The Olympics always have drawn worldwide attention, but in recent years the event has turned into something much more than a series of sporting events that pit the best athletes against one another in the quest for gold.

More than a competition of pure physical and mental strength, the Olympics has become an arena for countries to assert their political, cultural and economic significance.

This perception of a host country’s role in the games is not unique, said Paul Myer, a University of Maine Business School faculty member.

“I actually think that the news stories coming out of China with respect to the Olympics are probably going to be in the minds of most people in the world on equal par with what’s happening in the Games from a competitive point of view,” Myer said Friday.

Myer is an expert in sales, marketing, management and international business who has worked, lived and done business in China.

“I am just absolutely fascinated by the country,” Myer said. “It’s a mystical land in some ways.”

This is an exciting Olympics for Myer to follow, as a businessman.

“Whether it be the media or trying to create markets and business opportunities in the country, there’s just a lot of excitement,” he said. “From a marketing professional’s point of view, while major corporations like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are spending major amounts of money on global advertising, for the first time they are also spending an equal amount of money in China itself. It’s a rather risky and interesting strategy.”

Chinese people never have been a brand-loyal society like Americans, Myer said.

“While branding is important around the world, it’s probably less important in China,” he said.

Because the Olympics are being held in Beijing and many of China’s political and cultural attitudes are being brought to the forefront, the marketing environment becomes even more interesting.

“This is a very high-risk, high-reward environment because of all those factors,” Myer said. “Unfortunately, it won’t be until after the games that anybody will be able to assess if anyone made the right decisions.”

While attention to the Olympic Games themselves has dwindled, Myer said Chinese officials are very aware that the country has been put center stage.

On top of China’s being a political arena, its pursuit of athletic excellence never has been stronger than during this Olympic season.

“The Chinese modeled their national sports federations after what the Russians and the Germans did many years ago. They spot young children at very early ages and through fairly scientific methodologies determine whether these people are going to be enrolled in sports academies,” Myer said. “There’s tensions between how do you treat these people, as machines or as human beings. That’s all a fascinating part of it. There’s a lot of national pride there – they just don’t excel at pingpong.”

When returning to China earlier this year with the group of University of Maine students, Myer said the differences he saw were surprising.

To hide the slums of Beijing and Shanghai, the government built walls, tore down dilapidated buildings and erected new ones in their place.

“They’re building billboards from the ground level up that will mask off parts of the city that they don’t want the world to see,” Myer said.

On his recent trip, crews were preparing television broadcast cables.

“They were very aware of the camera angles. They had very specific instructions as to what they could do and couldn’t do,” Myer said. “It’s all designed to present an image. These games are very, very important to the Chinese for a whole variety of purposes, and they are exploiting it both internally and externally as much as they can.”

In addition to the technological capabilities of China, which has become a very mobile society, Myer said he was blown away by the country’s transportation infrastructure.

“I had never seen so many black Audis in my life outside of Germany where I used to live,” Myer said. He noted that there used to be a lot of cars in China’s major cities, but that they were old and puffing smoke.

“The number of new cars and black Audis is what stuck out,” he said. “You would think it was a used-car lot, and it wasn’t, it was the hotel we were staying at.”

On the political front, Myer said the government likely will struggle to keep its society under control.

“I’ve been to many Olympics [and] my impression is this is not going to be one that is going to be very comfortable to be at,” Myer said.

In addition to the price gouging of hotels and airlines, security is a major issue and Myer doesn’t think the Chinese are being overprotective.

“On the dark side, these games do have the potential to be another Munich. I hope to God that that doesn’t happen, but clearly the Chinese are taking this very, very seriously. I think it’s real and I think they are rightly concerned because there’s just a lot of opportunity for mayhem.”

Whether Americans tune in to watch the competitions is a question left to be answered.

“It will be interesting to see whether NBC’s coverage attracts the kind of numbers that they’re looking for,” Myer said. “Americans only like winners. If our athletes are performing well, I think they’ll probably get good numbers.”

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