Why 1984 Medalist Li Ning Lit the Flame at the Beijing 2008 Olympics: The Contribution of the Los Angeles Olympics to China's Market Reforms

Abstract

After the Communist victory in 1949, the People's Republic of China was excluded from most world organisations. China withdrew from the International Olympic Committee in 1958 in protest over its continued recognition of Taiwan, and since it supported the US boycott of the Moscow 1980 Olympics, it did not return to the summer games until the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. While the diplomatic importance of those games is well known, their importance for China's economic reforms has not been discussed. The Los Angeles Games not only played an important role in the revitalisation of Chinese national identity, but also provided an eye-popping example of marketised sport and mega-events just as the economic reforms were launched. The Los Angeles Games were the first televised broadcast of the popular culture of the West to a wide Chinese audience. The deep impression they left on their Chinese viewers helped to launch China towards becoming the economic power that it became a quarter of a century later. This was symbolically represented at China's first Olympic Games in 2008, when the Olympic flame was lit by Li Ning, the gold medalist in Los Angeles who founded a sporting goods company that is considered as one of the hallmark cases of the reforms.