MCLC: Shenyang's glossy overhaul

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Shenyang's glossy overhaul
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/29/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/world/asia/suspicions-cloud-shenyangs-pre
parations-for-chinas-national-games.html

SHENYANG JOURNAL
Suspicions Cloud City’s Glossy Overhaul for National Games
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

Shopkeepers in Shenyang, a provincial capital in northeastern China,
believe that an antipiracy crackdown was an effort to raise money for the
National Games.
By JACOB FROMER and EDWARD WONG

SHENYANG, China — At a sprawling construction site here in the capital of
Liaoning Province, workers fend off the August sun with towels on their
heads while cranes swing above. An athletes’ village is taking shape,
along with a light-rail line to connect it to the airport.

In another time or place, it might pass for Olympics preparation. But
Shenyang, as well as the rest of the province, is getting ready to host
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2012-06/02/content_15457039.htm> the
12th National Games next August, a two-week athletic competition where the
national unity that the world saw for 16 days at the 2012 Olympic Games is
expected to fracture as provincial sports officials use their athletes to
fight for status and promotions.

As China’s attention turns from London to Liaoning, the provincial capital
may have gotten off to a false start.

In July and August, shopkeepers in many neighborhoods here shut their
gates in a strike, turning parts of northeastern China’s biggest city into
a ghost town. The police were levying stiff fines — none of the
shopkeepers would say how much — and making arrests for the sale of
counterfeit goods in a scheme, the merchants said, to raise money to help
cover a budget gap for the National Games.

The strike drew attention across China, and despite official denials, many
observers agreed with Shenyang’s merchants that the heavy fines were a
means of paying for the National Games. “The logic makes sense,” Chang
Ping, a prominent columnist who has written about the closings in
Shenyang, said in a telephone interview.

The government has been characteristically opaque about expenditures for
the project. The most recent draft of a city budget on the Web site of the
Shenyang finance bureau is from 2010, and there are no figures for the
National Games. A person answering the telephone at the National Games
Organizing Committee was evasive and transferred calls to extensions that
went unanswered for days.

Shenyang’s mayor, Chen Haibo, addressed the issue in an interview with
China Newsweek, a state-run magazine. “Our goal is to host a frugal
National Games,” he said. “But to say we were fining people to pay for the
games? That’s just a rumor.”

Indeed, Shenyang has been bitterly criticized for wasteful spending.
Global Times, a state-run populist newspaper, published an online
commentary in June <http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/716191.shtml>
criticizing Shenyang’s demolition of a stadium
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2012-06/05/content_15475178.htm> built
in 2003 at a cost of $125 million and its erection of glossier sites for
next year’s games. The writer said that “the biggest push for such
projects lies in the distorted goals of local governments,” and that such
projects came with “corruption and waste of money.”

The enormous construction projects are precisely why the provinces compete
so hard to host the games, said Ma Dexing, editor in chief of Titan
Sports, a major Chinese sports magazine. “There’s lots of corruption, many
chances for kickbacks,” he said. “So many people benefit.”

In 2010, Shenyang held a public design competition, and Tom Wiscombe, an
American architect, was awarded two sites: a large sports and recreation
center that included a 5,000-seat taekwondo and weight lifting arena, and
a 4,000-seat judo arena at Shenyang University. “It was a very, very big
project,” Mr. Wiscombe said.

But now his designs are no longer being used. “As far as I know, Shenyang
is taking a different approach now, focusing on the renovation of existing
facilities,” he said.

In the neighborhoods that became ghost towns during the strike here,
people were wary of talking about the closings despite — or perhaps
because of — the attention the affair received in the Chinese news media.
Many claimed never to have heard of the campaign.

Though the sale of goods with fake brand names is common in Shenyang, as
it is throughout China, one convenience store owner who asked to be
identified only by her surname, Zhang, wondered what a shop like hers had
to do with an antipiracy campaign.

“It should be for the commercial area downtown that sells foreign brands,
not a small convenience store owner like me,” she said. She added that she
had closed her shop for a day after someone outside had shouted that
inspectors were coming.

The budget deficit conspiracy may sound far-fetched, but residents of
Shenyang were already wary of financial swindles. In 2007, the city was
roiled by a scandal over a pyramid scheme involving the sale of costly ant
farms that were supposedly breeding ants to be used in the production of
an aphrodisiac. When the scheme collapsed, thousands of enraged residents
swarmed the provincial government headquarters. Officials had to call in
the security forces.

So when the Shenyang government began collecting fines this year, many
people assumed it was another effort to extort money from the masses. The
government tried to tell residents through a microblog announcement that
the rumors were false, but it was bombarded with thousands of seething
comments.

The government changed its course later in the day and posted a phone
number for any merchants who had faced arbitrary inspections or excessive
fines. A statement by the government that circulated on the Internet said
officials had held an emergency meeting about the strike. “The antipiracy
campaign is finished,” it said. “We hope all businesses will open back up
now.”

At the National Games next August, athletes will compete not just for
medals but also for lavish bonuses and property, said Mr. Ma, the sports
editor. Indeed, many athletes believe that the National Games are so
important to provincial sports bureaus — which score political points when
their teams do well — that the Chinese competition, and not the Olympic
Games, lies at the heart of the four-year cycle.

“Even though the National Games take place in the year following the
Olympics, we have to sign a contract that says we will compete through the
National Games,” said one athlete, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
to avoid trouble with the authorities. “We have pressure to do well for
the provinces.”

With little more than a year remaining, and with so much on the line for
Shenyang, the local government is expected to do whatever it can to move
on from the shopkeepers’ strike and ensure that the games go off without a
hitch.

While crossing that finish line may be a worthy goal for sports officials,
it is far from popular with the athletes and critics of the games.

“I hope they cancel the National Games,” Mr. Ma said. “They’re not good
for anyone.”

Jacob Fromer reported from Shenyang, and Edward Wong from Beijing.