i know this topic has been beaten to death in recent days by the local press but let me wade in a little.
specifically lets talk about Singapore's table tennis team. And the local reaction to their silver medal winning effort.
make no mistake, Singapore IS a country of immigrants. But of course. So is China actually, for the Chinese are migrants from Ethiopia too. Some 325,000 years ago of course. Obviously I recognize that immigration has been a trend, and most nations are formed by that. foreign talents help supplement the existing population and enhances its capabilities. thats fine.
But i think there is a huge difference between supplementing talent, and whole sale import of players! The ENTIRE team in Singapore is made up of Chinese talents specifically picked to only play table tennis. That is bordering on ridicule.
I also recognize too that many other countries are also embracing foreign talents in sports. there is a difference though, between specifically INCENTIVIZING foreign talents to join a country using monetary rewards, versus the athlete CHOOSING to defect or migrate a nation on his / her free will without any incentives. THAT, is a big big difference.
What I find objectionable to Singapore's intentions, is that the authorities deliberately went out to get Chinese players by paying them extra money / incentives etc. I embrace Ronald Susilo as although he is foreign born, he did not come here due to badminton but our system helped him reach his potential. Ditto for Tao Li.
But these Chinese table tennis players? Its not about their identity card colours, its about their intentions.
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Baseball
2 comments:
just a thought: what about in professional leagues like the NBA where a team can be comprised of players from different geographical localities. yet the city still cheers for its team and feels a strong sense of identity for them, even if the players in the team are from elsewhere.
tfoo
let me try to hazard a guess concerning the essence of why people find such scenarios distasteful. maybe it is because a wholesale import of an entire sports team reeks of pure capitalism. if you examine it from the perspective of pure capitalism, there is absolutely nothing odd about this transaction. both parties benefit. this happens all the time when people set up businesses to sell various goods and services.
the reason why one finds this distasteful is because the olympics, sports, and national boundaries are arenas where people generally expect transcendent human qualities to take precedence over capitalist impulses. its the same kind of reasoning james blake used when complaining about fernando gonzalez in their olympic semi-final match.
so to surmise, the reason why people find this distasteful is that it is an intrusion of pure capitalist impulses into an arena of human life where people feel that there exist transcendent human qualities which should not be tainted by pure capitalism. it is the same reason why people find prostitution distasteful.
to me, this has alot of relevance to the argument about whether humans are pure materialist beings (i think they are not), because if humans are pure materialist beings, then there is no justification for there to exist arenas that transcend pure capitalist impulses in human life apart from tradition, but tradition cannot really be justified using the laws of physics.
i also feel this is extremely relevant to the conservative/liberal debate
(by conservative i do not mean republicans), because conservatism is all about human qualities that transcend pure economics and physics, while liberalism is much more associated, in my mind at least, with a bottom up approach.
tfoo
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