Lee Seok Hwai discusses possible reasons for the lack of enthusiasm.

ENTRENCHED opinions, it appears, are immoveable, even in the path of the Olympic juggernaut.

People in the US, China’s current main rival, and Japan, China’s historical arch enemy, seem to be unmoved by the Beijing Olympics, according to a poll by The Straits Times. Their largely ambivalent or even negative views of China remain intact.

What can China do to improve this deep-rooted latent hostility? Perhaps the more valid question is: Should it even try?

In psychology, studies have shown that the character of a person, once it is formed in his teens, will remain stable throughout his life. It is safe to assume the same immutability of a country’s psyche – the set of beliefs and values that shape its opinions and actions.

The East-West, totalitarian-democratic, divide between China and the United States will never be bridged. On any given day, mainstream American newspapers will carry articles that are either outright critical of China, or are implicitly so. Rare is the writer who expresses sympathy for the country.

As for Japan, the roots of its Sino animosity are much more complicated, and of course, that much harder to disentangle.

The Chinese, of course, have reflected all that ill feelings back to the Japanese and the Americans. 

Much has been made of Chinese rulers supposed exploitation of such hostility, when the occasion suits them. The word for it is “nationalism”.

Which brings me to a second psychological finding: That individual passions get amplified in a group setting. So a Chinese who is, say, annoyed with Japanese textbooks that glorifies imperial Japan, is likely to get seriously incensed if he joins a group of like-minded people, who will each also go from irate to furious.

At this point, pacifists will suggest doing away with national boundaries in the interest of world peace. I suggest that they sing to the tune of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

Read Lee Seok Kwai's feature on Olympic attitudes in The Straits Times today.