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Choose your subscription. Trial Try full digital access and see why over 1 million readers subscribe to the FT. Athletes are still in the process of qualifying for the winter events, but two Alpine skiers from Hong Kong have already qualified, meaning the region will be sending a team to Beijing.
Hong Kong competes separately from China at the Olympics, and has done so since , when it was a British colony. He went home, and a few days later, was arrested , under a law introduced last year that criminalises insulting the Chinese flag or national anthem. Other controversies surfaced during the Tokyo Games. Badminton player Angus Ng Ka-long, a great medal hope, kicked off a political firestorm simply for wearing a plain black shirt.
China's double-teaming of the Olympics — the equivalent, say, of the United States fielding both a national team and another of athletes solely from New York — has never been much of an issue at the Olympics and isn't becoming one so far in Tokyo. First, Hong Kong is winning, like never before. Tokyo is the most successful games ever for the city of 7. A gold medal in the men's foil event for fencer Cheung Ka Long was Hong Kong's first since the one-time British colony was reabsorbed by China in Cheung was born just 20 days before that momentous change in the city's trajectory.
Swimmer Siobhan Haughey, born in Hong Kong four months after the handover, also has two silver medals from Tokyo, becoming the city's first multiple medalist. Their combined haul of treasure outshines the one gold, one silver and one bronze that Hong Kong had accumulated through all of its previous appearances since its Olympic debut in But such success also begs a question: Is it fair that China — with one team labeled China and the other Hong Kong, China — is getting multiple pathways to Olympic podiums?
One could even argue that China is extra-privileged by having three teams at the Games, if one accepts Beijing's position that the island of Taiwan is also part of its territory.
The other change in any re-evaluation of whether Hong Kong still warrants its own team is how China has been treating the territory of late.
But on the other hand, to strip Hong Kong of its team when its uniqueness is already under attack would be another morale-bashing blow to its identity. Crowds have also sent that message by gathering in Hong Kong shopping malls to cheer on their medal winners.
Malls were places of protest in Although Hong Kong is unusual in the Olympic movement, it is not alone in being both separate but not entirely so. Should athletes from the Pacific Island of Guam or the U. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean triumph in Tokyo, the anthem their Olympic champions would hear would be the U. American Samoa and Puerto Rico also have their own teams. But for how long?
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