With the significant development of technology, the amount of information delivered to people is larger, wider and quicker than ever. International sporting activities are one of the sorts that many fans are fond of. In China, some sports fans consider them crucial in easing political tensions
such
as the Trade War against the US. They think the sporting philosophy and spirit of the game can trigger the empathy of all human beings and
thus
ease the tensions between countries.
Nevertheless
, I am not convinced by that idea at all.
To begin
with, sports games are, in most cases, treated as a demonstration of political relationships, which do not have anything to do with empathy. Let us divide the world into eastern and western for the rest of the argument. Imagine the host "A" an eastern country. For showing friendship to another eastern country "B", A tends to facilitate the steps secretly for B to get more medals in the ensuing competitions. That includes manipulating the rules of the competition to a way where the chances of winning for B are higher or forcing the referees to ignore the athletes violating the rules.
For instance
, in the previous Olympic Games, a tremendous amount of athletes drank beverages with prohibited components helping them to perform better in the competition, yet they passed the body test. If not revealed, the scandals could not have created shame at all for the host.
Therefore
potentially, those concealments for fulfilling political goals raise the tensions between the eastern and western worlds.
In the
second
place, for countries with tense relationships, the audience in the stadium might be hostile to each other due to the long-run political brainwashing. Essentially, brainwashing feeds to people a high amount of intense emotions bonded to political prejudices.
Such
feeling will resurge through the match between two teams, and can
thus
trigger the minds of the crowd in the stadium to politicise it in an unconscious manner.
That is
, intense emotions let people's minds far beyond winning and losing: The audiences of the winning side have the illusion of completely beating the other side to the ground, while the ones of the losing team blabbing about military operations and political sanctions to the opponent.
For example
, audiences from opposite groups tend to launch a street fight after the match. Not only does it generate a thorny social issue for diplomats of both sides to handle, but it
also
worsens the image of both countries and exacerbates their relationship.
To summarise, I do not consider holding international sporting occasions a wonderful idea to release patriotic emotions.
On the contrary
, it is dangerous. I hope deeper education to citizens and the depoliticisation of sports can one day make that idea feasible.