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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....
Monday, September 08, 2008
Cover-up?
Interesting discussion about the Olympics on Dialogue. Jo Kent from ABC brought up the question some in the foreign media have had regarding the age of the Chinese female gymnasts. Many have commented that one or more of them look quite young.
I remember when Nadia Comăneci made history with a perfect score at the Montreal Olympics. She was doing stuff that looked almost miraculous. She was 14 years old. That isn't legal now. Gymnasts are supposed to be at least 16. With this in mind, there are two issues creating a cloud over the Chinese gold count at the Beijing Olympics.
The first is visual. Those kids look very, very young. There are a couple of them that just don't look 16. So people started asking questions and doing some investigation. Upon investigation, several documents surfaced that showed the birth dates as different from the dates that were presented for the Olympics. As far as I know, every available listing of He Kexin's birth date before the Olympics states it as January 1, 1994. The date of January 1st catches my attention, because it strongly suggests that they may not know the exact date of her birth. But again, every time He Kexin's name has appeared, her date of birth has always been listed as January 1, 1994. Until the Olympics. Then it suddenly appeared as January 1, 1992.
Gao Zhikai insisted that nothing more could be said about the issue, because the government has provided birth certificates for the girls, and the birth certificate is the proof of age. But nobody is suggesting that the girls don't have birth records. They are charging that the records have been falsified. So the proof that they have not been falsified is that they exist? This isn't going to wash. He stated that in America, the birth record is also the proof of age. He seemed to be suggesting that in America, the birth records would be accepted. Not even close. In the United States, if documents appeared that contradicted the birth records, this would be prima facie evidence that the birth records had been falsified. There would have to be a complete investigation, because the media would insist on it. In China, there will not be a media uproar, of course, because the government controls the media. I do not say this to suggest that America is a more honest society. But it is a more open society, so certain types of dishonesty are harder to hide if someone has an interest in exposing them.
China has a well established pattern of age fixing. The 2000 Summer Olympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia. Chinese gymnast Yang Yun, who won bronze medals there as a "sixteen-year-old," was later presented to a national television audience as having only been 14 at the time.
I remember when Nadia Comăneci made history with a perfect score at the Montreal Olympics. She was doing stuff that looked almost miraculous. She was 14 years old. That isn't legal now. Gymnasts are supposed to be at least 16. With this in mind, there are two issues creating a cloud over the Chinese gold count at the Beijing Olympics.
The first is visual. Those kids look very, very young. There are a couple of them that just don't look 16. So people started asking questions and doing some investigation. Upon investigation, several documents surfaced that showed the birth dates as different from the dates that were presented for the Olympics. As far as I know, every available listing of He Kexin's birth date before the Olympics states it as January 1, 1994. The date of January 1st catches my attention, because it strongly suggests that they may not know the exact date of her birth. But again, every time He Kexin's name has appeared, her date of birth has always been listed as January 1, 1994. Until the Olympics. Then it suddenly appeared as January 1, 1992.
Gao Zhikai insisted that nothing more could be said about the issue, because the government has provided birth certificates for the girls, and the birth certificate is the proof of age. But nobody is suggesting that the girls don't have birth records. They are charging that the records have been falsified. So the proof that they have not been falsified is that they exist? This isn't going to wash. He stated that in America, the birth record is also the proof of age. He seemed to be suggesting that in America, the birth records would be accepted. Not even close. In the United States, if documents appeared that contradicted the birth records, this would be prima facie evidence that the birth records had been falsified. There would have to be a complete investigation, because the media would insist on it. In China, there will not be a media uproar, of course, because the government controls the media. I do not say this to suggest that America is a more honest society. But it is a more open society, so certain types of dishonesty are harder to hide if someone has an interest in exposing them.
China has a well established pattern of age fixing. The 2000 Summer Olympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia. Chinese gymnast Yang Yun, who won bronze medals there as a "sixteen-year-old," was later presented to a national television audience as having only been 14 at the time.
