Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

The importance of the Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games have become one of the pre- eminent ways 
of focusing global attention on a city or a country, raising its profile, attracting 
foreign visitors and encouraging investment. The existing image is a major 
factor in the selection process of a candidate for the host city. There is a 
symbiotic relationship between the existing brand image of a candidate city 
and the new brand image created by hosting the Olympic Games. When 
considering the location for the Olympic Games, the International Olympic 
Committee takes into account factors such as the following:
the population of the country must support the bid and be prepared to 
make it work;
the country must have significant tourism potential;
the country must have a foreign and domestic policy that is compliant 
with the Olympic ideal.
•
•
•

---

236 Cross-Cultural Communication
In any international sporting event, Anholt points out, national image or 
‘brand’ can strongly influence the choice of host country for a wide range 
of business decisions, including major sporting and cultural events. As he 
writes: ‘Using facts alone to pick the host country for an international sport-
ing event is fine up to a point, but in the end it has to be a location that 
the television audience finds exciting and appealing. Athletes and spectators 
have to feel happy about travelling and staying there, and their perceptions 
and prejudices about the place can carry just as much weight as practical 
considerations such as cost and transport links’ (Anholt and Hildreth, 2004).
Case study: the 2008 Beijing Olympics
China has actively engaged in ways to exercise the use of ‘soft’ power as an 
adjunct to public diplomacy. The Chinese government sees ‘soft’ power as a 
fundamental component of its projection of national, economic, military 
and political power. It helps guard China against international criticism and 
boosts the country’s international standing. President Hu, in his report to 
the 17th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on 15 October 
2007, declared that ‘soft’ power was not only a major component of national 
power but was also an ‘important source of national cohesion’.
The Beijing Olympic Games were branded by the Chinese as ‘The Peoples’ 
Olympics’. For China, hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics was a major 
opportunity to ‘brand’ itself to the world as a leading power. The design of 
the Olympic emblem combined the Olympic spirit with Chinese culture. 
The use of mascots represented the national characteristics of China’s most 
popular animals, namely the fish, the panda, the Tibetan antelope and the 
swallow, along with the Olympic flame.
The build- up to the Games was preceded by cultural diplomacy on a large 
scale, which included the following events:
2002: the foundation of the Chinese Culture Centre in Paris.
2002–2004: the Chinese government sponsored a series of Chinese 
New Year celebrations in New York, Bangkok, Sydney and London. In 
London, 200,000 attended the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar 
Square.
2004: the Chinese Culture Year was celebrated in a number of European 
cities.
2004: a large Chinese culture tour covered 22 African countries. This was, 
in effect, a precursor for Chinese economic expansion in its search for 
raw materials.
2005: the Festival of China was held at the Kennedy Center in the USA.
In addition, China hosted the Sixth Asia Arts Festival and increased American 
awareness of the Chinese export market, including the need to overcome the 
•
•
•
•
•

---

Cultural Diplomacy and Nation Branding 237
residual negativity of ‘made in China’ and the perceived cultural imperialism 
of Starbucks, McDonald’s and American pop music and films. In Moscow, 
a Year of China programme was established to promote Chinese culture.
The Chinese also emphasized that their Games were to be ‘green’ and ‘high 
tech’. All the above events were very actively reported in the China Daily, an 
English newspaper, and by the state- owned Xinhua News Agency and China 
Radio International (CRI), which, after the BBC, had the second largest audi-
ence in the world. The Confucius Institutes overseas promoted the Chinese 
language and culture abroad. The image of Chinese sports heroes, for example, 
Yao Ming, the Chinese baseball star of the NBA Houston Rockets, was 
exploited, typifying the image of Chinese people as positive, active and 
endowed with team spirit. In addition, Chinese kung fu clubs were set 
up overseas and popular films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 
and film stars such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were widely publicized. 
Furthermore, Chinese cultural values formed from their cultural past were 
extolled, including the idea that peace is precious, the spirit of order and 
discipline and the importance attached to education. All these were to 
counter negative perceptions, particularly in the West, of China posing an 
economic and potential military threat, the vexed question of human rights 
and restriction on ethnic minorities, problems in Tibet and the ongoing 
Taiwan question.