And were startled. yes. in fact, some of my chinese friends are calling the world cup effect. why? well, for those of us who watch china professionally it s easy to focus on elite politics, the leaders. recently we had the death of the former president. but there are many, many chinese who probably barely remember what the former president looked like. they re young. they might be working in factories. in terms of the world cup audience they tend to be male. they tend to be competitive. maybe the type of person who might jump up and go out and act on their emotions, and there are half a billion of them who are interested in watching the world cup. that is the audience in china. so what happened was they re all looking forward to being entertained at least by watching something on the screen, but the first thing they see in the very beginning was, oh, my god, there s an audience there and
Olympics in 1980. or last year when president joe biden staged a diplomatic boycott of the beijing games over human rights abuses in china. of course it s not only committees and countries that make sports political, it s the athletes themselves. in the 1968 mexico city olympics the american track athletes john carlos and tommy schmidt famously stood on the podium after the 200 meter, fists raised in a black power salute. muhammad ali made history when at the prime of his career he took a principle stand against fighting in vietnam saying famously he had no problem with the vietcong. they were not oppressing blacks in america. and collin kaepernick taking a
Spectators rejoice seeing an iranian and american player hug on the pitch. indeed anyone who thinks sports don t have a political dimension has never watched an india-pakistan cricket match in either india or pakistan. recall the olympics held in 1936 in nazi germany. the party used it as a propaganda vehicle for a message of aryan superiority, a message refuted when the black sprinter jesse owens won four gold medals. it s also not uncommon for countries to boycott the olympics like the moscow olympics in 1980. jimmy carter boycotted or last year when president joe biden staged a diplomatic boycott of the beijing games over human rights abuses in china. of course it s not only committees and countries that make sports political, it s the athletes themselves. in the 1968 mexico city olympics
Transparency into what ordinary folks think. obviously the outbreak of protests was startling to everyone especially leadership. they probably thought they had it in the bag after the big party congress in october. xi jinping got his norm busting third term, and many of his official rivals would have been co-opted, purged, detained, or just intimidated. but the people in the streets made their voices known and what was unusual, very rare about it is not only did some of them call for xi jinping himself and the communist party to be toppled, but these were cross-provincial outbreaks of protests. that makes it highly unusual and very worrisome to the regime. some of it was sparked by the world cup, right? i think the chinese saw the rest of the world at the world cup and were startled.
yes. in fact, some of my chinese friends are calling the world cup effect. why? well, for those of us who watch china professionally it s easy to focus on elite politics, the leaders. recently we had the death of the former president. but there are many, many chinese who probably barely remember what the president zemin looked like. they re young. they might be working in factories. in terms of the world cup audience, they tend to be male. they tend to be competitive. maybe the type of person who might jump up and go out and act on their emotions, and there are half a billion of them who are interested in watching the world cup. that is the audience in china. so what happened was they re all looking forward to being entertained at least by watching something on the screen, but the first thing they see in the very beginning was, oh, my god, there s an audience there and