First it was South Africa. Now it’s Rio de Janeiro. The World Cup and the Summer Olympics — the world’s two biggest sporting events — are to be held in Africa and South America for the first time. And it’s about time.
Friday’s announcement that Rio de Janeiro will host the 31st Olympiad in 2016 signified a major achievement for the city, for Brazil and the continent. No city in South America has ever before hosted the Games. Acknowledging this failed recognition, the vote by the International Olympic Committee for Rio in effect was meant to say the time had come for the Southern Hemisphere, belatedly but better late than never.
Brazil is the only country among the world’s 10 largest economies today that hasn’t hosted an Olympics. Brazil’s main contenders — the US, Spain and Japan — all hosted the Olympics before. In fact, had the US won, it would have been the eighth time America staged an Olympics.
South Africa’s winning of the 2010 World Cup bid was perhaps anti-climatic. It was narrowly edged by Germany that hosted the 2006 championship. When South Africa tried again to capture the World Cup, it did so with wide margins over Morocco and Egypt.
Both Brazil and South Africa are replete with natural beauties and fun- loving, colorful people but that is not enough; there are concerns about money. The Olympics will cost Brazil $14.4 billion. The outlay for South Africa’s World Cup is thought to be around $3 billion. Is it money well spent in what are developing countries?
By and large, it is hard to detect the benefits of big sporting events. Some question whether a developing country should be spending so much on such an event when so many live in abject poverty. It is easy to be blinded by the economic and infrastructure upside of winning the Games or the World Cup, without taking into account the potential drain on city and state coffers. A country could, for example, spend $10 billion on a sporting event, but only get back $8 billion for its economy.
Critics have also questioned whether Brazil’s and South Africa’s infrastructure can handle such huge events, and whether they are safe enough to welcome the participants and hundreds of thousands of visitors into the country.
The two nations have to deal with problems inherent to a developing country: Poverty, violence, security, inadequate infrastructure and transportation — all urgent issues that Brazil and South Africa alike must address.
The plus side is that thousands of tourists will visit the host countries and hotels will be filled, while millions will be spent on tickets, consumer goods and souvenirs. Winning the Olympic Games and World Cup could also kick-start other economic sectors, including construction, finance, culture, exhibitions and sports.
The IOC and World Cup votes are testimony to Brazil and South Africa’s emerging status in the world, as well as that of South America and Africa. The Olympics and World Cup both serve as a catalyst for change and improvement and there is confidence among the officials who voted that Brazil and South Africa have matured enough to solve their problems or at least keep them from adversely affecting the world’s two biggest sporting extravaganzas.
China, a great power
Although the world has accepted that China is emerging as a great power, it still does not always act as one, said The Economist in an editorial on Sunday. Excerpts:
For a country that prides itself on its “peaceful rise”, it was an odd way to celebrate a birthday. The People’s Republic of China marked its diamond jubilee on Oct. 1 with a staggering display of military muscle-flexing. Goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles filed through Tiananmen Square, past the eponymous Gate of Heavenly Peace, where, 60 years ago, as every Chinese schoolchild is taught (wrongly, it now seems), Mao Zedong declared that the Chinese people had “stood up”.
For many Chinese, daily life remains a grim struggle, and their government rapacious, arbitrary and corrupt. But on the world stage, they have never stood taller than today. China’s growing military, political and economic clout has given the country an influence of which Mao could only have dreamed. Yet Chinese officials still habitually complain that the world has not accepted China’s emergence, and wants to thwart its ambitions and “contain” it. America and others are trapped, lament these ascendant peaceniks, in a “Cold-War mentality”. Sometimes, they have a point. But a bigger problem is that China’s own world view has failed to keep pace with its growing weight. It is a big power with a medium-power mindset, and a small-power chip on its shoulder.
Take that spectacular parade. What message was it meant to convey to an awestruck world? China is a huge, newly emerging force on the world scene. And it is unapologetically authoritarian, as were Japan and Prussia, whose rises in the late 19th century were hardly trouble-free. Nor is China a status quo power. There is the unfinished business of Taiwan, eventual “reunification” with which remains an article of faith for China, and toward which it has pointed some 1,000 missiles. There is the big, lolling tongue of its maritime claim in the South China Sea, which unnerves its Southeast Asian neighbors. And China keeps giving reminders of its unresolved wrangle with India over what is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it briefly overran in 1962. Nor has it reached agreement with Japan over disputed islands.
