese gymnasts, I’m pretty sure that loose lips might just be enough to break this open.
[Addendum 1. I just want to be clear that this has nothing to do with sour grapes over the US loss in the gymnastics final yesterday. Gymnastics ain’t my game, and I’ve never been enamored of international competition in the first place. But I am interested in institutionalized corruption, fairness, and clean athletics, and this story touches on all of those themes. I’d be just as interested if the issue applied to US athletes competing in the patently absurd trampoline competition. Admittedly, I’d be a bit more upset if it happened in baseball.]
[Addendum 2: It’s true: professional athletes in the US have had their age claims called into question, too. But I don’t believe that there’s been an instance where someone has claimed that the US government altered the age to achieve competitive advantage in international tournaments.]
[Addendum 3: SI’s E.M Swift makes several of my points, more eloquently, here.]
I have no idea whether this is true or not. But there are two points you havn’t considered:
1. Actually Chinese national teams are under surveillence of Chinese National Sports Bureau, which is strictly a government department. This can hardly be news, since even the footable league is directly lead by an government official. This makes the member of the national teams, including their coaches, assistant workers and even atheletes have a official or semi-official identity.
2. Even you can prove certain ‘government’ official helped alter the age, you still havn’t proven if there is an ‘institutionalized corruption’ to alter the age in order to achieve competitive advantage. It could just be individual. It’s just like if a US soldier killed an innocent civialian in Irap, you would not say that the US government is complicit in killing him/her. Certainly the US government wouldn’t say so. Instead, it would treat it as an individual case and punish the soldier.
I spent part of the morning watching the US and Russian women compete against a gaggle of chinese little girls. They looked like rugby players next to jockeys. When the real women’s final? Shame on the IOC and China.
Demin –
You make good and reasonable points. The first, in particular, is worth keeping in mind: the National Sports Bureau is a gov’t department. So, in effect, anything it does is institutional by definition. A good and helpful reminder.
In regard to the second point, however, I’ll continue to disagree a bit. Here’s why: the Chinese gymnastics team has provided passports to the media and the IOC to prove that the gymnasts are 16. If those passports include incorrect data (it hasn’t been proven yet), then we have to ask: where did they come from? I suppose it is possible that the gymnasts, their coaches, or other athletic officials could have generated fake documents without the aid of other government departments, but that seems highly unlikely to me. If my post seems to suggest a vast government conspiracy – I did not mean it quite that way. But I do think that it’s very possible, even likely, that government departments beyond the Sports Bureau could have been involved in this. That’s what I meant by “institutionalized.” Perhaps I should have used a different term?
Anyway, thanks for the comment. I appreciate when you stop by.
Saw them all on the podium yesterday and I couldn’t believe it – looked creepy – only one of them seemed the right age.
He Kexin
“my real age is 16. I don’t pay any attention to what everyone says.”
So despite being propelled from obscurity in Wuhan 10 months ago, to the National team and 2 overseas World Cup events, another in Tianjin, she’s escaped her training schedule to check-up on what the AP, SI & NYTimes have written and decided to straighten the record?
NaaaaH
Going out on a limb here, I’d guess she wasn’t responding in English to English speaking reporters. So there are either doubts on home turf as to her eligibiity (telling?), or this ‘reporters question’ was posed FOR external consumption.
Why not the simple phatic statement (accompanied by a girlish giggle as if to say “you silly sausage”…?)
why the additional clause?
I’ve often noticed that scripted answers, or stuff from Xinhua at any rate, have this characteristic over-egged puddingness (!?!) to them.
From a team official “We already explained this very clearly. There’s no need to discuss this thing again.”
Now that’s more like it!
The IGF can only check passports, they will be presented with the same documents ad infinitum until someone dies of old age – which patently won’t be any of the girls.
This will end badly for the Chinese. Once these Olympics are over, no one will be afraid of annoying them any more, and as it all comes out years from now the gold will be stripped.
A point someone else made to me: Chinese folks traditionally count age differently than Westerners, reckoning that you’re one year old at birth. So that someone born, say January 1, 2000, would be considered 9, rather than 8 years old today. I don’t know if Xinhua follows this custom in their reporting on ages. Obviously, if Xinhua does so, it would just make the gymnasts even younger (12 in Western calculation). Just a minor point.