Mark Pinkstone/Former Chief Information Officer of HK government
It was a nail-biting time to the end of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games as the world’s two greatest superpowers – China and the US – battled out who would top the ladder in the quest for gold medals. At the end of the day, the Americans equalled China with 40 gold medals.
However, the US secured a total of 126 medals among its near 600 Olympic team. China fielded only 388 contestants.
The rivalry between the two extended beyond the common bounds of politics and economics to now include sport.
And as it is with the previous two denominators, it was not a fair game. The US’s opening gambit to destabilize the Chinese team came with a planted story in the New York Times that a Chinese team of 23 swimmers had been tested positive in drug tests prior to the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. Eleven of those tested positive were competing in the Paris Games. But all those tested positive were cleared by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after accepting reports that the athletes concerned had unknowingly eaten contaminated meat.
Social and mainstream media, athletes and politicians were quick to pick up the hot piece of gossip and questioned WADA as to why it didn’t disqualify the athletes. But WADA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Chinese anti-doping authority stuck to their guns that the trace contamination was not intentional.
However, the Chinese swimmers were undaunted by the controversary surrounding them and picked up 12 medals and another 8 for diving.
The nail biting started three days before the close when both China and the US were 33 golds each, with the US having the edge with a greater number of overall medals. Australia was third with 18 golds. China then moved forward securing another 5 golds to bring its tally to 39 while the US stood still at 33. Overnight the Americans bounced back securing another 4 golds to raise its tally to 38. On the eve of the finals the tallies were 39 for China and 38 for the US. China claimed one more and the cliff-hanger was women’s basketball match between France and the US. The US won the exciting game by one point, making it equal to China’s score.
One could only imagine the pep talks by the coaches in the Olympic Village on the night before the finals with both aiming to outdo the other. It’s all a matter of ‘face’.
As in any geopolitical rivalry it’s all about moving the goal post. Normally the Olympic winner is determined by the number of gold medals won. So even though China had the greater number of gold medals throughout the games, the US was declared the winner with the total number of medals won (126).
The size of the contingent also gives a national team the edge over its competitors by placing more athletes in an event, thus increasing a chance to gain one of the three medals.
With some 206 countries competing in the 2024 Olympics, the US had, by far, the largest number of 596 athletes vying for gold, silver and bronze medals. It was followed by the host country France with 573, Australia 460, Germany 427, Italy 403 and China 388.
Overall, the games were open and fair, save for some minor criticism by athletes about accommodation (hard cardboard beds) food (worms, which, incidentally, is a delicacy in Fujian city of Xiamen street stalls), and pollution in the River Seine.
Stars were born, among them Quan Hongchan the 17-year-old diving diva from Zhanjiang, Guangdong, who stole the show with her excitement gestures. She took home two gold medals for her performances. The most famed Chinese contestant was speed swimmer Pan Zhanle, the 20 year-old from Wenzhou, Zhejiang, who broke his own 100-meter freestyle world record and won two golds and one silver medal. And table tennis icon Sun Yingsha, 24, from Shijiazhuang, Hebei, whose selfie with mixed doubles runners-up, the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea was flashed across the world.
Despite the plot to destabilize the Chinese team and its diminished size compared with its rivals, the Chinese athletes rose to the fore to show the world that sport can overcome all obstacles and foster friendship among friend and foe in the true Olympic spirit.
Mark Pinkstone
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Mark Pinkstone/Former Chief Information Officer of HK government
The US Consul General for Hong Kong and Macau, Gregory May warned Americans on a CBS televised interview that in Hong Kong no one can criticize the local government. That is a blatant lie. Of course, anyone can criticize the government and many do.
What they cannot do is incite hatred towards the government. And that is a big difference. Criticism verses incitement. May is fully aware of what incitement means as similar laws appear in the US, UK, and other jurisdictions following the common law system.
But May was choosing his words carefully as he knows the impact they have in the US. His track record is that of damning Hong Kong as per the wishes of his bosses in Washington which has orchestrated a series of sanctions against Hong Kong people for the enactment of our National Security Laws.
With his barrage of anti-Hong Kong interviews, May is demonstrating total contempt and disrespect for his hosts, never seen anywhere before among the world’s diplomatic corps.
“People in Hong Kong are not free to criticize the government like they used to be able to,” said May in the interview. “It’s so disconcerting to see their rights and freedoms being so steadily taken away from them.”
The deliberately falsified interview was carried by CBS a major US television broadcaster, so his comments would carry much weight among a gullible audience. He went on that enactment of Hong Kong’s Article 23 created “a chilling effect, a massive chilling effect over Hong Kong. It is important, I think, that Americans who come here realize that you need to be careful what you say.”
If this doomsday scenario painted by May is real, then why are there some 85,000 Americans living in Hong Kong and 1,300 American enterprises making money in the Pearl of the Orient? The people of Hong Kong, including the American population know the real story: that Hong Kong is alive and well and all freedoms within the law are enjoyed by the populace.
In the words of Executive Council convener, Regina Ip in a segment of the CBS programme: “All the stability [and] safety have returned to Hong Kong.”
The Commissioner’s Office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) issued a strong rebuke of the recent comments made by May, telling him to abide by his duties and stop smearing Hong Kong. The office called for May, as the US government’s representative in the Hong Kong SAR, to abide by the basic professional ethics and code of conduct of consular officials and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and badmouthing the SAR.
The Hong Kong SAR Government also hit out against the US’s highest representative in the city saying it strongly disapproves of and condemns absurd remarks on the Hong Kong situation, noting that the US had 21 pieces of legislation dealing with national security. The Government said in a statement that ever since the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL) in June 2020, the US has chosen to overlook the large-scale and incessant riots that devastated society, livelihoods and the economy of Hong Kong in 2019. Instead, the Government added, the US has chosen to maliciously slander laws relevant to safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong SAR, and to blatantly attack the city’s efforts in safeguarding national security dutifully, faithfully and in accordance with the law.
The American audience was given an “insight” into what Hong Kong is like today by CBS interviewer Ramy Inocencio, who found “the city felt hollowed of its people and its soul.” Was he locked up in his hotel room on July 1 and didn’t venture out on the streets? Hong Kong is full of vitality and that’s the reason millions of tourists are flocking to our shores every day. Hong Kong is a go-go place.
Inocencio, CBS’s Beijing correspondent, was very dramatic in his picture of Hong Kong. “Multi-lane highways and narrow back alleys were devoid of traffic and footfall. Many official celebrations the government had advertised felt barely celebratory, with just a sprinkling of attendees.” What!
But that is what the American public is being fed by their national media and State Department officials. Lies and more lies. The Americans living here must be horrified to see such reports and it’s interesting that not one appeared on the CBS programme to present their side of the story. They know better, they live here.
Others interviewed by Inocencio included Chan Po-ying, wife of “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Sebastien Lai, son of jailed activist and former newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, and Nathan Law another activist who fled to the UK to escape the long arm of the law.
