Interesting Situation

5.56X45mm

5.56X45mm

Milforum Mac Daddy
Here’s a different take on the Peking Olympics, lauded by so many as a sign that China has Made It:
Thousands of farmers… face ruin because their water has been cut off to guarantee supplies to the Olympics in Beijing, and officials are now trying to cover up a grotesque scandal of blunders, lies and repression.

Thus, while in the capital, foreign dignitaries have gushed over the millions of flowers in bloom and lush, well-watered greens around its famous sights, just 90 minutes south by train, peasants are hacking at the dry earth as their crops wilt, their money runs out and the work of generations gives way to despair, debt and, in a few cases, suicide.

This entirely man-made (or Chinese government-made) disaster is affecting about 31,000 people around Baoding, a city to the south of the capital. Many are said to have lost their homes or land.
...
But for those who also believe that China is a great and growing economic power, the fact that it decided to deprive its own hinterland of water in order to stage the Games says something about its fragility. A nation that cannot even keep both its farmers and its swimming pools supplied with water is not one in which there can be any great long-term confidence.
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Now you know.
 
We're going to need a more reliable source than someone's blog.

Doesn't sound entirely out of character though and 31,000 people is a VERY small number for Chinese standards.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
We're going to need a more reliable source than someone's blog.

Doesn't sound entirely out of character though and 31,000 people is a VERY small number for Chinese standards.
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There is absolutely nothing unusual in this process if you do a basic search of the web you will find that almost every Olympic games has displaced literally millions of people (It is estimated that 2 million people have been evicted from homes with the minimum of compensation between 1988 and 2004 to make way for Olympic facilities), I have no doubt that China will probably have matched that figure on their own mainly because unlike Athens, Seoul, Atlanta or Sydney they have a massive population to deal with.

I found this information on one site however I am not sure of its validity so you are more than welcome to question it...

Past games were often worse:
- For the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, 720,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes and homeless people were rounded up and detained in facilities outside the city, the report said.
Development and urbanization led to unaffordable housing.
- Leading up to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, more than 400 families were displaced to make room for the Olympic Village, 20 families were evicted from the site of the Olympic stadium and 200 other families were displaced for the construction of ring roads. Housing prices and rents increased 139 and 149 percent respectively during the six-year period before the games and the lack of affordable housing forced low-income earners out of the city.
- For the 1996 Atlanta Games, some 30,000 poor residents were displaced due to gentrification.About 2,000 public housing units were demolished. Legislation was introduced to criminalize homelessness, the report said.
- Legislative measures also were introduced ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics to simplify the expropriation of private property. Hundreds of Roma were evicted from their settlements. Homeless people were also locked up and stuck in mental hospitals
- Because the main sporting complex for the 2000 Sydney Games was built on surplus government wasteland, no one was directly evicted or displaced for those games. But the city's gentrification led to house prices more than doubling between 1996 and 2003. Rents soared 40 percent, forcing many to move to the city's fringe.
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This is one of many contoversial issues connected with the Bejing Olympics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_and_controversies_over_the_2008_Summer_Olympics
Regarding the issue at hand, this article claims

The Geneva-based group Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions has claimed that 1.5 million Beijing residents would be displaced from their homes for the Olympics event. Beijing's Olympic organizing committee and China's Foreign Ministry have put the number at 6,037.[164] Some sources say that as of May 2005, 300,000 residents were evicted in preparation for the games and that police in Beijing placed many people under arrest for protesting against the evictions.[92] Other sources say that nearly 15,000 people were relocated.[165]
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Dare I add another of my own, albeit speculative

I’ve been puzzled by the discrepancy between the large number of gold medals relative to silver and bronze the Chinese have won during this last Olympics. If a country has a strong team in a specific sport shouldn’t we expect a distribution of abilities reflected in the ranking to reflect this strength. That is, if there are plenty of gold’s won by a country there will also be a similar level of silver and bronze medals won as well assuming there are at least three competitors in each event from that country? Moreover, in the last Olympics the number of Chinese golds to total medals increases to 70% for events that require subjective judgements (Gymnastics, Diving, Boxing etc) compared to 40% for the remainder. I've tried to include only those (non team) events with at least three Chinese entries per event but it's a bit time consuming.

There might be several innocent reasons for this discrepancy. For example, an athlete or team may be more inspired towards gold than a lesser medal hence increasing motivation and resources towards this goal. However, notice however how the Chinese medal distribution in the last two Olympics and in particular the last one, differs from other big medal winners such as the US and Russia with the possible exception of the US in Atlanta.

2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/medals_table/default.stm
2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/medals_table/default.stm
2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/static/in_depth/olympics/2000/results_schedule/medals_table.stm
1998 http://www.mapsofworld.com/olympic-trivia/olympic-games-results/atlanta1996.html
 
This is one of many contoversial issues connected with the Bejing Olympics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_and_controversies_over_the_2008_Summer_Olympics
Regarding the issue at hand, this article claims

The Geneva-based group Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions has claimed that 1.5 million Beijing residents would be displaced from their homes for the Olympics event. Beijing's Olympic organizing committee and China's Foreign Ministry have put the number at 6,037.[164] Some sources say that as of May 2005, 300,000 residents were evicted in preparation for the games and that police in Beijing placed many people under arrest for protesting against the evictions.[92] Other sources say that nearly 15,000 people were relocated.[165]
Click to expand...

Dare I add another of my own, albeit speculative

I’ve been puzzled by the discrepancy between the large number of gold medals relative to silver and bronze the Chinese have won during this last Olympics. If a country has a strong team in a specific sport shouldn’t we expect a distribution of abilities in the ranking to reflect this strength. That is, if there are plenty of gold’s won by a country there will also be a similar level of silver and bronze medals won as well assuming there are at least three competitors in each event from that country? Moreover, in the last Olympics the number of Chinese golds to total medals increases to 70% for events that require subjective judgements (Gymnastics, Diving, Boxing etc) compared to 40% for the remainder. I've tried to include only those (non team) events with at least three Chinese entries per event but it's a bit time consuming.

There might be several innocent reasons for this discrepancy. For example, an athlete or team may be more inspired towards gold than a lesser medal hence increasing motivation and resources towards this goal. However, notice however how the Chinese medal distribution in the last two Olympics and in particular the last one, differs from other big medal winners such as the US and Russia with the possible exception of the US in Atlanta.

2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/medals_table/default.stm
2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/medals_table/default.stm
2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/static/in_depth/olympics/2000/results_schedule/medals_table.stm
1998 http://www.mapsofworld.com/olympic-trivia/olympic-games-results/atlanta1996.html

Note this can work both ways, the figures could equally suggest that the judges may be unfairly demoting Chinese silver and Bronze medallists as much as promoting one to gold!
 
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perseus said:
Note this can work both ways, the figures could equally suggest that the judges may be unfairly demoting Chinese silver and Bronze medallists as much as promoting one to gold!
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I think pro-host judging has been going on at the Olympics for as long as I can recall and I think it has been most prevalent in the Boxing arena followed closely by Gymnastics and Diving.
 
MontyB, for the most part the '88 Seoul Olympics point is true. Many people were displaced because of the Olympics. The number is somewhat disputable but probably isn't too far off the mark if you include people who simply moved out.
As for the land value going up, well... the rough area for a long time became the most expensive part of Seoul and there's plenty of other places to go to anyway.
Looking back though, it was a sacrifice that had to be made. The sort of boom that followed the Olympics was simply astonishing and it was exactly what the country needed.
People take their country being rich for granted but I do not.
As for the Chinese... they're probably doing a similar thing. They're expecting that the amount of investment etc. will sky rocket in the coming years.
 
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the_13th_redneck said:
MontyB, for the most part the '88 Seoul Olympics point is true. Many people were displaced because of the Olympics. The number is somewhat disputable but probably isn't too far off the mark if you include people who simply moved out.
As for the land value going up, well... the rough area for a long time became the most expensive part of Seoul and there's plenty of other places to go to anyway.
Looking back though, it was a sacrifice that had to be made. The sort of boom that followed the Olympics was simply astonishing and it was exactly what the country needed.
People take their country being rich for granted but I do not.
As for the Chinese... they're probably doing a similar thing. They're expecting that the amount of investment etc. will sky rocket in the coming years.
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This is exactly the point though what happened in China regarding the Olympics was no different to what has happened elsewhere to make way for the games I have no doubt that the numbers of people displaced is greater than elsewhere but when you have a population almost 5-100 times that of the previous games venues you have to expect that the numbers will be proportionally higher as well.

I also imagine that most of the nations holding the games use land in the poorest parts of the host cities because it is:
A) Cheaper.
B) The most desirable part of the city to upgrade.
therefore it is always going to be the lowest on the social scale that get shafted by the process.
 
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Yeah, but I don't think these countries actually cut off the water to farmers. By doing that you're not forcing people to relocate, you're pretty much destroying their source of life.
But you do have a good point.
If we count all of these, we'll find plenty of things that our side is guilty of, though in many cases it seems to be corporations who are the guilty party not necessarily the government.
 
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