Chinese state television broadcaster CCTV on Sunday pulled the plug on its Olympic coverage to avoid showing Taiwan’s badminton team winning the gold medal by defeating the top-rated Chinese team.
Taiwan won its first gold medal of the Paris Olympics when its men’s doubles team of Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin bested China’s Liang Weikeng and Wang Chang in an upset badminton victory.
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If you want to look up Taiwan’s champions online, you’ll have to search for “Chinese Taipei,” the name Beijing long ago bullied the Olympics into using for the island’s athletes. Taiwanese athletes are also forced to compete under a five-petal flower symbol instead of their national flag. Flags, banners, towels, and other items bearing authentic Taiwanese iconography were confiscated from spectators in Paris, while Chinese nationalists were free to unfurl giant red Communist flags.
The top-seeded Chinese team seemed like pretty good sports about Taiwan inching them down to a silver medal. Wang Chang said the 76-minute showdown was “one of the most intense matches” he and Liang Weikeng have played. Neither team could hold a lead of more than four points throughout the badminton battle.
The Chinese Communist government was much less sporting. Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that CCTV’s Olympics channel did not begin covering the marathon match until the Chinese team briefly took the lead about halfway through, and then cut the feed when Taiwan won.
China’s Sun Jiajun competes in the men’s 4×100-meter medley relay final at the Summer Olympics in Nanterre, France, on August 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
CCTV also pointedly avoided showing the jubilant fans in the audience yelling “Taiwan Number One!” and decided to show men’s gymnastics instead of the badminton medal ceremony, treating China’s highly skilled silver medal team like a couple of losers. The entire game was broadcast to eager crowds back home in Taiwan, while China only carried 40 minutes of it.
Media outlets in Communist-controlled Hong Kong were equally petty, reporting Liang and Wang as the silver medalists but avoiding all mention of the Taiwanese team that took the gold. China’s hyper-nationalist “little pink” blowhards filled social media with complaints that the badminton match was rigged and the referees were Taiwan sympathizers. Some little pinks with exceptionally sore posteriors insisted that China should have been recorded as winners of both the gold and silver medals, since Taiwan is “an inalienable part of China’s territory.”
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“When will unification happen? I don’t want to see a team from Taiwan at the next Olympics,” one Chinese social media user moaned, forgetting that his wish has already come true, because the Olympic Games have been billing Taiwanese competitors as residents of “Chinese Taipei” since the 1980s.
“China claims to be a major power, but in fact it’s very narrow-minded and intolerant. That’s why CCTV stops broadcasting when it loses, and broadcasts only when China wins,” Chinese American political commentator Chen Pokong told RFA.
“China claims that politics has no place in the Olympics, but they themselves bring politics to the Olympics,” he mused.
Zhang Yufei, of China, competes during a heat in the women’s 200-meter butterfly at the 2024 Summer Olympics on July 31, 2024, in Nanterre, France. (Ashley Landis/AP)
Chen noted that CCTV has a huge battalion of reporters at the Paris Olympics because Chinese athletes have been instructed not to give interviews to any other media outlet.
Taiwanese, both in Paris and back home, exuberantly celebrated their gold medal victory. Their signs and banners might have been confiscated, but the authorities could not stop fans from chanting “Taiwan!” in the stands, or slipping a bit of the Taiwanese anthem into the opening musical fanfare.
“I feel so emotional. We cannot be officially known as Taiwan at the Olympics, but this is a proud moment for all Taiwanese because we’re being seen,” one Taiwanese Olympics fan wrote on Facebook.
“This shows that we can remain strong no matter how much we feel threatened by the other side,” said another, referring to China’s menacing presence on the far side of the Taiwan Strait.
The Taiwanese government on Monday asked French authorities to investigate an incident in which a sign reading “Let’s go Taiwan!” was violently stolen from a female badminton fan and destroyed. Another fan reported the theft of a towel bearing a similar slogan.
