Unity or Bias: How did the U.S. media report on China’s Olympic gold medals?

This summer, while the world witnessed Chinese athletes’ outstanding performances in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games with the motto of “Unity in Diversity”, some U.S. media accused China of aiming to top the gold medal tally.

Until the day before the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, Team China continued to lead the gold medal list and was placed first in the medal count by the International Olympic Committee. However, some American media outlets changed the widely-accepted counting method to ensure an “America First” tally by which the country counted the most medals, which included reporting from the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), New York Times and Washington Post.

The Tokyo Olympics took place amid the severe onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, and had hoped to raise awareness towards the goal of “Unity in Diversity” among citizens of the world. But, in fact, biased reports against China in some U.S. media have not dampened to any degree. They are sparing in no effort to discredit China’s sporting system, hyping the lie that Chinese Olympians are manufactured in a “sports assembly line” for winning gold medals and completely ignoring the talents, persistence, passion, and hearts of Chinese Olympians.

In a recent article in the New York Times, the Chinese sporting system was called “China’s sports assembly line” or “the Chinese sports machine”, “designed for churning out gold medals” at the exclusion of silver and bronze. The way that the New York Times represented Chinese athletes is more akin to describing robots than humans.

When it came to the American media’s groundless accusations against China and Chinese athletes, the general public expressed their disapproval online. A highly recommended comment by a reader from Silicon Valley, California, directly points out the U.S. media's bias against China, saying, “The Western world, and in particular white people, need to learn to accept that Chinese people… can excel out of passion for what they do and not because they're robots, cheaters, status-obsessed”. The reader also called for stopping these stereotypes altogether. “Accept that, yes, they can win on merits, heat, and drive. Accept that, yes, they’re just as smart, gritty, passionate, innovative, and human as anybody else. If we could do that, we’d see fewer articles like this (in NYT)”.

What should be noted is that this is not the first time the American media has reported biased coverage on the Chinese performance in the Olympics, its medals and athletes.

In 2016, when Team China bagged 26 gold medals, ranking third on the gold medal count at the Rio Olympics, the same U.S. media outlets argued: China is lagging behind, and China’s falling number of golds and overall medal standing reflects problems in the country’s national sporting system.

Still the New York Times published a report entitled “Lower Medal Count in Rio Rattles China’s Olympics Obsession”, having questioned China's sporting system. But the author’s prejudice towards China can be found in between the lines, for instance stating that “Many Chinese are asking if the nation’s once insatiable appetite for medals has hit a limit.”

Also, the standards and tunes of some U.S. media outlets regarding the Olympics have continued to change to suit their own needs.

For example, some American media’s answer to the question “Does the number of Olympic medals that a nation wins show its status?” depends on whether China or America tops the medal tally. When the Chinese team topped the U.S. in the Tokyo Olympic gold medal tally this summer, the Washington Post said “Olympic medals no longer show off nations’ cultural power. That’s good”.

But when the U.S. ranked No. 1 in the Rio 2016 Olympic medal tally, National Public Radio (NPR) said that the trend of a country's Olympic performance over time is closely aligned with its political, economic and military strength in the summer of 2016. As per this report, the U.S. has won more medals than any other country for decades, indicating the U.S. is an Olympic superpower and a global power.

All Olympians, regardless of their nationalities, who strive to compete for their best results in the Games for the prize of medals and glory, deserve recognition and respect. But, ironically, the outstanding performance of Team China at the Olympics has not been enough to defeat the bias in the U.S. media.