Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games © 2020 the Authors Published version Juego, Bonn Juego, B. Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games. Perspectives Asia, (9), 3034. https://hk.boell.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/perspectives-asia-no.9-web_1.pdf 2020 Issue 9 September 2020 Two Sides of the Medals – Sports and Politics in Asia ASIA Hong kong YAngon neW DelHi BAngkok PHnom PenH Beijing This edition of perspectives Asia is published jointly by the offices of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Asia The Heinrich Böll Stiftung is a publicly funded institute that is closely affiliated with the German party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. From our headquarters in Berlin and 32 overseas offices, we promote green ideas and projects in Germany, as well as in more than 60 countries worldwide. Our work in Asia concentrates on promoting civil society, democratic structures, social participation for all women and men, and global justice. Together with our partners, we work toward conflict prevention, peaceful dispute resolution, and search for solutions in the fight against environmental degradation and the depletion of global resources. To achieve these goals, we rely on disseminating knowledge, creating a deeper understanding between actors in Europe and Asia, and on a global dialogue as a prerequisite for constructive negotiations. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Cover illustration: Kaitlin Chan All rights reserved to Heinrich Böll Stiftung Contents 2 Editorial 4 The Tokyo Olympics: East Asian Sporting Mega-events Revisited Brian Bridges 7 The Fukushima Disaster and the Tokyo Olympcs Koide Hiroaki 11 Asia at the Olympics Ashish Khandalikar 15 From the Streets to Stadiums: Extreme Sports in China An Interview with Ding Yiyin 20 Sport in Southeast Asia: More than Medals, It’s the ‘We’ Feeling Johanna Son 24 We are the Champions Photographs by Pho Thar 30 Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games Bonn Juego 35 Coming apart at the Seams: Why Women Workers in the Cambodian Garment Industry Need a Sporting Chance at Equality Rachana Bunn 40 From Mud to Mat: How Kabaddi Recaptured the Public Imagination Shripoorna Purohit 44 Skateistan: Empowering Girls to Follow their Dreams An Interview with Zainab Hussaini 49 Shaping up Sport for all Genders An Interview with Law Siufung Cover illustration: Kaitlin Chan All rights reserved to Heinrich Böll Stiftung democracy; and in 2018 Pakistan’s greatest cricketer, Imran Khan, became Prime Minister. Fittingly, former Indonesian President Sukarno – after setting up the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) in 1963 as a counter to the Olympics, and having his country banned from the Olympics the following year – declared: ‘[N]ow let’s frankly say, sports have something to do with politics.’ This issue of Perspectives Asia examines such intersections of sports and politics. We look at how, through sports, identities are shaped, myths and heroes are born, and unconventional truths are buried. Brian Bridges gives a concise analysis of the political currents behind the various summer and winter Olympics held in China, Japan and South Korea. Koide Hiroaki, an activist in Japan’s anti-nuclear movement and former nuclear engineer, points out the Japanese government’s mismanagement of the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath, and questions the strategy of using the Tokyo Olympics to divert attention from the ongoing consequences of the nuclear meltdown. Ashish Khandalikar highlights some fascinating statistics about the Olympics from a distinctly Asian perspective. Who would have known, for example, that the first Olympic gold medal won by an Asian was received by Tejbir Bura from Nepal at the first Winter Olympics in 1924 in Chamonix, France, where the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition was recognized for its (unsuccessful, and for seven Indian porters tragically fatal) attempt to conquer the world’s highest peak? Extreme sports expert Ding Yiyin gives an account of how skateboarding, BMX racing and other previously subculture sports This should have been a summer like no other for Tokyo. After 56 years, the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and the Paralympic Games should have returned to the city to bolster former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s grand project to revitalize Japan. Like in 1964 – when Tokyo, as the first Asian city to host the Olympics, sought to demonstrate to the world that it had emerged from the post-war period and transformed into a strong, liberal democracy – the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were meant to show the nation and the world that ‘Japan is back’ and that the 2011 Fukushima triple catastrophe was a thing of the past. But the corona pandemic struck the world. Although Mr. Abe stubbornly clung to his plans and pretended for weeks that everything would go on as ‘normal,’ the International Olympic Committee on 24 March announced the postponement of the Games until summer 2021. Now Tokyo has to wait another year to become the first Asian city to host the summer Olympics twice. And it has set a new record, as the first Olympic host to be plagued by postponements twice. In fact, large sporting events are often entangled with politics and hidden interests. In his 2009 book, ‘Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia’, Victor Cha argues that sports can impact diplomacy, serve as a prism to project a country‘s vision, and facilitate change within a country. This seems especially plausible in Asia, where in the early 1970s small ping-pong balls helped to end the Cold War between China and the United States; in 1988 the Seoul Olympics were a catalyst for South Korea’s surprising transformation into a Editorial 2Editorial have found their way into China and are enriching the country’s sporting horizons. Zainab Hussaini explains how skateboarding is helping to build trust among young children, often girls, from different ends of the social divide in Afghanistan, many of whom bear the scars of war-time trauma. Joanna Son explores how sports can help to build a shared identity across nationalities. The ASEAN nations’ Southeast Asian Games, which officially include indigenous martial arts beloved throughout the region, such as muay, sepak takraw and pencak silat, have helped to transcend national boundaries and build a regional sense of community. One such sport, kabaddi, has spread from India to large parts of South Asia and beyond. Shripoorna Purohit describes how this unique sport has gone beyond its origins and captured the public imagination. On the other hand, the SEA Games exhibit a complex amalgam of nationalism, patronage and corruption. Bonn Juego explains these linkages and sketches out a path towards the depoliticisation of sports for more positive purposes. Photojournalist Pho Thar, recently released from Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison after a 14-month sentence for making fun of the military, follows a cohort of disabled athletes from Myanmar’s Paralympic Sports Federation. His photographs testify to the transformational power of sports. While athletes and sports enthusiasts around the world sport fancy jerseys provided by global brands and sponsors of large sporting events, the workers who make them, mostly female, toil under atrocious conditions in the garment sectors of Cambodia and other Asian countries. Rachana Bunn raises her voice for them, calling for more respect for human rights, and an end to exploitative working conditions in garment factories. Gender fluid bodybuilder Law Siufung discusses the multiple hurdles LGBTI athletes in Asia have to deal with, and suggests ways to work upon the rules, norms and market forces towards gender diversity. With the battle against the coronavirus far from over, sports may seem like a distant memory to many people. It remains uncertain whether the Olympics and Paralympics will take place in 2021 in Tokyo, or will be cancelled altogether. Nevertheless, when the games do resume, the rich, diverse and complicated interactions between sports and societies in Asia will continue. So will the struggles over exploitation and exclusion related to class, race and gender, which, as Bonn Juego puts it, are best overcome by collective political action. With this issue, the production of Perspectives Asia has moved to our new regional office in Hong Kong. We look forward to working with the other Asian offices of Heinrich Böll Stiftung to provide political analysis from Asia twice a year. Please contact us should you have any suggestions, questions or comments. Clemens Kunze, Kevin Li, and Lucia Siu The Editors Heinrich Böll Stiftung Hong Kong Office 3 Editorial Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games Bonn Juego 30 Southeast Asia Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games The Southeast Asian Games has been negatively politicised since the 1950s. It has sported a complex interplay of colonialism, decolonisation, nationalism, geopolitics, patronage and capitalism. Repurposing it for the well-being of individual athletes and the regional sporting culture is long overdue. Yet, to depoliticise sports toward positive purpose necessitates collective political action. Introduction The 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines from 30 November to 11 December 2019 was the biggest sporting event ever held in the region. Yet what should have been a showcase of athletic excellence became instead a reminder of the recurring political pestilence that has plagued this biennial competition since its 1959 inauguration. Controversies over the host country’s alleged organisational incompetence, corruption, politicking, and human rights violations overshadowed stories of victory, individual triumphs and team records.1 Again, politics won over athletics. News and images featuring incomplete facilities and logistical mishaps abounded. Online bickering between loyalists and critics of President Rodrigo Duterte spilled over into public debate on the government’s hosting performance. Elected politicians, state officials, and politically connected businessmen managed the Philippine SEA Games Organising Committee, which is facing investigations for misappropriation of the event’s USD 150 million budget, notably its lavish expenditures for the cauldron and the grand opening and closing ceremonies. Then there were complaints from activists about how the construction of a major venue, the 50-hectare sports complex within New Clark City, was used by the government and private investors to accelerate the forced displacement of some 500 indigenous Aeta families. The politicisation of sports (i.e., the struggle for the allocation of power and resources between competing interest groups in the sporting community) is not exclusive to the SEA Games. This phenomenon is more pronounced in commercialised sports involving the exchange of big money sourced from states, corporations, and individual capitalists, like the Olympics, continental games, and many professional leagues. But its prevalence is not an excuse to normalise the commodification of the bodies and lives of athletes, or to continue tolerating corrupt practices of organisers from the public and private sectors. Since its foundation, the norms and conduct of the SEA Games have been governed by political, security, economic and business considerations, rather than intercultural aspirations between neighbouring countries. After being held 30 times, the SEA Games is still in search of meaning and purpose. Colonial sports Sport is both an individual and social endeavour. Individually, sport is the quest to realise the maximum potential of the human will, mind and body. Socially, sport entails complex relationships between players of a game, concerned institutions and other stakeholders within the body politic. The history of the SEA Games is very much Bonn Juego teaches international development studies at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland’s Capital of Sport. He is a Filipino academic who has held research fellowships and teaching appointments at the Universities of Aalborg, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and City of Hong Kong. He has recently authored “IPE Scholarship About Southeast Asia: Theories of Development and State-Market-Society Relations” in The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy (2020). Discourse on sports “decolonisation” included concepts such as Pan-Asianism, Asiatisation, and anti-colonialism…these ideas were interpreted differently as either new patterns of “dependent relationships” between former colonies and colonisers, or as articulations of a “variety of nationalisms,” based upon ethnicity, state or anti-imperialism. 31 Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games Southeast Asia a story of political power relations, rather than of memorable athletic achievements. Sports politics, or the political capture of sports, in Southeast Asia has several dimensions. From a historical perspective, the evolution of sports in the region has displayed distinctive features of colonialism, decolonisation, geopolitics, nationalism, patronage and capitalism. First, “Western” sports were introduced by European and American colonisers in Southeast Asia from the 16th century until the 1940s. Through mediation by local elites, imperial sports became tools to instil discipline and loyalty in the colonial subjects, aside from their entertainment value for the ruler and the ruled.2 In the early 20th century, the US agenda in Asia, via its Philippine colony, incorporated amateur sports into the “modernisation” doctrine, which problematised the “backwardness” of Asian societies, politics, economies and cultures. From 1911 to 1913, the American branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association created the Far Eastern Championship Games and the Far Eastern Athletic Association, which reorganised into the Asiad and the Asian Games Federation after World War II. Colonialism constituted a “mass-based sportive citizenship training” with a certain “bio-political” aim to resolve “civilizational deficits of East Asian concepts of masculinity” through sports “as a healthy, rational, and scientific form of recreation” that could stop Asian vices of “promiscuity, gambling, cock-fighting, and boozing.”3 Colonial sports promoted international games and physical education as a significant part of the “Western civilizing mission” to transition Asia into modernity, democracy, capitalism and “muscular Christianity.”4 Geo-politics From the 1940s through the 1960s, newly independent Asian countries adopted sport programmes as part of their respective national identity-formation and nationbuilding processes. Discourse on sports “decolonisation” included concepts such as Pan-Asianism, Asiatisation, and anticolonialism in the organisation of regional games. Among Asia’s political elites, these ideas were interpreted differently as either new patterns of “dependent relationships” between former colonies and colonisers, or as articulations of a “variety of nationalisms,” based upon ethnicity, state or antiimperialism. Secondly, the politicised nature of the SEA Games started with its precursor, the Southeast Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Games, established under the leadership of the Olympic Council of Thailand in 1958 during the Third Asiad in Tokyo. Though sports have served as a symbol of amity in the regionalism of contemporary Southeast Asia, it was an interesting mixture of national interests and friend/enemy distinctions in geopolitics that initially defined SEAP’s exclusivist membership. The decision of Thailand—as the pioneering host nation and overall administrator of the 1959 SEAP Games—to make the inaugural spectacle exclusive to its non-communist neighbours (i.e. Burma, Laos, Malaya, Singapore, and South Vietnam) and reject the participation of the more competitive sporting countries (i.e. Indonesia and the Philippines) “had the goal of containing [North] Vietnamese communism” and “undoubtedly favoured Thailand’s athletes” – thus reflecting a “mode of Thai-centric, anticommunist regionalism encompassing mainland Southeast Asia.”5 Only in 2003 did all the peninsular and insular countries comprising Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) become participants in the SEA Games, namely: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Pursuit of national interest has been a persistent characteristic of ASEAN’s regional sporting culture. Instead of fierce competition between nations as in the Olympics, the distinct norms of tolerant reciprocity and cooperative exchange among participating states delineate the SEA Games. For example, the host country is given the privilege of selecting a list of events that play to its advantage and allow it to top the medal standings. This pragmatic approach is aimed at securing funds for the event, which are mostly appropriated from Business and political elites act as patrons to their clients among athletes, fans, consumers and voters. Their influential involvement in sports is present through various means... national teams and athletes thrive on monetary contributions from wealthy private and corporate benefactors, not necessarily on government funding. 32 Southeast Asia Politics and Sports Capitalism in the Southeast Asian Games the host government’s national budget, to sustain the SEA Games. Patronage and Clientelism Thirdly, the politics of patronage and clientelism is a permanent fixture in the history of sports in Southeast Asia. Business and political elites act as patrons to their clients among athletes, fans, consumers and voters. Their influential involvement in sports is present through various means: from owning teams and clubs, and having sponsorship deals, in commercial sports (e.g., in the old Philippine Basketball Association and the new Malaysian Football League), to organising and bankrolling local tournaments and matches in vote-rich grassroots communities, especially during an election season. It is also often the case in the region that national teams and athletes thrive on monetary contributions from wealthy private and corporate benefactors, not necessarily on government funding. Sport is woven into the fabric of society. It serves specific functions to different groups of people, though unequally in terms of class relations. For instance, some of the favourite spectator sports in Asia – like football, basketball, boxing and horseracing – signify the pursuit of personal ambition for athletes, a regular day job for staff, or simple leisure for ordinary fans. On the contrary, these games serve as pastimes, gambling opportunities, entrepreneurial ventures, tax credit strategies, or public relations occasions for sections of Asia’s elite. Sports are also a battleground of opposing tendencies in society. There have been historical moments when spectator sports and celebrity athletes have exhibited political resistance, notably the refusal of the legendary boxer Mohammad Ali to serve in the US military during the Vietnam War, the No Room For Racism campaign in European football leagues, and the recent support to the Black Lives Matter movement in the National Basketball Association. However, in Southeast Asia, sports are less likely to provide a platform for opposition politics than for powerful social forces to exercise their patronage and clientelism. Sports Capitalism Alongside nationalism and patronage, the logic of sports capitalism is shaping the sporting culture in Southeast Asia’s emerging economies. Sports capitalism enables unequal social relations whereby sports generate profits for some while exploiting others through alienation, commodification and dispossession. The political economy of sports capitalism has multiple aspects and contradictory manifestations, which have critical implications for the future of the SEA Games and the evolving sports structure: 1. Liberalist Individualism. Sports capitalism exemplifies liberalist individualism – the ethos in which individuality, competitiveness and personal excellence against all institutionalised odds are celebrated. In the hegemonic US-style capitalism, in which social inequalities are peddled as a natural order, sports is promoted as a special sphere where even the poor, black descendants of slaves are qualified to compete in pursuit of greatness, despite lacking inherited property from rich parents, or the institutional advantages of white privilege, simply by having individual determination, skill and talent. The same individualistic path to success, like the rags-to-riches story of Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao, is being popularised in the highly stratified and class-divided societies of Southeast Asia. 2. Inequalities. Under conditions of capitalism, there are stark inequalities in the allocation of value in sports. Though star players of spectator sports are paid astronomical salaries and talent fees, they may still be considered as workers for the owners of companies who profit from their work, and as labourers whose incomes are legitimately earned through their perceptible hard work and professionalism. In team sports, individual excellence is praised, while the game is presented as a process of teamwork. However, lower-tier workers who significantly contribute to the sports production process are often limited to subsistence or starvation wages. 3. Alienation and Commodification.