Olympic feast could be sweet or sour

Hosting the Olympics and Paralympics has prompted China to take real steps towards improving the lives of disabled people, but it still has a long way to go in improving its attitude to equality, says Shi Guangyu

Xiao Wang is a blind masseur. Every day he commutes across town from his home in the south of Beijing to the massage clinic in the east where he works.

But today he notices something different about his journey: the roads are much less congested than usual but the bus he is on seems a lot more crowded. Today is the first day of Beijing’s traffic control strategy, aimed at reducing pollution and improving traffic flow during these two Olympic months.

Xiao Wang’s workplace is in the heart of Beijing’s business district and he is expecting the Games to bring him new foreign customers. To meet this demand, Xiao Wang and his fellow blind masseurs have been busy learning English.

For ordinary Beijingers, going for a massage at one of the city’s “blind massage parlours” is one of the few opportunities they have to meet disabled people face-to-face.

And the government has recently put a lot of effort into creating jobs for disabled people – a fact it readily advertises.

Yet social attitudes are still, at best, patronising and over-protective and there is little real under­standing of social equality and the needs of disabled people.

One example of good intentions gone awry is Beijing’s new accessible bus route with low-step buses for wheelchair access. Unfortunately, neither the public nor disabled people themselves were familiar with the idea of universal access and so the scheme was abandoned days after it opened on the grounds of lack of demand.

Social attitudes and a lack of respect for the needs of disabled people are among the most worrying aspects of the Beijing Olympics.

Queuing for the bus causes Xiao Wang the greatest anxiety. He may be blind but he is young and feels awkward when he’s pushed to the front of the queue. Disabled or not, he believes he is a citizen like everyone else and shouldn’t be treated differently.

This is a matter of equality, which means accepting people’s differences. People should realise that whatever “psychological problems” we might have as disabled people, we are not – in this respect at least – much different from the rest of the population.

The constant emphasis on the “emotional sensitivities of the disabled” reinforces the idea of us as a species apart. All that prescriptive advice given to non-disabled volunteers in Chinese Paralympic training manuals augments the barriers between disabled people and the rest of society. Everyone should be treated with equal respect and an over­bearing, over-protective attitude is not usually very helpful.

Yet when it comes to the Olympics, most Chinese people are genuinely enthusiastic.

Our enthusiasm comes from our sense of hospitality, our love of big, noisy events and, perhaps, our deep-seated vanity.

The Olympics are greeted with opposition by very few people in China in the way they have been opposed in London and other cities around the world. Most people here can find their own reasons to support the Games. Whatever anxieties we might have about the inconvenience the Games are causing us, or the cost to the economy, our excitement just now seems to override all other considerations. This is as true for disabled people as for the rest of society.

Beijing is more developed and generally provides better disabled access than most other cities in China. Most residential districts now have wheelchair ramps, pavements have tactile paving for blind people and lifts and accessible toilets have been installed in many public places.

Wherever possible, international standards are applied – especially at Olympic venues.

But things aren’t yet perfect. The newly-opened Line Five underground, for example, still needs improvements to make it fully accessible to wheelchair-users. Access for disabled people is a slow process which involves more than just accessible hardware.

What is most needed is a change in mindset.

China is still a developing country and until recently its civil society has been very weak. Holding the Olympics – especially the Paralympics – here is helping to encourage the growth of civil society.

It is also raising public awareness of disability and inspiring improvements in our living environment.

The Paralympics will leave us with the hope – and the determination – that we can break down social barriers and create a more equal society in the future.

Will the Paralympics really be the sweet course of Beijing’s Olympic banquet? We are waiting with bated breath!

•Shi Guangyu (not his real name) is a disabled activist with a non-governmental organisation and lives in Beijing