Thursday, August 14, 2008

China's Gymnasts

Well if you have been keeping up with the Olympics, you have probably heard about the Chinese Gymnast Controversy that the gymnasts were under the age allowed to compete (On the link there are also some good age revealing pictures of these little girls). A former Olympian describes the advantages to youth in the sport in a CNN video. Also on that video is a reference to a Chinese gymnast who won the bronze medal in 2004 who now admits she was underage when she competed.

For starters, I couldn't care less who won the gold and clearly the Americans were falling all over the place, so that's not what this about. It's just that the Chinese have a "whatever it takes" attitude when it comes to them. And I mean with respect to every aspect of life. Cheating is something that is considered acceptable if it advances their causes. Now obviously not all of them are like this, but overall it seems they have a different culture when it comes to intellectual property and some other avenues of life. This seems to be well documented in China related books, such as the Wall Street Journal's, One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. My own personal experiences in grad school also confirmed this.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008