May 20, 2007
China's next target: cheerleading
While I sometimes sound the warning bell about disturbing stories out of China, every now and then the Middle Kingdom gives us a bit of news on the light side.
Newsweek recently produced a story about the internationalization of American cheerleading; and, of course, China was getting in on the action:
“China is getting serious about cheer….China, as usual, is the most aggressive of the up-and-comers. The country's leaders hope the sport will help reverse declines in children's health that have accompanied modernization. They also hope cheer's camaraderie will fight the isolation many of China's studious children feel. As a result, Beijing is promoting cheer in schools, inviting American coaches to run clinics and creating cheer majors and scholarships at sports universities. "When China wants to catch up on something, they can do it quick," says Shawn Chen, president of Sias International University in Zhengzhou, who traveled to Orlando to watch his school's team compete.” ---Newsweek
The Chinese don’t know what they’re in for. In our politically correct, nitpicky times, even cheerleading has become controversial in recent years. In upstate New York, the parent of a female basketball player evoked Title IX earlier this year because her daughter’s high school did not provide pompom-waving cheerleaders for the girls’ basketball games. (It turned out that most of the female players wanted no part of them anyway----but that’s another essay.) Meanwhile, some rightwing busybodies in the U.S. have been concerned that cheerleading is a corrupting influence because of its suggestive overtones.
Maybe cheerleading will distract the Chinese with some of these weighty issues, so they will spend less time developing anti-satellite missiles and rattling their sabers at Taiwan.
However, I cannot help but wonder what Mao Zedong would have said. Sis Boom Bah! Rah rah rah comrades.