Ross Clark Ross Clark

Sinophobia, the last acceptable racism

The Chinese have excelled at London 2012, much to the annoyance of their Western rivals. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the claims against swimmer Ye Shiwen reflect irrational suspicion of her country. Here is an edited version of Ross’s article (you can read the full version here):

The story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympics but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in Olympic history.

I refer, of course, to the People’s Republic of China. But this is not a story you will have picked up from the BBC or the press. Rarely can a sporting performance have been met with such resentment as that of 16-year-old Ye Shiwen in the 400 metres women’s medley. She had hardly wiped the drops from her goggles before the US swimming coach John Leonard was making coded accusations of drug use. Her offence, it seems, was to have swum faster than the all-American winner of the men’s event, Ryan Lochte.

When Ye Shiwen won a second gold medal, she enjoyed none of the adulation showered on other multiple winners. Then, two days later, the whole issue went quiet. What had happened? Ye Shiwen had passed the drugs test to which all medal winners are subjected. She wasn’t a drugs cheat after all.

Deprived of the opportunity to accuse her of doping, the nation’s Sinophobes changed tack. Obviously she was the product of a ‘brutal training regime’. Then came the extraordinary accusation that she might have been genetically modified. BBC’s Newsnight entertained the fantasy that athletes might be having their genes modified — interspersed with clips of Ye Shiwen winning her medals.

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