1 “Olympic Movement” is the official term used by the IOC to define the global structure over which it presides and I use it in that sense here, without affirming that it is a social movement in the social scientific sense of the word.

2 Hai, Ren, Aolinpike yundong (The Olympic Movement) (Beijing: People's Sports Publishing House, 1993, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 The Olympic Education Standing Office was formed by the BMCE under the Beijing Academy of Educational Science in late 2004. It was dissolved in late 2008. It had nine employees in addition to the director. It collaborated with a fluid “experts group” consisting of university professors with expertise in Olympic studies who were called on as needed; the core had about ten members, and the author was added to this group.

4 http://en.beijing2008.cn/education.

5 Interview with Yang Zhicheng, Chief of the Division of Olympic Education at BOCOG, Beijing, 25 March 2008.

6 www.bjoe.org.cn.

7 International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter 2007 (Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee, 2007), p. 11Google Scholar.

8 See ch. 5, “Mixing sport and politics: China and the International Olympic Committee,” in Brownell, Susan, Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar.

9 My assertion about BOCOG's desire to please the IOC is based on discussions with persons associated with the IOC and the Chinese government, who wished to remain anonymous.

10 Beijing Municipal Communist Party Education Working Commission and Beijing Municipal Commission for Education, Beijing shi xuexiao Aolinpike jiaoyu xingdong jihua (Beijing Municipal School Olympic Education Action Plan), Document No. 53 in 2005 (6 December 2005) (Beijing: Office of the Leading Small Group of Beijing Municipal Olympic Education, 2006), www.bjoe.org.cn/bjeduaoy/1227512373435170816/20060914/23016.shtml.

11 I was given a hard copy of the Chinese document by Yang Zhicheng but have been unable to find a copy of it on the website of BOCOG or the Ministry of Education; this is unusual since most key government documents are now available on official websites. There is a version of it on the Chinese information website Baidu (http://baike.baidu.com/view/1092898.htm). I have not found a complete English translation, making it unlikely that the IOC knew its contents.

12 A brief overview of the history of the creation of Beijing's Olympic education is given by Shen, Geng in his preface to Beijing Aolinpike jiaoyu gongzuo rizhi (Work Diary of Beijing's Olympic Education) (Beijing: Beijing Sport University Press, 2008), pp. 1–14 (in Chinese and English)Google Scholar.

13 Interview, Beijing, 25 March 2008.

14 Beijing Municipal School Olympic Education Action Plan, p. 4.

15 Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Gongmin daode jianshe shishi gangyao (Programme for Implementing the Construction of Citizen Morality), 20 October 2001, http://news.sohu.com/20081020/n260121037.shtml.

16 Beijing Municipal School Olympic Education Action Plan, p. 3.

17 E-mail communication, 21 December 2008. This was to some degree an implicit criticism of the government's political appropriation of the Olympics, but this must be understood in the wider context of the relationship of intellectuals to the Olympic Movement. It is common worldwide that educators consider themselves the true “keepers of the flame” and reject attempts by the political and corporate worlds to appropriate it. This conflict extends into the relationship between intellectuals and the IOC and is particularly strong in Germany and France. In China, Olympic scholars collaborated more closely with the local organizing committee and the government than was true of Olympics held in Western Europe and North America in the last two decades. Close collaboration with educators also occurred in the Olympics held in Japan and South Korea.

18 BOCOG, Ministry of Education, Beijing Municipal Government, “Guanyu mingming shoupi Aolinpike jiaoyu shifan xuexiaode tongzhi” (“Circular on the naming of the first group of Olympic education demonstration schools”), 6 December 2005, in Beijing Municipal School Olympic Education Action Plan, pp. 11–12. The framework for the activities of the demonstration schools is also described in the Action Plan itself, section 3, part 1, articles 1–5, pp. 3–5.

19 “Di29jie Aoyunhui zuweihui, Jiaoyubu guanyu mingming Beijing 2008 Aolinpike jiaoyu shifan xuexiao tongzhi” (“Circular on the naming of Beijing 2008 Olympic education demonstration schools from the organizing committee of the 29th Olympic Games and the Ministry of Education”), BOCOG Document No. 222 in 2006 (13 October 2006), www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/52/info35952.htm.

20 Beijing Olympic Education Standing Office, 2007nian Beijing shi Aolinpike jiaoyu gongzuo zongjie (2007 Year-End Summary of Beijing Municipal Olympic Education), document in possession of the author.

21 Interview, Beijing, 28 January 2008.

22 Interview, Beijing, 1 January 2008.

23 The democratic parties have members who are representatives in the municipal People's Political Consultative Conference and People's Congress, giving them the important political connections that enable them to attract the attention of government officials.

24 Interview, Beijing, 25 October 2007.

25 Jiusan xueshe (September Third Society), “Guanyu shishi Aolinpike jiaoyu de jianyi” (“Proposal on implementing Olympic education”), in Ning, Wu, Baolin, Sun, and Yu, Long (eds.), Canzheng yizheng anli xuan: Beijing juan (Selected Case Studies in Participatory and Consultative Government: Beijing Volume) (Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2007), pp. 19–23Google Scholar.

26 Phone interview, Beijing, 16 January 2008.

27 Interview, Beijing, 18 October 2007.

28 Shen, Geng, Tiyan Aolinpike (Experiencing the Olympics) (Beijing: Beijing Sport University Press, 2008), p. 5Google Scholar. The English translation in the book was done by the author.

29 Interview with Hujialou Central Primary School principal, Beijing, 8 January 2008.

30 September Third Society, “Proposal,” p. 19.

31 Anagnost, Ann, “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi),” Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kipnis, Andrew, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” The China Quarterly, No. 186 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kipnis, Andrew, “Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hairong, Yan, “Neoliberal governmentality and neohumanism: organizing suzhi/value flow through labor recruitment networks,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Anagnost, “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi),” p. 197.

33 Brownell, Susan, Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

34 While it is common wisdom, the source of this statistic is not clear. It may be that the perception of a general decline in the health of children is related more to fears about social change than to a statistically significant decline.

35 Chinese Ministry of Education, Mian xiang 21 shiji jiaoyu zhenxing xingdong jihua (Action Plan for Revitalizing Education for the 21st Century), Document No. 9 in 1999 (24 December 1998), www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/37/info3337.htm (accessed 16 November 2008).

36 Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and State Council, Zhonggong Zhongyang, Guowuyuan guanyu shenhua jiaoyu gaige, quanmian tuijin suzhi jiaoyu jueding (Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council on Deepening the Educational Reforms and Fully Promoting Suzhi Education), 13 June 1999, www.moe.gov.cn/edoas/website18/info3314.htm.

37 State Council of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Resolution of the State Council on the Reform and Development of Basic Education, Document No. 21 in 2001 (29 May 2001), www.edu.cn/20010907/3000665.shtml (accessed 15 November 2008).

38 Yang Zhicheng, “Aolinpike jiaoyu yu suzhi jiaoyu youji jiehe” (“The organic link between Olympic education and suzhi education”), Zhongguo jiaoyu bao (Chinese Education News), 6 August 2007, p. 2, www.jyb.cn/cm/jycm/beijing/zgjyb/2b/t20070806_103010.htm (accessed 27 January 2008).

39 Fundamental Principle No. 2 of the Olympic Charter mentions “the harmonious development of man.”

40 Interview, Beijing, 25 March 2008.

41 Interview, Beijing, 28 January 2008.

42 Ren Hai, “Olympic education and cross-cultural communication,” in Hai Ren, Lamartine Dacosta, Ana Miragaya and Niu Jing (eds.), The Olympic Studies Reader, Vol. 1 (CD Rom version; to be published by the Beijing Sport University Press).