Carrie Lam’s Tokyo Olympics TV deal: a bid to reignite Hong Kong’s patriotic fervour like in Beijing 2008?

As the Hong Kong government snaps up the broadcast rights to the Tokyo Games, observers wonder if what it really seeks is a national pride pick-me-up from a bygone time when most Hongkongers identified as Chinese

But in the years since Hongkongers turned out to cheer the Chinese heroes of Beijing 2008, protests, arrests and a national security law may have taken the shine off the soft power value of gold medals

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Children in Hong Kong show their support for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch relay. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Published: 11:41am, 16 May 2021Updated: 5:03pm, 16 May 2021

In the third instalment of our Tokyo Trail series on key issues surrounding the Olympics, we look at why Hong Kong’s government snapped up broadcast rights to the Games.

It may sound surreal now, but tens of thousands of Hongkongers turned out to cheer for the Beijing Olympic torch relay when it came to the city in 2008.

Local residents took pride in China winning 51 gold medals at the Games that year, surpassing America’s 36, and mainland officials could be confident that most Hongkongers were feeling sufficiently patriotic.

According to a study by the Public Opinion Research Institute (Pori), more than 51 per cent of Hongkongers identified as Chinese during the Beijing Olympics, the highest level since the survey started in 1997.

But things soon went downhill.

A protester practises throwing a petrol bomb during the anti-government protests of 2019. Photo: AFP

Negative sentiments towards Beijing started to build following the arrest in 2009 of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who had been critical of China’s human rights record.

SCMP Series

Tokyo Trail: key issues surrounding the 2020 Olympics

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