The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus Volume 7 Issue 23 .docx

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 7 | Issue 23 |
Number 4 | Jun 2009
1
The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? China’s First
Olympics in
East Asian Perspective
Susan Brownell
The Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? China’s
First Olympics in East Asian Perspective
Susan Brownell
It is commonly stated that the 1964 and 1988
O l y m p i c s w e r e “ t u r n i n g p o i n t s ” f o r t h e
i n t e g r a t i o n o f J a p a n a n d S o u t h K o r e a ,
respectively, into the global community. It was
anticipated that the Beijing Olympics would be a
“turning point” for China. Now that the Beijing
Games are over, we can ask whether anything
“turned,” and if so, in which direction? This
essay deals with a central paradox of the
Olympic Games – they reinforce nationalism and
internationalism at the same time. A one-sided
focus on nationalism, such as characterized much
of the media coverage of the Beijing Olympics,
can lead to the erroneous conclusion that the
Olympic Games exacerbate rather than moderate
political conflicts. Wishful thinking that the

Beijing Games would be a turning point for
h u m a n r i g h t s a n d d e m o c r a c y l e d t o t h e
conclusion by China watchers in the West that
the Beijing Games were not the turning point that
was hoped for. However, reflection on what
actually “turned” in Japan and South Korea helps
us to see what we should actually be looking for
in the case of China. This retrospective suggests
that the interplay between nationalism and
internationalism was similar in all three Olympic
Games, and offers a more optimistic prospect for
C h i n a ’ s p e a c e f u l i n t e g r a t i o n i n t o t h e
i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o m m u n i t y .
Most of the modern Olympic Games held
between 1896 and 1988 took place in the shadow
of wars, past, present, and future. The political
a n i m o s i t y s u r r o u n d i n g B e i j i n g 2 0 0 8 w a s
especially highlighted by contrast with the
comparatively tranquil background of the four
preceding Olympics. The Albertville 1992 Winter
Games had been the first Olympics in history
considered to have “100% participation,” with no
boycotts or IOC-dictated exclusions (in addition
to these reasons, before World War II nations
often did not compete for lack of funding or
indifference from the central government). South
Africa’s exclusion since 1964 had ended in 1988,
but the tail end of the Cold War had extended
into the Seoul Games with the boycott by North
Korea, Cuba, and Ethiopia. The Barcelona 1992
Summer Olympics were marred only by the
IOC’s barring of Yugoslavia; both there and at
the preceding Albertville Games, the former
Soviet Union was represented by the Unified

Team. From the Barcelona Olympics onward the
Games were considered to forward integration
and reconciliation, and the political issues that
dominated public opinion were domestic or
regional (Catalonian sovereignty in Barcelona
1992; the rise of the American South and racial
integration in Atlanta 1996; Aboriginal rights in
Sydney 2000; Greece taking its place as a
respected EU member in 2004).
Although after the Tibetan uprisings in March
2008 some Chinese expressed the hope that the
B e i j i n g O l y m p i c s m i g h t p r o m o t e e t h n i c
reconciliation like that between Aborigines and
Whites in Sydney 2000, a closer look would have
r e v e a l e d t h a t i n A u s t r a l i a t h e w o r k o f
reconciliation through the Olympic Games had
begun at least as early as 1996, when the use of
aboriginal symbols in the Sydney segment of the
Atlanta closing ceremony had provoked protest.
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In Beijing, however, the use of ethnic minority
symbols, including Tibetan symbols, was notably
absent in the opening ceremony, which was
especially significant since the use of dancing and
singing minorities to symbolize national unity is
a c o m m o n f i x t u r e i n C h i n e s e n a t i o n a l
celebrations. The restoration of dialogue with the
Dalai Lama and a discussion about whether to
invite him to the opening ceremony only

emerged after the March uprisings, which
suggests that previous to that time no serious
attempt had been made to utilize the Games
toward reconciliation between Tibetans and
Han. Indeed, the National Traditional Games of
Ethnic Minorities of the People’s Republic of
China, which had been one of the showpieces of
the P.R.C.’s ethnic policy since their initiation in
1953, suffered from a lack of attention due to the
focus on the Olympics when the 8th installment
was held in Guangzhou in December 2007. Most
of the opening ceremonies performers were Han
students dressed as minorities and many of the
athletes were Han students at sport institutes
recently recruited to learn “traditional ethnic
sports.”
Another reconciliation that did not take place at a
symbolic level was that between the people and
the Communist Party as represented in the figure
of Chairman Mao. As Geremie Barmé and
Jeffrey Wasserstrom have observed, Chairman
Mao was absent in Zhang Yimou’s opening
ceremony, which skipped from the Ming dynasty
to the late 1970s and gave the spotlight to
Confucius, whom Wasserstrom has called “the
comeback kid” of the Beijing Games. [1] The
Communist Revolution was also generally absent
from Olympic symbolism. This was due to a
decision that traced its roots back to the 1990
Asian Games, China’s first hosting of a major
international sport festival. The cultural
performance in the Asian Games ceremony had
been choreographed by the same national team
of choreographers that had designed the cultural
performances for the previous three Chinese

National Games – starting in 1979 with the first
post-Cultural Revolution performance, which
had the theme “The New Long March.” The
themes and symbols utilized by this team of
choreographers had gradually evolved away
from the political symbols that dominated
ceremonies after 1949 and toward “cultural
symbols.” The 1990 Asian Games had taken
place one year after the Tiananmen Incident,
w h i c h h a d b e e n a d i s a s t e r f o r C h i n a ’ s
international relations and a severe setback for its
plans to reach out to the world through the Asian
Games. (The Asian Games were, nevertheless,
the occasion for the first official cross-straits
exchanges, and Taiwan sent a large official
delegation.)[2] In 1990 it was recognized that
“ethnic cultural” （民族文化）symbols were
more attractive to the outside world in general
and also constituted a shared cultural repertoire
with East Asians and overseas Chinese.[3]
B y t h e t i m e t h e p l a n n i n g f o r t h e B e i j i n g
ceremonies had begun, this strategy for drawing
in international audiences was known as the
“cultural China” （文化中国）strategy. It traced
its roots to multiple international developments,
including the 1980s and 1990s works of Harvard
historian and philosopher Tu Weiming and other
“New Confucianists,” as well as government
policies for promoting the “cultural industry” in
Japan and South Korea in the mid to late 1990s;
the international orientation of the Korean
cultural policies had gained impetus from the
1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympic Games in
Seoul.[4] “Cultural China” was also expressed in

t h e C h i n e s e g o v e r n m e n t ’ s s u p p o r t f o r
“Confucius Institutes” around the world, and it
was linked to Hu Jintao’s concept of “soft
power.” For the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a key
policy recommendation from the People’s
University concluded, “On this basis, we
cautiously propose that in the construction of
China’s national image, we should hold the line
on ‘cultural China,’ and the concept of ‘cultural
China’ should not only be the core theme in the
dialogue between China and the international
community in Olympic discourse, but also it
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should be added into the long-term strategic plan
for the national image afterwards”[5]. Although
the vast majority of educational and cultural
programs surrounding the Beijing Olympics
targeted the domestic population (see the
discussion of Olympic education below), a debate
about the target audience for the opening and
closing ceremonies was resolved in favor of the
international audience. Film director Zhang
Yimou, the choreographer of the ceremonies, is
not well-regarded inside China, where his work
is seen as pandering to Western tastes with a
superficial and exoticized picture of traditional
Chinese culture. His “Eight Minute Segment” in
the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics
was so disliked that the bid competition for the
choreography of the 2008 ceremonies was re-

opened. That Zhang was finally re-confirmed in
2005 indicates that the final decision was to
prioritize international tastes over domestic.
Tang Dynasty Symbolism in the Opening
Ceremony. From BOCOG official website
(http://en.beijing2008.cn)
In the end, the only significant violence did not
pit sovereign states against one another but took
place in China’s Tibetan areas. However, this
should not mislead us into thinking that the
Beijing Games did not take place in the shadow
of war – a point that, I believe, was very present
in the minds of the East Asian audience but was
missed by Westerners with shorter and more
spatially distant memories. And it is important
to remember that the Beijing Olympics were the
first Olympics to take place in an East Asian
country that is not host to U.S. military bases.
This was the “present absence” in 2008 in
comparison to Tokyo 1964 and Seoul 1988.
Shimizu Satoshi, Christian Tagsold, and Jilly
Traganou remind us that many of the symbols of
the 1964 Tokyo Olympics established continuity
with pre-war Japanese national symbols.[6]
Japan did not have an official national flag or
anthem in 1964: the hi no maru flag and the kimi
g a y o a n t h e m h a d b e e n p r o s c r i b e d b y t h e
occupation authorities after World War II and
were not officially reinstated as the national flag
and anthem of Japan until 1999, and indeed, they
have been plagued by controversy ever since.

However, the logo of the Tokyo Olympics
consisted of the rising sun over the five Olympic
rings, which was also used in the first of the four
official posters. While designer Kamekura
Yūsaku denied that his design was the hi no
maru, stating that it was meant simply to be a red
sun, he had played an active role in nationalist
representations of Japan in wartime propaganda.
Tokyo Olympic Poster. From IOC official
website (http://www.olympic.org)
The 1964 torch relay was the longest held to that
date; indeed, a sense of rivalry with Japan’s
coming-out party may well have been a principal
http://en.beijing2008.cn
http://www.olympic.org
http://www.olympic.org
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reason that China insisted on holding the largest-
ever international torch relay. The Tokyo 1964
torch passed from its origin in Olympia, Greece,
across the Middle East and Asia, into countries
that Japan had once invaded, finishing with
Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Hong Kong and Taiwan (but not Korea) - and
then on to Okinawa, which at that time remained
a U.S. military colony. The Mainichi Shimbun
wrote, “In Okinawa, it gave power, hope and

encouragement to the islanders who are longing
for the day when America returns Okinawa to
Japan.”[7] Indeed, an Okinawan movement for
reversion to Japan was gaining strength as the
Olympics neared. During the relay in Okinawa,
hi no maru flags were waved by spectators on
the roadside and the kimi gayo anthem was
played, which, as Tagsold points out, lent
cultural weight to Japan’s claim to Okinawa.
In Tagsold’s accompanying essay, the role of the
genbakuko (atom boy), and the Self-Defense
forces in the opening ceremony offer points of
comparison with the Beijing Olympics, as does
his argument that the Tokyo Olympics enabled
the “re-nationalization” of Japan by associating
the classical national symbols (flag, anthem,
emperor, military) with the Olympic symbols of
internationalism and peace. This subtle symbolic
shift was largely unremarked in the West, and
the concomitant absence of international
contestation contributes to today’s recollection of
the Tokyo Olympics as a peaceful turning point
in Japan’s integration into the international
community. Tagsold also argues that Sakai’s
igniting of the torch enabled Japan to assume the
role of victim in World War II as the first nation
to bear the brunt of atomic attack.[4] While
detailed scholarship on U.S. and Asian reactions
to the use of symbols associated with emperor,
nation and the Asia Pacific War in Tokyo 1964 is
lacking, it appears that neither the U.S. nor the
Asian victims of Japanese colonialism and war
publicly opposed the use of symbols representing
Japan’s “re-nationalization” or its claim on
Okinawa.

Before the Beijing 2008 Games, the major regional
tension - between China and Taiwan - flared up
in April 2007 over the route of the torch relay,
when Taiwan insisted that the torch must enter
Taiwan and exit through a third country so that it
w o u l d n o t b e p o r t r a y e d a s a t e r r i t o r y o f
mainland China with a dependent status similar
to that of Hong Kong and Macao. Given the
huge IOC effort to mediate between China and
Taiwan in the decades of China’s exclusion from
the IOC (1958-1979), it was significant that no
high-profile negotiations were held and five
months later it was simply announced that
Taiwan would be bypassed – but this can be
understood if one realizes that this was actually a
peripheral affair by Olympic standards, since no
boycott of the Olympic Games was being
proposed and that is the central concern of the
IOC. The IOC organizes the Olympic Games, but
the local organizing committee organizes the
t o r c h r e l a y . T h e b a s i c p r o b l e m o f t h e
participation of both parties in the Olympic
Games had been resolved decades beforehand by
the IOC’s 1979 Nagoya Resolution stipulating
that Taiwan cannot use any of the national
symbols of the Republic of China in Olympic
venues, but must compete under the name, flag
and anthem of the Chinese Taipei Olympic
Committee. This “Olympic formula” is today the
agreement that enables the participation of both
Taiwan and China in many other international
organizations. The China-Taiwan tension was
eased by the March 2008 election of the KMT’s
Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s President, opening a
new page in China-Taiwan diplomacy.

Like all host countries, China attempted to use
the Olympic Games to promote its own agendas.
The torch relay was intended to symbolize
national unity when it announced that the
international relay would advance from Vietnam
to Taiwan and on to Hong Kong. Taiwan,
however, refused to take part in a route that
represented Taiwan as a domestic stop (although
i t w a s a g r e e d t h a t t h e n e u t r a l w o r d 海
外，“overseas,” would be used to describe the
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relay before the torch landed on the mainland,
r a t h e r t h a n t h e p r o b l e m a t i c 国际，
“international”). In stark contrast to the U.S.’s
laissez-faire approach to Okinawa in 1964, the
P . R . C . g o v e r n m e n t m a i n t a i n e d a n
uncompromising position against any symbols of
Taiwanese (or Tibetan) independence and
sovereignty. The Parade of Athletes in the
opening ceremony provoked minor issues that
were mostly missed by the non-Chinese-speaking
world. When the first cross-straits sports
exchange was to take place at the 1990 Asian
Games in Beijing, the Chinese translation of the
English “Chinese Taipei” became a point of
c o n t e n t i o n . T h e m a i n l a n d h a d t y p i c a l l y
translated it as Zhongguo Taibei（中国台北）,
but Taiwan translated it as Zhonghua Taibei（中
华台北）, a distinction of one character that

makes little difference even to Chinese speakers
except that, if one were to split hairs, one might
understand Zhongguo as implying “Chinese
national territory” and Zhonghua as implying
“Chinese people.” The 1989 agreement between
the two sides had stated that China would allow
Taiwan to use Zhonghua Taibei in official
Olympic venues, but China would retain its
customary usage in non-official settings,
including media coverage and sports announcing
in Mainland events. Leading up to the opening
ceremony, there had been rumblings in the
Taiwanese media that if Taiwan were to be
announced as Zhongguo Taibei when it entered
the stadium, then Taiwan should boycott the
G a m e s ; t h i s w a s b a s e d o n a n e r r o n e o u s
understanding of the agreement and actually was
never in question. When Taiwan entered the
stadium, it was announced in English, then in
French, and finally in Mandarin as Zhonghua
Taibei. When Chinese Hong Kong entered, it
was announced according to Mainland custom as
Zhongguo Xianggang. Another problem had
been created by the Chinese decision to use
Chinese character stroke order in determining
the order of the entering nations, because this put
Chinese Taipei and Chinese Hong Kong next to
each other - China as the host country marched in
last, and so it was not a factor. As with the torch
relay, Taiwan refuses to march adjacent to China
in the Parade because it would symbolize it as a
province of China; this is a problem in English, as
well, which has been solved by having Taiwan
march with the “T’s.” The problem was solved
by inserting the Central African Republic

between Taiwan and Hong Kong – since “China”
literally means “central country,” the Central
African Republic shares the character zhong with
them. Ironically, the stroke order placed Japan
before Chinese Taipei, but with Taiwan’s former
colonial status no longer problematic for
Taiwanese identity, this was not an issue.
Chinese Taipei enters the stadium in the opening
ceremony. Source
(http://tw.people.com.cn/GB/7636145.html)
As in the lighting of the torch by Sakai in 1964,
the incident in the Paris leg of the torch relay,
when a Tibetan protester tried to wrench the
torch away from a young Chinese female
Paralympic athlete in a wheelchair, produced an
image of China as a victim that received a great
deal of attention in the Chinese media. The
victimization function was further carried out by
the nine year-old survivor from the Sichuan
earthquake disaster area who entered the
stadium beside the flagbearer, basketball icon
Yao Ming, in the opening ceremony. The small
flag carried by the boy was upside down, an
international nautical symbol for distress.
H o w e v e r , i t a p p e a r e d t h a t t h e b o y h a d
http://tw.people.com.cn/GB/7636145.html
http://tw.people.com.cn/GB/7636145.html
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unintentionally flipped the flag, because no
official explanation was issued, and Xinhua news
agency requested clients not to use a photo of it
shortly after sending it out. While not as forceful
as the image of Japan victimized by the atom
bombs, within China these symbols did preserve
the Chinese narrative of victimization in the
midst of the most grandiose Olympics ever.
Yao Ming, flagbearer for China, enters the
stadium with Lin Hao, earthquake survivor.
Source
(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/0
8/content_9057855.htm)
Looking back on the 1964 torch relay and
Olympics from the perspective of 2008, one
wonders why the Tokyo Games did not incite a
furor as the Beijing Games did. Given the
extensive Japanese atrocities associated with
colonialism and war and Japan’s failure to make
effective apologies and reparations to victims at
that time, the key symbols and torch relay seem
even more inflammatory than those surrounding
the Beijing Games. Tagsold’s accompanying
essay argues that the symbolic work was
sufficiently subtle to bypass domestic legal and
moral arguments, and few Western observers
were aware of the ongoing conflicts between
Japan and the nations it had occupied and
colonized a generation earlier. But, he argues,
more important was the general historical

context; in the Cold War era, the effort to delimit
the Olympic Games as “apolitical” was stronger
than it is now because the international political
stakes were higher. I would argue that in 1964
this produced a stronger “will not to know” than
was present in 2008. One big difference is that
the 2008 Olympics were a media mega-event far
exceeding what the Tokyo Olympics were, and
this provided a platform for human rights and
Tibetan NGOs with a higher level of media savvy
and organization than had heretofore been seen
in the Olympic context. It was easy to be misled
by the heat of the media coverage into believing
t h a t p r o f o u n d “ p o l i t i c a l ” c o n f l i c t s w e r e
occurring. However, closer examination reveals
that there was no serious momentum toward
national boycotts of the Games, and more
national Olympic committees (204) and national
representatives (over 100 “national dignitaries,”
of which about 80 were “heads of state”) took
part in the opening ceremony than in any
previous Games. It was the first opening
ceremony attended by an American president
outside of the U.S. From my position as a
Fulbright Researcher in Beijing with regular
contact with the U.S. embassy, I felt that the Bush
administration strongly wanted these Games to
take place and to be successful. Well-informed
observers such as He Zhenliang, China’s senior
IOC member and sports diplomat, felt that Sino-
U.S. relations had been strengthened through the
Games and perhaps had become closer than they
had ever been since 1949.
As in Tokyo, soldiers had a large presence in the
Beijing Olympics, including the participation of

9,000 People’s Liberation Army soldiers in the
cultural performance of the opening ceremony.
The Chinese “riot police” (防暴警 , literally
“violence-prevention police”), had high visibility
during the Olympic Games. This is a category of
security personnel whose domestic numbers and
functions had been expanded in 2005, at the same
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-
08/08/content_9057855.htm
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time that China also started sending riot police
on U.N. peacekeeping missions. Clad in black,
physically bigger (many are former wushu and
judo athletes), and more highly trained and
educated than the regular and armed police, they
were brought out in large numbers to protect
sensitive locations in Beijing. Their training drills
were shown on CCTV in dramatic ways that
promoted a positive image of them as anti-
terrorist police ready to help evacuate a stadium
in case of a bomb or to secure the release of
innocent spectators taken hostage. The riot
police are more frequently deployed to control
the local populace than to deal with terrorists –
indeed, on the night of the opening ceremony I
watched them clear out the crowd that had

gathered in the square at the central train station
to watch the opening ceremony on the big-screen
TV, when the security personnel decided the
c r o w d w a s t o o b i g a n d t h e s i t u a t i o n w a s
dangerous. However, the effect of the Olympic
coverage may have been similar to that described
by Tagsold for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces –
their image was improved by linking them with
keeping the peace at the Olympics.
The author posing with a soldier guarding the
VIP lane at the closing ceremony, following the
example of Chinese spectators.
One more point in Tagsold’s analysis is also
relevant to Beijing. He observes that the
p l a n n i n g o f t h e s y m b o l i s m o f t h e T o k y o
Olympics and the opening ceremonies was led
by the Ministry of Education, which controlled
most of the interpretation of national symbols
from 1959 onward.[9] Masumoto Naofumi has
recently brought to the attention of Anglophone
scholars the fact that formal educational
initiatives related to the Olympic Games were
organized outside of the organizing committee
for the first time in the context of the 1964 Tokyo
Summer Games.[10] Building on his work, I
have argued that since that time there has been
a n “ E a s t A s i a n s t r e a m ” i n t h e “ O l y m p i c
Education” initiatives that have surrounded the
Games, which has been ignored by Eurocentric
scholars.[11] From 1961 to 1964 the Ministry of
Education distributed four Olympic readers and
guidebooks to primary and secondary schools

and colleges nationwide. Two books were
produced by the organizing committee for
distribution to schoolteachers from 1960-61: 1,000
copies of The Glorious Tokyo Olympics (130
pages) were distributed in Kanto area schools
and 1,000 copies of Olympic Facts & Figures for
Teachers’ Use (36 pages) were distributed to
school teachers. In addition to school textbooks
and school activities, the Ministry of Education
promulgated the “Citizens’ Olympic Games
Movement” aimed at educating the people in the
streets about the Olympics, increasing national
pride, and improving understanding of foreign
countries.[12]
The important role played by the Japanese
Ministry of Education is particularly illuminating
for a comparison with the Beijing Olympics.
With the support of the Chinese Ministry of
Education, the Beijing Municipal Education
Commission in collaboration with the Beijing
Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games
(BOCOG) organized the largest Olympic
Education program ever implemented by a host
city. When this effort began, the director of the
educational programs for the 1998 Nagano
Winter Games was invited twice to Beijing for
consultation. Nagano’s “One School, One
Country” sister school program was adopted
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(this program has been utilized in every summer
and winter Olympics since 1998, excepting the
2004 Athens Olympics). Beijing quickly far
exceeded what Nagano had done - a source of
pride due to the rivalry with Japan. A total of
200 primary and secondary schools in Beijing
City and another 356 schools nationwide were
d e s i g n a t e d a s “ O l y m p i c E d u c a t i o n
Demonstration Schools,” which were responsible
for devoting at least two hours per month to
Olympics-related activities, and for conducting
“hand-in-hand sharing” activities with other
schools and the surrounding community. The
third theme of the Beijing Olympics – the 人文奥
运 ( t r a n s l a t e d a s “ P e o p l e ’ s O l y m p i c s ” o r
“Humanistic Olympics”) also drew on the
concept of the 1964 “Citizen’s Olympic Games
Movement” but unfolded it on a much larger
scale. China’s effort involved the mobilization of
70,000 college students through the Communist
Y o u t h L e a g u e s y s t e m a s “ G a m e s - t i m e
volunteers” to help at all official Olympic
venues. Approximately 400,000 “city volunteers”
were enlisted to staff 550 volunteer stations and
maintain social order throughout the city. A
multitude of cultural and educational activities
for the community were organized through the
central Party Office of Spiritual Civilization
Development and Guidance and its Beijing
branch.
In a recent article in China Quarterly, I develop
an argument about Beijing’s Olympic education
that builds on Tagsold’s argument about the
T o k y o O l y m p i c s . [ 1 3 ] A s i n J a p a n , t h e
educational project was oriented toward

i m a g i n i n g C h i n a t a k i n g i t s p l a c e i n t h e
international community. The content of the
school programs largely imparted knowledge
about the world outside China, and in this
respect it differed markedly from the inward-
l o o k i n g f o c u s o f p r e v i o u s n a t i o n a l
educational/propaganda campaigns. Western
observers tended to dismiss Beijing’s Olympic
education as just another nationalist propaganda
campaign, but I believe they were missing the
important point: true, one major goal was
patriotic education – but as in Tokyo, the old
n a t i o n a l i s t s y m b o l s w e r e r e - s h a p e d b y
association with symbols of internationalism, the
global community, and world peace. This is the
paradox of the Olympic Games – they reinforce
nationalism and internationalism at the same
time. Perhaps the national identity itself is not
greatly changed, but it is an important shift in
orientation if the holders of that identity start to
see their nation as an equal partner among
friendly nations instead of a victimized nation
among hostile nations.
International song and dress at the Olympic
Education Exhibition, May 2008. Photo by the
author.
One illustration of this point is a conversation I
had with a Tsinghua University student who, as
an Olympic volunteer, was standing beneath the
flagpole when the Chinese flag was raised in the
Olympic opening ceremony. He asked me what I
thought of Beijing’s Olympic education programs

– didn’t I find that much of it was just a “show”
by the government? I told him that while many
of the activities might be considered to be
“appearance-ism,” I thought that teaching
students that their country was taking its place
among other nations as an equal, and that China
would no longer be “bullied” by other nations,
would have an important effect on the students
for the future. He was silent for a moment, and
then confessed that when he saw the Chinese flag
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being raised in the stadium and heard the wild
cheering of the crowd, he had gotten tears in his
eyes, and this had been the first time in his life
that this had ever happened to him. From this
perspective, he agreed with my conclusion. Our
conversation took place during a dinner to which
I had been invited so that I could advise him on
whether to accept admission to the Master’s
D e g r e e p r o g r a m s a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f
Pennsylvania or the University of Southern
California, with an eye to which city would offer
better future employment opportunities.
The raising of the Chinese flag in the opening
ceremony. From BOCOG official website
(http://en.beijing2008.cn)
In sum, if the 1964 Games were a turning point in

J a p a n ’ s p e a c e f u l r e c o n c i l i a t i o n w i t h t h e
international community, we can probably point
to a similar outcome of the 2008 Beijing Games.
On the other hand, the Tokyo Games, far from
eliminating past symbols of militarism and war,
only re-oriented them. The same will likely be
true of the effect of the Beijing Games on the
elements of revolution, socialism, Communist
ideology, and anti-Western sentiment that figure
so large in Chinese national identity. Even as I
write this, the former director of Beijing city’s
Olympic Education Office is working on a draft
of a long-term plan being developed by the
Ministry of Education – he has been assigned to
the section that deals with Marxist-Leninist
thought and socialist morality. In both Japan and
China, the idea of national victimization at the
hands of the West remains, although in China it
appeared that a change was finally starting. In
the official rhetoric, the Beijing Games were
supposed to “erase the label of the Sick Man of
East Asia” that had loomed in the Chinese
imagination for over a century as an insult
applied to China by the West and Japan. Young
Chinese told me that they recognized that the
Sick Man of East Asia was political rhetoric used
to stir up patriotism and that they did not think
much about it themselves – although, as one
college student put it, they would “never forget
the history” that it represented.
I f t h e p o l i t i c a l b a c k g r o u n d o f t h e T o k y o
Olympics was emotionally-charged, the lead-up
to the 1988 Seoul Olympics involved outbreaks of
actual violence related to the games. On October

8, 1979, President Park Chung-hee officially
announced the intention to bid for the Olympic
Games; on October 26, he was assassinated at a
dinner party by the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, and in 1980 General Chun
Doo-hwan seized power in a military coup. In
September 1981, Seoul was selected as the host
city by the IOC. In October 1983, a North Korean
assassination attempt on President Chun at the
Aung San National Cemetery in Rangoon killed
14 South Korean officials. And then in 1987, less
than a year before the Olympic Games, two
North Korean operatives left a bomb on Korean
Air #858, killing 115 people, including 93 South
Koreans. The confession of the operative who
survived despite eating a cyanide capsule stated
that the order was intended to disrupt the Seoul
Olympic Games, and was personally penned by
Kim Jong-Il, now President of North Korea.[13]
It was primarily because of this act that North
K o r e a w a s l i s t e d a s a “ S t a t e S p o n s o r o f
Terrorism” by the U.S. State Department in 1988.
It was not removed from the list until October 11,
2008.
This history has since been overshadowed by the
positive recollection that the Olympics “brought
democracy” to South Korea when Roh Tae-woo
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
10

assumed the presidency in 1987 through a
c o n s t i t u t i o n a l e l e c t i o n a n d a p r o m i s e o f
democratic reforms. This rosy view of Olympic
history often neglects the subsequent events in
which Chun and Roh were convicted of mutiny,
treason, and bribery and blamed for the 1980
Kwangju massacre of several hundred pro-
democracy protesters.
T h e r e w e r e m a n y p e o p l e , i n c l u d i n g I O C
members and Chinese journalists, who wondered
if the Beijing Olympics could stimulate a
democratic transition in China like that attributed
to the Seoul Olympics. If they were looking for a
dramatic change, they were disappointed. But
there were key differences in China. One
difference was the lack of a real external military
t h r e a t . J a r o l M a n h e i m a r g u e s , b a s e d o n
interviews with South Korean government and
Olympic officials, that one hope of the ROK
g o v e r n m e n t w a s t h a t , b y f o c u s i n g w o r l d
attention on South Korea, the Olympics would
increase world awareness about the North
Korean threat and purchase a form of insurance
against northern aggression.[14] It would appear
that the Games succeeded on both counts. In the
analysis of IOC member Dick Pound, it was
because of this “insurance” that the conservative
military stood back and allowed a democratic
transition to begin before the Games had even
started; the military gained a sense of security
from the expressions of support for the Games
issuing from both the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
as well as other members of the socialist bloc.[15]

Unlike South Korea, in the past three decades
China has experienced peaceful transitions of
power in the midst of sweeping social and
e c o n o m i c c h a n g e , a n d t h e r e i s c u r r e n t l y
widespread popular support for gradual instead
of dramatic political change. The Tibet uprisings
and the violent acts, or foiled intended acts, of
groups classified as “terrorist” had an internal
function similar to the external threat to South
Korea; they strengthened the conservative
position of the Chinese security system. It was
not clear to me how well the political history
surrounding the Seoul Olympics was known by
intellectuals and policy-makers in China – but if
it were fully understood, I can imagine that
South Korea’s move toward democracy would
serve as a counter-model because of the massive
popular demonstrations that accompanied it,
while in China there is currently a strong
aversion toward mass protests. This does not,
however, mean that the same forces that pushed
South Korea toward political reform were not at
work in China. Manheim’s interviewees believed
that the presence of the international media, the
negative image of South Korea it conveyed to the
world, and the legitimacy it conferred on
demonstrators and opposition politicians forced
the ruling party to make significant political
concessions.[16] Global scrutiny of China in 2008
was much greater and it does appear that this
pressure had effects. The domestic pressure for
g r e a t e r m e d i a f r e e d o m a n d g o v e r n m e n t
transparency has increased over the last year, not
just because of the Olympics, but also because of
the Wenchuan earthquake and the tainted milk

scandal. Vibrant debates about China’s inability
to effectively communicate a national image to
the outside world are now going on, and large
government investment is being made in foreign
communications and public diplomacy. The
temporary Olympic law that guaranteed more
freedom to foreign journalists was extended
indefinitely just as it expired on October 15. A
h i g h e r l e v e l o f o r g a n i z e d d i s s i d e n c e i n
comparison with recent years was revealed when
C h a r t e r 0 8
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210), a
document calling for political reform signed by
303 Chinese intellectuals and activists, was
initiated in late spring 2008 and publicly issued
in December 2008. The Information Office of the
State Council published its first Human Rights
A c t i o n P l a n
(http://www.china.org.cn/archive/2009-04/13/
content_17595407.htm) in April. China is
changing but only greater distance will allow us
to look back and assess it.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210
http://www.china.org.cn/archive/2009-
04/13/content_17595407.htm
04/13/content_17595407.htm
04/13/content_17595407.htm
04/13/content_17595407.htm
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4

11
Tagsold’s essay describes the rise of the anti-
Olympic movement in Japan called “trops”
(“sport” spelled backwards). The opposition to
Nagoya’s bid for the 1988 Summer Games was a
wake-up call for the IOC, which has given
increasing attention to environmental issues in
the ensuing years. In China in 2008, sports
scholars frequently stated that the 1964 Tokyo
Olympic Games gave rise to an “anti-Olympic
m o v e m e n t ” i n J a p a n ( a p p a r e n t l y n o t
understanding that the movement did not really
emerge until 1988), and they felt that this might
also occur in China. A 2002 article in 体育学刊
[Journal of Physical Education] introduced the
trops concept to China, but described it as
advocacy for popular sport as opposed to the
Olympics, and did not mention its environmental
connection.[17] While popular protests against
rapacious development and environmental
destruction have been cropping up all over
China, and were occasionally linked to the
B e i j i n g G a m e s , i t d i d n o t a p p e a r t h a t a n
o r g a n i z e d a n t i - O l y m p i c m o v e m e n t e v e r
congealed. Censorship regulations promulgated
by the Central Propaganda Department before
and during the Games restricted the publication
and broadcasting of criticism of the Olympic
Games, which might cause one to suspect that
any incipient anti-Olympic movement was
squelched, and that the shape of public opinion
in China might be similar to that in Japan in 1988
if people were allowed to openly criticize the
Olympics. However, closer analysis reveals that

the underlying issues were different in China
compared to Japan. Japan’s trops movement has
thrived in a context in which there has been a
strong political will to host Olympic Games,
which has aroused the opposition of citizen’s
groups. Altogether, Japanese cities have put
forward five unsuccessful and four successful
bids for Olympic Games, including Tokyo’s
successful bid for the 1940 Summer Olympics,
later rescinded; Tokyo’s unsuccessful bid for the
1960 Summer Olympics and successful bid for
the 1964 Olympics; Sapporo’s unsuccessful bids
for the 1968 and 1984 Winter Games; Nagoya’s
bid against Seoul for the 1988 Summer Olympics;
Osaka’s bid against Beijing for the 2008 Games
(revealing a lack of solidarity in the East Asian
bloc within the IOC); Sapporo’s successful bid for
the 1976 Winter Games; and Nagano’s successful
bid for the 1998 Winter Games. As discussed in
Bill Kelly’s accompanying essay, Tokyo is
c u r r e n t l y b i d d i n g f o r t h e 2 0 1 6 S u m m e r
Olympics. Japan’s repeated bids, and the massive
urban development projects proposed in the
Tokyo 2016 bid, seem to indicate that the
momentum toward organizing Olympic Games
in association with large-scale development is
more powerful than the anti-Olympic and pro-
environment movements. Japan has also
violated customs of bloc voting within the IOC
and sacrificed East Asian solidarity for its
Olympic bids. Similarly, a forthcoming chapter
by James Thomas based on his fieldwork among
urban squatters in Seoul in 1988 concludes that
the Seoul Olympics enticed Korean citizens to
support the state’s grandiose development

program by linking it with a “new empowered
nationalism;” he observes that even after ex-
presidents Chun and Roh were imprisoned and
discredited, the Olympics-inspired development
program continued.[18]
Demolition along Wangfujing Street, Beijing,
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
12
May 2008
It may be that the Beijing Games will initiate a
period of regular bids for Olympic Games. I was
i n S h a n g h a i i n N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 8 , w h e r e
preparations for the 2010 World Expo are
ramping up now that the Olympics are over, and
the mood in the municipal government is
currently positive toward a future Olympic bid.
However, when Chinese scholars refer to an anti-
Olympics movement, they refer to opposition to
the state-supported sport system and the
government’s neglect of popular and school
sport. In 1964 Japan placed third in the gold
medal count and in 1988 South Korea placed
fourth, their highest placements of all time.
Chinese sportspeople believed that their first
place in their own Olympics might also be the
peak of China’s state-supported sport system,
and that the pursuit of gold medals might be
downgraded after the Games and more attention
given to school and recreational sport. The

D i r e c t o r o f t h e S t a t e S p o r t G e n e r a l
Administration, Liu Peng, took a preemptive
stance immediately after the Olympic Games in
an interview in the People’s Daily on September
6, stating, “Our position on the state-supported
sport system is clear: One, we will maintain it;
two, we will perfect it.”[19] But the debates about
the future of the state-supported system are still
going on.
Motivated by rivalry with China and South
Korea, the Japanese government established a
National Training Center in 2000 and a system of
subsidies for top athletes in 2003, leading to a
fifth-place finish in the gold medal count at the
2004 Athens Olympics, the first time that it had
defeated Korea (ninth) in the gold medal count
since the 1988 Seoul Olympics – and also the first
time that China, Japan, and South Korea had all
finished in the top ten (excepting the socialist
bloc-boycotted 1984 Olympics). When Germany
found its sixth-place finish behind Japan
unacceptable, it initiated the revival of several of
the former East German sports schools.[20] In
addition to Germany and Japan, a number of
other sport superpowers were shamed by their
performance in Athens, and their governments
increased funding for sport, including Russia,
Australia, and Great Britain; the British Olympic
Association is currently pressing for greater
funding on the premise that it, like China, should
make a good showing at its own Olympic Games
in 2012. In Beijing, Great Britain redeemed its
national honor with an unexpected fourth (up
from ninth), Germany climbed back into fifth

place, Australia dropped to sixth (from fourth),
South Korea surprised in seventh, and Japan
slipped to eighth – due in part to South Korea’s
gold medal in baseball, which added salt to
Japan’s wound. Among the sport superpowers
of the world, the U.S. is an anomaly in its lack of
direct government investment in sport, since
most American Olympians are cultivated in the
collegiate sport system, a structure that is unique
to the U.S. The U.S. Olympic Committee’s
(USOC) investment in sport is only a miniscule
part of the American sport infrastructure. About
half of the USOC’s 600 million-dollar operating
budget in the last Olympiad came from a long-
term contract with the IOC that grants about 13%
of U.S. Olympic television rights fees and 20% of
Olympic Top Programme marketing revenue to
the USOC, which is greater than the percentage
allotted to the other 204 national Olympic
committees combined. In 2008 resentment began
to boil over in the IOC and among the other
national Olympic committees, who felt that the
U . S . g o v e r n m e n t w a s a v o i d i n g i t s m o r a l
obligation to fund national sport by essentially
skimming profit off the Olympics that should be
shared more equitably with other countries. The
USOC and IOC are currently at a standoff, and
the re-negotiation of the contract has been
postponed until economic conditions are more
favorable. Government investment in Olympic
sport seems to be on the increase worldwide,
stimulated in part by China’s rise as a sport
superpower. This Chinese model is itself
stimulated by East Asian Olympic rivalries
fueled by Japan and its memories of the 1964

APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
13
Olympics as a turning point in Japan’s status
among nations.
In sum, when we carefully reexamine the 1964
and 1988 Olympics, it is surprising that we
remember them today as turning points in the
peaceful integration of Japan and South Korea
into the global community. Why would “peace”
be associated with these events so clearly
connected with political upheaval and war? In
the popular memory at home and abroad,
probably the outstanding organization of the
ceremonial pageantry and the sports events
themselves worked their magic to leave lasting
memories segregated from the surrounding
politics. In the academic analysis, symbols of
national pride that had been born in war and
emphasized collective sacrifice in the struggle for
survival among hostile nations were resituated
within the pursuit of individual excellence and
health, in peaceful interaction with a friendly
outside world. Perhaps as the heated emotions
surrounding the Beijing Olympics fade into the
distance, these Games will look similar to their
East Asian predecessors in hindsight.
Susan Brownell is Chair of the Department of
Anthropology and Languages at the University
of Missouri-St. Louis. She is the author of

Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to
C h i n a
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0742556417/?tag
=theasipacjo0b-20) (2008) and the editor of The
1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games:
S p o r t , R a c e a n d A m e r i c a n I m p e r i a l i s m
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0803210981/?tag
=theasipacjo0b-20) (2008), winner of the 2009
North American Society for Sport History
Anthology Award in Sport History.
Recommended Citation: Susan Brownell, “The
Beijing Olympics as a Turning Point? China’s
First Olympics in East Asian Perspective” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 23-4-09, June 8, 2009.
See the other articles in this series: Playing
Politics with the East Asian Olympics, 1964-2016:
W i l l i a m W . K e l l y , I n t r o d u c t i o n
(http://japanfocus.org/-William_W_-Kelly/3164
)
Christian Tagsold, The 1964 Tokyo Olympics as
P o l i t i c a l G a m e s
(http://japanfocus.org/-Christian-Tagsold/3165
)
William W. Kelly, Asia Pride, China Fear, Tokyo
Anxiety: Japan Looks Back at 2008 Beijing and
F o r w a r d t o 2 0 1 2 L o n d o n a n d 2 0 1 6 T o k y o
(http://japanfocus.org/-William_W_-Kelly/3167
)
Notes

[1] Geremie R. Barmé, “Painting over Mao: Notes
on the Inauguration of the Beijing Olympic
Games,” posted on China Beat August 12, 2008;
reprinted in Kate Merkel-Hess, Kenneth L.
Pomeranz, and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, eds.,
China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), p.
172; Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “What Would Mao
Think of the Games,” posted on thenation.com,
August 22, 2008; reprinted in China in 2008, pp.
179-82.
[2] Liang Lijuan, He Zhenliang and China’s
Olympic Dream, translated by Susan Brownell
(Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 2007), pp.
333-55.
[3] Susan Brownell, Training the Body for China:
Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s
Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1995), pp. 60-62, 315-18.
[4] 2008年北京奥运会的人文理念、社会价值与国
家文化形象构建研究报告[“Research Report on
the Construction of the Humanistic Concept,
Social Value and National Image of the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games”], National Social
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0742556417/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20

http://japanfocus.org/-William_W_-Kelly/3164
http://japanfocus.org/-Christian-Tagsold/3165
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
14
Sciences Foundation Major Project #06&ZD007,
People’s University, Beijing (project initiated in
2006, final report published in 2008), p. 194.
[5] Haksoon Yim, “Cultural Identity and Cultural
Policy in South Korea,” The International Journal
of Cultural Policy, Vol. 8 (1)(2002), p. 46.
[ 6 ] S h i m i z u S a t o s h i , “ R e c o n s i d e r i n g t h e
Significance of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics -
Forgotten Historical Memories of East Asia,
Modernization, Tokyo and Athletes,” paper
presented at the conference on “The Olympics in
East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, and
Globalism on the Center Stage of World Sports,”
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and
Social Sciences, Hong Kong University, March

15, 2008; Christian Tagsold, “Turning Sport
Upside Down in Japan: From Sports Mega-
Events to the Trops Movement,” paper presented
at the conference on “The Olympics in East Asia:
Nationalism, Regionalism, and Globalism on the
Center Stage of World Sports,” Yale University,
October 3, 2008; Jilly Traganou, “Design and
National Identity in the Olympic Games of
Greece, Japan, China,” paper presented at the
conference “From Athens to Beijing: West Meets
East in the Olympic Games,” International
Olympic Academy, Ancient Olympia, Greece,
May 24, 2008.
[7] Shimizu, “Reconsidering the Significance of
the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,” p. 4.
[8] Christian Tagsold, “The Tôkyô Olympics as a
Token of Renationalization,” in Andreas Niehaus
and Max Seinsch, eds., Olympic Japan: Ideals and
Realities of (Inter)Nationalism (Würzburg:
Ergon, 2007); Tagsold, Die Inszenierung der
kulturellen Identität in Japan. Das Beispiel der
Olympischen Spiele Tôkyô 1964 [The Production
of Cultural Identity in Japan: the Case of the
Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games](Munich: Iudicium,
2002).
[9] Tagsold, “The Tôkyô Olympics as a Token of
Renationalization,” p.118.
[10] Masumoto Naofumi, “Creating Identity –
Olympic Education in Japan,” in Andreas
Niehaus and Max Seinsch, eds., Olympic Japan:
Ideals and Realities of (Inter)Nationalism
(Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2007).

[11] Brownell, Susan, “Western-centrism in
Olympic Studies and its Consequences in the
2 0 0 8 B e i j i n g O l y m p i c s , ” E a r l e F . Z e i g l e r
Commemorative Address delivered before the
international conference, “Pathways: Critiques
and Discourse in Olympic Research,” organized
by the International Centre for Olympic Studies
of the University of Western Ontario at the
Capitol Institute of Physical Education, Beijing,
A u g u s t 7 , 2 0 0 8 [ w i l l b e a v a i l a b l e a t
www.LA84foundation.org]; Susan Brownell, “论
北京模式奥林匹克教育 - 东方特色，发展中国家模
式, ” [ “ O n t h e B e i j i n g M o d e l o f O l y m p i c
Education – Eastern Characteristics, A Model for
D e v e l o p i n g N a t i o n s ” ] 《教育科学研
究》[Education Science], vol. 12(2007): 18-20.
[12] Tagsold, “The Tôkyô Olympics as a Token of
Renationalization,” pp. 126-27.
[ 1 2 ] S u s a n B r o w n e l l , “ B e i j i n g ’ s O l y m p i c
E d u c a t i o n P r o g r a m : R e - T h i n k i n g S u z h i
Education, Re-Imagining China’s Future,” China
Quarterly 197(March 2009): 44-63.
[13] Ok Gwang and Ha Nam-Gil, “Beyond All
Barriers: The Significance of the 1988 Seoul
Olympics.” Paper presented at the conference on
“The Olympics in East Asia: Nationalism,
Regionalism, and Globalism on the Center Stage
of World Sports,” Yale University, October 3,
2008.
[14] Jarol B. Manheim, “Rites of Passage: The
1988 Seoul Olympics as Public Diplomacy,” The

Western Political Quarterly 43(2)(1990), pp.
291-93.
[15] Richard W. Pound, Five Rings over Korea:
The Secret Negotiations Behind the 1988 Olympic
Games in Seoul (Boston and New York: Little,
APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
15
Brown, 1994), pp. 320-23.
[16] Manheim, “Rites of Passage,” p. 291.
[ 1 7 ] 吴忠义 [ W u Z h o n g y i ]，高彩云 [ G a o
Caiyun], “我国TROPS 运动的理论建构与实
践”[“Theory Construction and Development
Trend of TROPS Movement in China”]《体育学
刊》[Journal of Physical Education] 9(3)(May
2 0 0 2 ) : 9 - 1 1 .
http://www.chinatyxk.com/editer/doc/200687
16355028346.pdf
[18] James P. Thomas, “The 1988 Seoul Games
and the Legacies of an Olympic Regime,” in
William Tsutsui and Michael Baskett, eds.,
forthcoming volume based on the conference
“Olympia Desires: Building Bodies and Nations
in East Asia,” University of Kansas, April 10-12,
2008.
[19] 许立群 [Xu Liqun], “国家体育总局局长刘鹏：

举国体制要坚持要完善” [“Liu Peng, Director of
the State Sport General Administration: The
State-Supported Sport System will be maintained
and perfected”], 人民日报 [People’s Daily],
S e p t e m b e r 6 , 2 0 0 8 ,
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/7830416
.html.
[20] Johnson, Ian, “The New Gold War,” Wall
S t r e e t J o u r n a l , A u g u s t 2 , 2 0 0 8 , P a g e A 1 ,
http://s.wsj.net/public/article_print/SB1217632
04928806141.html.
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0742556417/?tag=theasipacjo0b-
20)
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0803210981/?tag=theasipacjo0b-
20)
Click on the covers
http://www.chinatyxk.com/editer/doc/20068716355028346.pdf
http://www.chinatyxk.com/editer/doc/20068716355028346.pdf
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/7830416.html
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/7830416.html
http://s.wsj.net/public/article_print/SB121763204928806141.ht
ml
http://s.wsj.net/public/article_print/SB121763204928806141.ht
ml

APJ | JF 7 | 23 | 4
16
above to order.
The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 4 |
Number 2 | Jan 26, 2015
1
'Only a disciplined people can build a nation': North Korean
Mass Games and Third Worldism in Guyana, 1980-1992 「鍛錬
された民のみぞ国づくりに役立つ」ガイアナにおける北朝鮮のマスゲー
ムと第三世界主義 1980-1992
Moe Taylor
Abstract: As the 1970s drew to a close, Forbes
Burnham (1923-85), Guyana's controversial
leader of 21 years, received Pyongyang's
assistance in importing the North Korean
tradition of Mass Games, establishing them as
a major facet of the nation's cultural and
political life during the 1980-92 period. The
current study documents this episode in
Guyanese history and seeks to explain why the
B u r n h a m r e g i m e p r i o r i t i z e d s u c h a n
experiment in a time of austerity and crisis, its
ideological foundations, and how Guyanese
interpreted and responded to Mass Games.
I argue that the Burnham regime's enthusiasm

for Mass Games can in large part be explained
by their adherence to a particular tradition of
socialist thought which holds education and
culture as the foundation of development.
While such a conception of socialism has roots
in the early Soviet Union and, in the case of
Guyana, was greatly influenced by the North
Korean model, it was also shaped by local and
regional contexts.
The deep aversion of parents to their children
losing class time to Mass Games training, along
with ethnic division and Indo-Guyanese hostility
to the Afro-Guyanese dominated government in
particular, proved the central obstacles to
widespread public support for the project.
Despite these contradictions, Mass Games,
which took on a local flavour distinct from its
North Korean progenitor, did in fact resonate
with those who believed in Burnham's promise
of a brighter, socialist future, while also
appealing to a certain widespread longing
w i t h i n G u y a n e s e c u l t u r e f o r a m o r e
" d i s c i p l i n e d " s o c i e t y .
Introduction
In the final months of 1979, while the Iran
hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan dominated international headlines,
the approximately 750,000 citizens of the South
American republic of Guyana (formerly British
Guiana) were informed by state-owned media
about the coming arrival of a strange and

mysterious new thing called Mass Games, a
spectacle event that would be, according to one
editorial, "the most magnificent in the history
o f o u r c o u n t r y . " 1 I t w o u l d r e q u i r e t h e
mandatory participation of their children in
primary and secondary school, parents were
told, and would take place at the National Park
a u d i t o r i u m o n 2 3 F e b r u a r y 1 9 8 0 t o
commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
founding of the Co-operative Republic, as part
of the broader Mashramani celebrations
( G u y a n a ' s v e r s i o n o f C a r n i v a l ) . I t w a s
presented to Guyanese as both a performance,
a spectacle, implying entertainment; but also as
fundamentally educational in nature, a project
of the Ministry of Education whose primary
value lay in what it stood to offer the nation's
youth. It was also made clear that this event
was the latest fruit of fraternal cooperation
between Guyana and the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK), which had taken on
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2
increasing importance in the life of the country
during the last six years. It was the dawning of
a decade in which North Korean-style Mass
Games became a major facet of the cultural and
political life of Guyana, and it is this episode in
Cold War international relations the present
study seeks to document. More specifically this
article examines the ideological, political and

cultural factors which moved the ruling
People's National Congress (PNC) to import
and adapt North Korean Mass Games, and how
Guyanese interpreted and responded to the
state-driven experiment.
Guyana, North Korea and the Burnham Era
Guyana is the sole English-speaking country in
South America, bordering Venezuela, Brazil
and Suriname on the northern coast but
culturally affiliated with the Anglophone
Caribbean. First inhabited by indigenous
Amerindian peoples, successive periods of
colonial rule by the Netherlands (1648-1814)
and Britain (1814-1966) saw the arrival of
slaves from Africa and indentured labourers
from India, China and Portugal (in particular
the island of Madeira), forging a pluralistic
society with six official ethnic groups. However
modern society and politics would largely be
shaped by the often troubled relations between
the two largest communities: Indo-Guyanese,
mostly Hindu with a sizable Muslim minority,
working the sugar estates and rice farms of the
r u r a l c o a s t l a n d , a n d A f r o - G u y a n e s e ,
predominantly Christian, concentrated in the
capital and employed primarily in the civil
service, security forces, mining and urban work
force. Historically Indo-Guyanese constituted
the single largest group; by 1970 for example,
t h e y r e p r e s e n t e d 5 1 . 4 p e r c e n t o f t h e
population, with Afro-Guyanese constituting
30.6 percent.2
The arrival of North Korean Mass Games in

Guyana at the dawn of the 1980s was the latest
episode in the controversial 21-year reign of
Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham (1923-85),
leader of the People's National Congress
(PNC). A London-educated Afro-Guyanese
lawyer and trade unionist, Burnham's political
career began with the anti-colonial and labour
struggles of the early 1950s in the then
recently established People's Progressive Party
(PPP), led by the Indo-Guyanese dentist and
fellow trade unionist, Cheddi Jagan. As the
Marxist leanings of Jagan and other PPP
leaders stoked British and American fears
about a communist takeover in the colony,
Burnham led a breakaway faction that would
become the PNC in 1957, positioning himself as
a moderate socialist who would protect private
property and welcome foreign investment, in
contrast to the supposedly Stalinist Jagan.
Guyana's electoral arena was torn along ethnic
lines, with most Indo-Guyanese backing Jagan
and most Afro-Guyanese following Burnham,
while Washington decided the latter best
served its agenda of curbing Soviet influence in
the region. Covert intervention by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the 1960s was
instrumental in the PNC's ascension to power,
a dark period marred by ethnic violence,
sabotage and labour unrest.3 Burnham was
elected Premier in December 1964 in coalition
with the right-wing United Force (UF), and
became Prime Minister with Britain's granting
of independence in May 1966. As Guyana
stepped into independent statehood, Burnham
inherited an underdeveloped plantation

economy dominated by the production of sugar,
rice and bauxite for export, and a population
deeply divided by years of communal strife.
The first indication that the honeymoon
between Burnham and his American patrons
would be short-lived came on 23 February
1970, when, having shed his cumbersome
coalition partner in a rigged 1968 election,
Burnham formally declared Guyana a "Co-
operative Republic," and proclaimed a new
revolutionary course for the nation under an
official ideology he called "co-operative
socialism." He vowed to "establish firmly and
irrevocably the co-operative as the means of
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3
m a k i n g t h e s m a l l m a n a r e a l m a n 4 a n d
changing, in a revolutionary fashion, the social
and economic relationships to which we have
been heir as part of pure monarchial legacy."5
Like the Juche idea in North Korea, co-
operative socialism would be simultaneously
articulated as the brainchild of the maximum
leader and as an indigenous adaptation of
Marxism-Leninism, based in Guyanese history
and conditions.6 At its core was the principle of
self-reliance (primarily manifested in the
nationalization of all foreign-owned enterprises
a n d t h e b a n n i n g o f i m p o r t s d e e m e d

unessential), a multitude of ambitious
educational and cultural reforms designed to
create a "new man" free of colonial influences,
and a programme, never fully realized, to build
a new economic structure based on co-
operatives. In explaining this sudden shift to
the Left, the Comrade Leader (the formal title
Burnham adopted in the 1970s) maintained
that he had always been a Marxist, but had the
wisdom and tact to put ideology aside until he
had secured independence for his country.
W h i l e t h e r e w a s s o m e b l o w b a c k f r o m
Washington, the PNC regime was spared the
kind of overt American hostility received by
other Leftist states of the region in the same
period; with the staunchly pro-Soviet PPP the
only other serious contender for power,
Burnham remained the lesser evil in the eyes of
Washington throughout the Cold War.
Burnham's foreign policy priorities were
securing aid, favorable trade agreements and
outside support in Guyana's territorial disputes
with neighbors Venezuela and Suriname,
particularly the former, which historically
claims two-thirds of Guyana's territory and was
threatening military action in the period. As
Burnham snubbed the Western powers which
had once backed him as Guyana's best defence
against communism, he hoped to find an
alternate source of support in the socialist bloc
and Non-Aligned Movement. The outcome of
these efforts presents an interesting case study
of what options existed for developing
countries located in "America's backyard"

against the politics of the Cold War and the
Sino-Soviet rivalry. Traditionally, the Soviet
Union recognized Burnham's opposition, the
PPP, as the legitimate Marxist-Leninist party in
Guyana. With Burnham's rise to power having
been bankrolled by the CIA, and his routine
condemnation of the "Soviet threat" during his
opposition years, the Brezhnev administration
had plenty of reason to be sceptical. Moscow's
r e a c t i o n w a s t o r e c o g n i z e G u y a n a a s a
"socialist-oriented" (rather than socialist)
country, rejecting Burnham's bid to have the
P N C a d m i t t e d i n t o t h e C o m m u n i s t
International (reserving that honour for the
PPP), and his request that Guyana be accepted
i n t o t h e C o u n c i l f o r M u t u a l E c o n o m i c
Assistance (COMECON), 7 the economic
organization of socialist states. At the same
time, Moscow continued its fraternal relations
with Burnham's opposition, and offered
scholarships to Guyanese students – not
through formal government channels, but
through the PPP. By the late 1970s there was
thinly-veiled animosity between the two states,
with the PNC charging Moscow with "flip-
flopping" on commitments of aid and of
supporting a "fifth column" within Guyana.8
Cuba was a more constructive ally, and
provided Guyana with substantial medical
personnel, scholarships and military aid.
However the Cuban Communist Party (PCC)
had also traditionally been aligned with
Burnham's opposition, and provided guerilla
training to PPP militants. Burnham grew
frustrated with what was perceived as Fidel

Castro's unwelcome interest in influencing the
course of Guyana's "revolution," and in 1978
five Cuban diplomats were expelled for
allegedly offering guerrilla training to members
of the Working People's Alliance (WPA),
Guyana's second major Left opposition group.9
In June of 1972 Guyana became the first
country in the Commonwealth Caribbean to
recognize the People's Republic of China,
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4
thereby accessing a vital market for Guyanese
sugar and bauxite and becoming the recipient
o f s u b s t a n t i a l a i d , m o s t n o t a b l y t h e
construction of a textile mill and clay brick
factory in the mid-1970s. 10 However Beijing's
p o l i c y i n t h e r e g i o n w a s c a u t i o u s a n d
pragmatic, unwilling to back insurgencies or
shore up Leftist governments under threat, and
by the late 1970s it was drastically curtailing
aid to even its closest allies in the Third
World.11 Moreover, in the context of the Sino-
Soviet rivalry, Burnham's overtures towards
China only exacerbated tensions with Moscow.
Burnham was a zealous champion of the Non-
Aligned Movement (NAM), hosting the 1972
Non-Aligned Foreign Ministers Conference, an
occasion he used to unveil a monument to
movement founders Nasser, Nkrumah, Nehru

and Titoin the capital. But as a coalition of
developing nations facing their own economic
difficulties, NAM could hardly be a source of
capital, nor could it be of much assistance in
the event of a military conflict with Venezuela.
And like other Third World leaders, Burnham
discovered that strident support for the "Arab
cause" in international fora – which the PNC
took active part in – was not guaranteed to be
repaid in Middle Eastern oil dollars.
However, the PNC's foreign policy objectives
proved neatly compatible with those of another
country eagerly seeking new allies on the
international stage in the same period: North
Korea. The two states became natural allies as
their respective representatives came face to
face via the Non-Alignment Movement in which
both took an active role. Charles Armstrong
(2013) described this phase in North Korean
foreign policy thusly:
T h e 1 9 7 0 s w e r e a d e c a d e o f
unprecedented outward expansion
for North Korea. Admission to
several UN bodies, active lobbying
at the UN General Assembly, a
successful diplomatic offensive in
t h e T h i r d W o r l d , a n d n e w
economic and political ties to
advanced capitalist countries all
reflected a new global presence for
the DPRK. Long a partisan of the
socialist side in the global Cold
War, Kim Il Sung presented his

c o u n t r y i n t h i s d e c a d e a s
"nonaligned," and a model for
postcolonial nation-building.12
While Pyongyang had begun reaching out to
governments in Asia, the Middle East and
Africa in the 1960s, it extended this activity
into Latin America and the Caribbean with
renewed vigour by the following decade.13
Pyongyang succeeded in building a substantial
base of support among the radical and non-
aligned governments of Africa and the Middle
East, but encountered more difficult terrain in
Latin America and the Caribbean, where in the
turbulent atmosphere of the Cold War potential
allies were few and their time in power often
short. One notable exception was Cuba, and
North Korea established diplomatic relations
with it in August 1960. However while friendly
cooperation between the two states existed,
there was a discernable distance as well,
suggesting that the Cuban leadership's
commitment to Moscow, and North Korea's
ambiguous position in the Sino-Soviet split,
placed certain limits on the potential of such a
partnership.
North Korea's Third World diplomacy was in
large part an attempt to build international
support for its geo-political objectives in the
Korean peninsula, and its strategy was not
unsuccessful: votes from Third World states
made possible a number of political victories at
the United Nations in this period.14 Meanwhile
Guyana under Burnham's leadership had

gained a reputation for its outspoken support of
radical causes worldwide – from the Palestinian
intifada to Basque separatism – and became
one of the most vocal advocates of North Korea
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5
on the world stage. Guyana consistently
defended North Korea in international fora,
hosted the first "Latin American-Caribbean
Conference for the Independent and Peaceful
Reunification of Korea" in January 1979, and
played a leading role in similar activities
worldwide.
While for the Soviets and Cubans the PNC's
distance from orthodox Marxism-Leninism was
a flaw, diplomatic pronouncements from North
Korea praised the fact that co-operative
socialism, like Juche, was a "unique line" of a
national character, and furthermore one which
incorporated the self-reliance philosophy of
Kim Il Sung. 1 5 Relatedly, it appears that
idiosyncratic regimes like the PNC, lacking a
firm commitment to the Soviets or Chinese,
were attractive allies to Pyongyang because it
allowed them the opportunity to play the
patron-mentor role so important to their
desired domestic and international image. If
the Soviets had Cuba and the Chinese had
Albania, North Korea could boast that Guyana
was "carrying out socialist construction under

the banner of the Juche idea created by the
great leader Comrade Kim Il-Sung."16
Forbes Burnham and Kim Il-Sung in
Pyongyang, late 1970s
In addition to the pragmatic need for aid and
diplomatic support, other factors drew the PNC
to North Korea. In the prevailing atmosphere of
T h i r d W o r l d i s m , a n d t h e B l a c k P o w e r
movement rocking the Caribbean of the 1970s,
Soviet socialism had limited credibility; at the
s a m e t i m e , M a o i s m w a s n o t u s e f u l t o a
thoroughly urban-based ruling party encircled
by a hostile countryside. By contrast, Juche
seemed to perfectly reinforce the Burnham
brand, notably his obsession with self-reliance,
his emotionally-tuned nationalism and his faith
in the power of education and culture to
transform concrete reality. North Korea's self-
identification as a member of the Third World,
and Kim Il Sung's emphasis on anti-imperialism
and the attention he paid to issues facing post-
colonial states had a special appeal to the left-
wing of the PNC, as it did to other Third World
radicals. By the 1970s North Korea had
recovered from the devastation of the Korean
War, underwent rapid industrialization and
developed a seemingly robust economy; to the
scores of Latin American and Caribbean
activists, intellectuals and artists who made the
pilgrimage, the grandeur of Pyongyang seemed
to offer proof that the so-called Third World
could in fact achieve rapid development
through a socialist path.17

State media coverage of the first Guyanese
Mass Games in 1980
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6
The outcome of this diplomatic junction was
roughly a decade of extensive political,
economic, military and cultural relations
b e t w e e n G u y a n a a n d N o r t h K o r e a
unprecedented in the Western hemisphere.
North Korea's extensive aid focused on
supporting the regime's goal of self-sufficiency
in food; this included material gifts (e.g.
tractors, harrows, boat motors), efforts to raise
the productivity of traditional food sectors such
as rice and fishing, as well as agricultural
projects designed to introduce new crops
Guyana had to otherwise import, such as
potatoes. North Korea also aided the PNC's
desire to vastly expand its military capabilities -
particularly in the areas of artillery and naval
warfare – in preparation for a potential conflict
with Venezuela. Burnham's former vice-
president Hamilton Green has even alleged
there were North Korean troops stationed
along the Guyana-Venezuela border, prepared
to impel any incursion,18 although such claims
have been vigorously disputed. Nevertheless,
N o r t h K o r e a n a g r o n o m i s t s , c h e m i s t s ,
engineers, doctors and military officers, as well
as contingents of English students, become
guests in the country, as Juche study groups

popped up in every major city and town, and
party members and civil servants were
implored to attend public rallies in solidarity
w i t h t h e i r c o m r a d e s i n A s i a . C u l t u r a l
collaboration flourished as well, as North
Korean and Guyanese artists, musicians and
dancers engaged in state-sponsored exchanges,
c o l l a b o r a t i n g a n d p e r f o r m i n g i n b o t h
Pyongyang and Georgetown. North Korea's
most substantial gifts in material terms
included the construction of a glass factory at
Yarrowkabra and Guyana's first acupuncture
clinic, staffed by North Koreans, in the capital;
h o w e v e r , s e v e r a l o t h e r p r o j e c t s w e r e
announced or initiated only to be abandoned
following Burnham's death in 6 August 1985.
Burnham's successor, Desmond Hoyte,
representing the "right-wing" of the PNC,
believed Guyana's long-term interests were
better served repairing its relationship with
Washington and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), and his ascension to power began
the gradual decline of the North Korean
partnership in the 1985-92 period. The aborted
North Korean ventures included a small hydro-
electric project in the north-west, a spare parts
factory capable of producing ten to fifteen tons
annually, a gold mining operation in the
interior, a new national stadium in the capital
capable of seating 20,000, and a North Korean-
style "Students and Children's Palace."
Mass Games
While Mass Games in North Korea were first

observed by PNC leaders during the latter half
of the 1970s, they date back to the birth of the
Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea
following liberation from Japanese rule in
A u g u s t 1 9 4 5 . A l t h o u g h t h e h i s t o r i c a l
development of Mass Games is beyond the
scope of this article, they have their roots in the
European group-gymnastics clubs of the
nineteenth-century, whose traditions were
eventually adopted by socialist parties and
became part of the cultural sphere of the early
Soviet Union (see Nolte 2002, Stites 2009,
Burnett 2013, Frank 2013). It should be noted
however that mass spectacle and mass
mobilization were part of a broader zeitgeist of
the interwar period, appealing to ideologues
and artists of both the Left and Right, and mass
gymnastics displays made their appearance in a
number of European countries. Their most
recent incarnation in North Korea commenced
in 2002 under the formal name TheGrand Mass
Gymnastics and Artistic Performance Arirang.
("Arirang" is the title of a traditional folk song,
which, through the metaphor of two separated
lovers, has become a kind of anthem of Korean
reunification).19 Today an Arirang performance
in North Korea involves approximately 100,000
performers, the bulk of them primary and
middle school students, and typically takes
place annually in August through September in
Pyongyang's massive Rungnado May Day
S t a d i u m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungnado_May_Day_Stadium

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7
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungnado_May_D
ay_Stadium).20 They are without comparison the
largest choreographed performance in the
world.21
There are three central components to Mass
Games: gymnastics, music, and the panoramic
backdrop; however the gymnastics portion is
supplemented with dance, singing, drama, and
in recent years the entire performance has
been enhanced with lasers and pyrotechnics.
The gymnastics are mass group gymnastics,
whose dazzling effect is achieved through the
s h e e r n u m b e r o f b o d i e s p e r f o r m i n g i n
synchronized unity. The backdrop is created
through tens of thousands of children aligned
in one side of the stadium seats holding books
of illustrated cards positioned contigously with
each other to give the illusion of an imperforate
surface; by changing the pages of the book in
precisely coordinated unison following the
signals of a conductor, the backdrop image is
transformed throughout the performance. The
entire spectacle is coordinated to thematic
music, which according to Burnett (2013) can
bring to mind, conversely, "a four-part
Christian-style hymn, military march, operatic
quasi-recitative, folk song, classical symphony
or ballet, or Hollywood Golden Age film
score."22

The Guyana Committee for Solidarity and
P e a c e h o s t s a n e v e n t f o r " M o n t h o f
Solidarity with the DPRK," June 1980, at
the Guyana Mines Workers Union hall in
Linden. Left to right: Committee President
Edwin James, Committee Secretary Jean
Smith and Sim Sang Guk of the DPRK
embassy.
Kim Jong-il, in his April 1987 speech "On
Furthering Mass Games Gymnastics," divides
the value of Mass Games into three areas: its
impact on the development of the children
participating as performers, its impact on the
"party members and workers" who constitute
the audience, and its contribution to North
Korea's relations with foreign countries.23
Firstly, Mass Games plays an important role in
turning school children into "fully developed
communist people."24 His definition of such
people merges the intellectual with the
physical, and contains echoes of the same
language used by nineteenth century European
advocates of mass gymnastics: "one must
a c q u i r e a r e v o l u t i o n a r y i d e o l o g y , t h e
knowledge of many fields, rich cultural
a t t a i n m e n t s a n d a h e a l t h y a n d s t r o n g
physique."25 While Mass Games are an excellent
way to "foster particularly healthy and strong
physiques,"26 they also install "a high degree of
organization, discipline and collectivism,"27 as
the performance forces them to "make every
effort to subordinate all their thoughts and
actions to the collective."28 While participating

in Mass Games helps mold school children to
become ideal citizens, they also educate the
a d u l t a u d i e n c e , a s a f o r m o f i d e o l o g y -
reinforcing entertainment: "they are a major
means of firmly equipping the Party members
and other working people with the Juche idea
and of demonstrating the validity and vitality of
our Party's lines and policies."29 They remind
North Koreans of "the line and policy put
forward by our Party on the basis of the Juche
idea at each period and stage of the revolution,
as well as the history and achievements of the
struggle of our Party and people to carry them
out."30 And lastly, Kim Jong-il explains that by
inviting foreigners to attend Mass Games, as
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8
well as working to assist other nations in
a d a p t i n g M a s s G a m e s , N o r t h K o r e a ' s
international prestige is enhanced while "trust
between our country and other countries is
deepened."31
Mass Games come to Guyana
North Korean Mass Games instructor Kim
Il Nam (far left) oversees Guyanese
students preparing the backdrop for the
first Guyanese Mass Games in 1980.

In September 1979 a seven-member team of
North Korean Mass Games instructors arrived
at Guyana's Timehri International Airport. They
were headed by visual artist Kim Il Nam,
reported to have ten years of experience in
Mass Games training and personally selected
for the mission by Kim Il Sung himself.3 2
According to the Guyanese press, the group
spent two months familiarizing themselves with
Guyanese history and culture, touring schools,
factories, farms, historical sites, and Guyana's
famous Kaiteur Falls.33 This was followed by
three weeks of training school teachers, and
two and half months of training student
participants.34 During this final phase, the
illustration work to create the panoramic
backdrop went on eleven hours a day in
alternating shifts at the Sophia auditorium,
while gymnasts and dancers trained five hours
a day with North Korean instructors and the
well-known Guyanese performer Dawn
Schultz.35 Burnham apparently visited often to
observe these preparations firsthand.36 Father
Andrew Morrison (1919-2004), a Jesuit,
opposition activist and tireless critic of Mass
Games, claimed that for the occasion the
government imported eight tons of decorations
from North Korea, 100,000 balloons from North
America and distributed 200,000 lapel buttons
bearing Burnham's image.37
Initial efforts to recruit a prominent Guyanese
artist to the position of artistic director were

unsuccessful. Keith Agard, known as a devout
member of the Nichiren Buddhist Soka Gakkai
sect and for his Mandala-like paintings full of
heady cosmic-mystical themes, politely
declined the offer, as did the well-known
abstract painter and draughtsman Dudley
Charles; both were apprehensive over its highly
structured format and political orientation. The
job went to George Simon, a Lokono Arawak
painter and graphic artist who had once
studied fine art at the University of Portsmouth
in England, at the time working as a lecturer at
Guyana's E.R. Burrowes School of Art. Today a
renowned painter (and archeologist) known for
his acrylic paintings steeped in Amerindian
folklore and spirituality, Simon may have
s e e m e d a n u n l i k e l y c a n d i d a t e , b u t h i s
background in graphic art engendered an
appreciation for the new medium.38 "I suppose I
took to it," Simon recalls,
…because as a printmaker, one
had to restrict oneself to get an
i m a g e o n t o p r i n t . I f i t w a s a
silkscreen print that one was
preparing, one had to prepare the
drawings in a particular way to suit
that technique. If it was lithograph,
t h e n a g a i n , t h e r e i s s o m e
r e s t r i c t i o n . A n d s o i t i s w i t h
intaglio printmaking. So it didn't
bother me. I understood that to
make this work, and to make these
drawings be dynamic, they had to

APJ | JF 13 | 4 | 2
9
be simple, yet it had to have the
p u n c h t h a t w o u l d m a k e i t a
s p e c t a c l e .
Following an apprenticeship period in which
Simon learned the new techniques from his
North Korean teachers, the 50x80 centimeter
boards that together constituted the panoramic
backdrop were painted by students from the
E . R . B u r r o w e s S c h o o l o f A r t u n d e r t h e
supervision of Simon and the North Koreans.39
As artistic director, Simon also served as the
conductor during the performances, who
directs the succession of backdrop images with
a series of coloured flags.
Appointed as musical director was Patricia
Cambridge, who had graduated from America's
B o s t o n C o n s e r v a t o r y i n 1 9 7 5 a n d h a d
previously worked for Guyana's Ministry of
Culture. Cambridge describes her compositions
for Mass Games as "eclectic in style to match
the choreography and the overall storyline"40
which included "some calypso-flavored
elements, folk songs, national songs, and
marching music woven into the production."41
This music in turn was performed by the
Guyana Police Forces Band aided by the City

School's Choir.
How much creative freedom did people like
George Simon and Patricia Cambridge have?
Both artists describe a process in which the
Ministry of Education deferred to their
judgement and vision in terms of design and
composition; however they worked under the
understanding that their output must reflect
the themes and messages presented to them.
Their preliminary work needed to be approved
by the Minister of Education, who was tasked
b y t h e P a r t y l e a d e r s h i p w i t h e n s u r i n g
ideological pedigree, and "changes could be
required if anything was deemed ideologically
incorrect."42 Simon also recalls one year when a
mishap in the performance made the grandiose
portrait of Burnham appear to have one eye
closed, sparking a call in one local newspaper
that the artistic director be punished. 4 3
Although the threatening remarks were never
acted upon, it gives some impression of the
authoritarian atmosphere in which the artists
worked.
As the state-owned media began hyping the
event with much fanfare in the months leadings
up to Mashramani, many Guyanese were
apprehensive and somewhat confused, and
Burnham's opposition wasted no time in
concluding that Mass Games would "serve no
educational purpose but merely to divert
attention from the general economic and social
situation of the country." 4 4 The Working

People's Alliance (WPA), a radical Left
opposition party led by the scholar Walter
Rodney, called for parents and teachers to
boycott the event. Nevertheless, Guyana's first
Mass Games went ahead on 23 February 1980,
with Burnham, the PNC senior leadership and
foreign diplomats in attendance. Students from
different regions of the coastland were
organized into different chapters: West
Demerara students re-enacted Burnham's
proclamation of the Co-operative Republic in
1970, while the five chapters handled by
Georgetown students dealt with industry,
agriculture, education, defense and the PNC's
"Feed, Clothe and House" (FCH) campaign.45
Students from the east coast completed the
b o o k w i t h a f i n a l c h a p t e r o n G u y a n a ' s
international relations, the entire performance
taking ninety minutes, as is standard in North
Korea.46
Needless to say, in a country with a population
of approximately 750,000, Guyanese Mass
Games did not approach the grandeur of those
h e l d i n P y o n g y a n g : a t t h e i r p e a k t h e y
n e v e r t h e l e s s i n c l u d e d 3 , 0 0 0 s t u d e n t
performers (780 of whom held the card-books
which constituted the backdrop) drawn from
twenty-six primary and secondary schools
(although a total of 10,000 students were said
to have been involved in an entire production)
APJ | JF 13 | 4 | 2

10
a n d t h e b a c k d r o p c h a n g e d s i x t y t i m e s
( c o m p a r e d w i t h 1 8 0 i n a N o r t h K o r e a n
production). If we accept media reports that
tickets for the first Mass Games, which cost
three Guyana dollars, were completely sold out,
we can roughly gauge the attendance, as the
National Park's open-air auditorium seats
upwards of 10,500. In addition to the main
event open to the public, there were three, free
subsequent performances for school children in
the following weeks, a practise that became
standard.
Guyanese Mass Games, 1983
Although the state-owned media was compelled
to heap praise on the event, its coverage is
useful for conveying an idea of the visual
character of the performance. The journalist
Raschid Osman, writing for the state-owned
Chronicle, offered the following description:
Mass Games came alive yesterday
f o r t h o u s a n d s o f M a s h
[ M a s h r a m a n i ] r e v e l l e r s , a
spectacular sweep of colour and
pageantry and informed by a
precision that had to be seen to be
believed. Viewed for the first time,
Mass Games with their cinema-like
tableaux and seemingly endless
possibilities, prove to be just a bit

awesome.
The giant pictures segmented into
p a g e s o f b o o k s h e l d a l o f t b y
hundreds of children, gymnastics
b y f u r t h e r h u n d r e d s i n t h e
foreground, the swirling rhythm of
gaily-coloured costumes and the
sense of pomp and circumstance
which always accompanies the
unfurling of flags, all merged to
make the performance at the
National Park a memorable one.
At a signal from a director perched
in a box up in the north stand they
turned the leaves and fashioned
pictures relevant to honouring
Prime Minister Forbes Burnham,
economic independence, the
development of agriculture, the
welfare of the people, defending
the Republic, holding high the
banner of anti-imperialism and
independence, and developing
socialist education and culture.
There is little doubt that Mass
Games has instilled the children
with discipline that would be hard
to beat. For the most part, the the
particpants moved as if they were
a l l p a r t s o f o n e b i g m a c h i n e
operated by a single operator."47
The state-controlled press made out Mass

G a m e s t o b e a m a g n i f i c e n t s u c c e s s o f
tremendous historical importance, even while
quietly acknowledging the "many criticisms"
among the public.48 Mass Games continued
throughout the 1980s, expanding in size and
sophistication under the direction of the
M i n i s t r y o f E d u c a t i o n ' s M a s s G a m e s
Secretariat. The North Korean team stayed in
Guyana for nine months, training staff from the
M i n i s t r y o f E d u c a t i o n a s M a s s G a m e s
APJ | JF 13 | 4 | 2
11
instructors before departing with a lavish
farewell ceremony hosted by the PNC top brass
at the National Cultural Centre.49 In addition to
the Republic Day performance at Georgetown's
National Park, additional annual performances
c o m p a r a b l e i n s i z e w e r e h e l d i n t h e
predominantly Indo-Guyanese region of Berbice
on the east coast, and the predominantly Afro-
Guyanese mining town of Linden, Guyana's
second most populous town. The PNC boasted
that the former involved 2,600 student
performers from thirty-six schools and was
attended by 40,000 local residents.50 By 1982
Mass Games training was incorporated into the
public school system's year-round physical
education curriculum.51 By the mid-1980s, the
Guyanese military (Guyana Defence Force)
w e r e i n c o r p o r a t e d i n t o t h e a n n u a l
performance, as were members of the Guyana

N a t i o n a l S e r v i c e ( G N S , a c o m p u l s o r y
paramilitary service program for youth). Local
steel bands were also included in subsequent
years, increasing the Caribbean flavour of the
production. As for the WPA's boycott campaign,
four months after the first Mass Games, party
leader and respected scholar Walter Rodney
was killed by a bomb detonated in his car, in
what is widely accepted to have been an
assassination perpetrated by Burnham's
security forces. It was a massive blow from
which the party never fully recovered.
Guyanese Mass Games, 1986
The content of Mass Games in Guyana reflected
a distinctly Guyanese appropriation of the
North Korean medium. The portrait of Forbes
B u r n h a m p l a y e d a c e n t r a l r o l e i n t h e
backdrops, as did the image of Kim Il Sung in
North Korea. In general the tone was highly
nationalistic and echoed common PNC themes
of patriotism, education, unity, self-reliance,
non-alignment, and international solidarity.
Inter-ethnic unity and homage to the Guyanese
peoples' diverse points of ancestry was often
emphasized by, for example, dancers from the
r e s p e c t i v e c o m m u n i t i e s a p p e a r i n g i n
t r a d i t i o n a l d r e s s . T h e c e l e b r a t i o n a n d
encouragement of youth was also a consistent
theme, reflecting the fact that it was this group
who the event was seen as primarily serving.
The backdrops commonly depicted Guyana's
natural beauty and wildlife, as well as typically
socialist realist-style portrayals of "reality in its

revolutionary development" populated with
happy workers, students and scientists, all
interwoven with standard political slogans such
as "Produce or Perish," "National Unity for
Prosperity" and "Practise the Virtues of Self-
Reliance." Another common element was the
recital and visual representation of text from
renowned Guyanese poets, such as Martin
Carter and A.J. Seymour (which was not
without irony, as the former was an opposition
supporter, beaten by PNC militants while
participating in an anti-government rally in
1978). Generally speaking, Mass Games
reflected a Guyanese aesthetic, more free in
form and more cheerful than its North Korean
progenitor. While an ideological factor was
certainly paramount, and the tragic history of
slavery and indentureship were sometimes
i n v o k e d , t h e s e w e r e b l e n d e d w i t h t h e
temperament and rhythms of the Caribbean.
The resulting performance was less bellicose,
less militaristic, more light-hearted and
internationalist; it lacked the solemnity and
hard-hitting character of North Korean Mass
G a m e s , l e a n i n g m o r e t o w a r d s a j o v i a l
patriotism. I asked Yolanda Marshall, a
Guyanese writer and poet who performed in
the 1986 Mass Games as a dancer, to watch a
APJ | JF 13 | 4 | 2
12
video recording of a contemporary North

Korean performance and share her thoughts.
She commented:
It is very similar, in terms of the
display cards and gymnastics etc.
Our Mass Games was like a well-
organized Carnival show. Bigger,
brighter costumes, Caribbean
m u s i c , d a n c e s e t c . O u r M a s s
Games resembled some type of an
African celebration from slavery
with a mixture of militancy and
blending of cultures. I personally
feel my Guyanese Mass Games was
more fun, after all, most Guyanese
love to dance to good music.52
The following brief descriptions of a few Mass
Games performances offer examples of their
general style and content. The 1985 Mass
Games, the last one before Burnham's death in
August of that year, was entitled "Youth –
participation and development for peace." It
was conceived as a tribute to the United
Nation's International Youth Year (IYY), and in
addition to this overriding theme, relayed the
story of the arrival of Guyana's six ethnic
groups through settlement, slavery and
indenture, and congratulated Burnham on the
occasion of his sixty-second birthday.53 The
1986 Mass Games was entitled "Standing up
for Guyana," and its chapters were "in honour
o f t h e y o u t h o f G u y a n a , t h e c e n t e n a r y
celebration of the Guyana Teachers Association
and Guyana's eighteenth independence
anniversary."54

The 1987 Mass Games "Guyana – Oh Beautiful
Guyana" opened with a shower of praise for
Burnham's successor, Desmond Hoyte, and a
patriotic tribute to the Co-operative Republic.
The subsequent seven chapters were a
celebration of the nation's natural resources,
devoted in turn to flora, forestry, rivers,
mineral wealth, wildlife, Guyana's holiday
resorts and a concluding chapter extolling "the
b e a u t y , f i r m s p i r i t , d e t e r m i n a t i o n a n d
resoluteness of the Guyanese people as they
continue to build a united and free country."55
Mid-way through the performance time was
taken to declare Guyana's recognition of the
United Nation's International Year of Shelter
for the Homeless(IYSH).
The 1988 Mass Games, "Guyana – a Nation on
the Move" is particularly interesting, as it was
based on Burnham's theory of Guyanese history
as the natural and spontaneous impulse
towards co-operative living, supressed under
colonialism but emerging triumphant under the
leadership of the PNC. The performance begins
in the colonial past with the harsh realities of
s l a v e r y a n d i n d e n t u r e d l a b o u r ( n o t ,
interestingly, with Guyana's indigenous people,
among whom Burnham had posited Guyana's
original co-operative spirit). In the second
chapter, emancipation has been declared and
free Africans, refusing to continue working on
the plantations as wage-labourers, pool their
resources and establish communal villages

s u s t a i n e d o n a g r i c u l t u r e a n d f i s h i n g .
Subsequent chapters portray the growth of
Caribbean unity, the struggles of sugar workers
and the development of the trade union
movement with Burnham, Jagan56 and Hubert
Critchlow57 as its guiding lights. This leads
towards the achievement of independence, the
proclamation of the Co-operative Republic in
1970, and concludes with Guyana's march into
the future in a final chapter entitled "Guyana –
Boldly Reaching out for Progress."58
Why did Guyana adopt Mass Games?
The period in which the Burnham regime
decided to embark on the ambitious and costly
project of bringing Mass Games to Guyana was
one of crisis and austerity. Despite its rhetoric
of self-reliance, the PNC never succeeded in
substantially diversifying the country's narrow
export base or outgrowing its dependency on
foreign oil and other imports. Like most
APJ | JF 13 | 4 | 2
13
developing nations Guyana was hit hard by the
1973 oil crisis, whose effects were compounded
by mismanagement and corruption in the vastly
expanded state sector and the punitive
measures of the United States, which cut aid
and blocked loans from the Inter-American
Development Bank.5 9 In 1978, a desperate

The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus Volume 7 Issue 23 .docx

The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus Volume 7 Issue 23 .docx

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