The Beijing Olympiad

The stage is set for the Beijing Olympiad to be the greatest mega-event, sporting or otherwise, in history. Still, the issues taxing many minds include whether the Beijing Games will be successful; whether they will be wrought with and wrecked by troubles; and who they will benefit. What value will the 2008 Games be to the people of China? Will they mainly serve the purposes of the dominant political, economic and cultural groups at and between the local, regional and global levels of modern social life? The Beijing Olympiad examines these among other questions, providing a range of original insights of interest to an array of scholars, researchers and students from Sports Studies to Sociology, Politics, Economics, International Relations and Legal Studies.

Paul Close is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick. David Askew is Associate Professor of Law and Xu Xin is Associate Professor of International Relations, both at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University.

List of Tables. List of Contributors. Acknowledgements. List of Abbreviations. Preface. 1. Introduction 2. Towards an Analytical Framework 3. Olympism, Individualism and Nationalism 4. The Olympics, the Nation-State and Capitalism 5. Beijing and the Olympic Social Compact 6. The Olympic Games as a 'Coming Out Party': Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and the Asian Olympic Discourse 7. Righting the Games: Human Rights and the Beijing Olympic Games 8. China's Long March for the Olympics 9. Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index