Vorwort

The particular contribution of our volume lies in assembling a group of East Asian sports scholars to place the Beijing Olympics in an East Asian context. The Olympics are indeed “Games” but these Games are as much about economics and politics as about play, and they are as much about patriotism and profit as about sportsmanship. The Beijing Olympics were a potent opportunity for China to bring an Asian dimension to the Olympics and for the world community to cosmopolitanize China. They were a means by which Beijing could claim its place as a global city, and they were a stage on which regional political and economic rivalries could be played out or played up or played down in a sporting idiom. Because they took place in multiple geopolitical and historical contexts, any assessment of their effects must appreciate them as the fifth such Games held in Asia, held after a century of Asian connections to the worldwide Olympic Movement. That is what we seek to emphasize in bringing together scholarship on the Olympic experience in five East Asian settings.