Furthermore, Ren (2002:12) believes that these characteris-tics could complement and extend the Western conception of Olympism in four areas:
•
Emphasizing mental and moral aspects as being at least as important as physical strength, thus strengthening the Olympic ideal•
Emphasizing internal body training may counterbalance the external body training stressed in Western sport•
Emphasizing the process as well as the outcome of sport may result in a healthier attitude to winning and losing•
Emphasizing harmonious relationships with the natural world may encourage host cities to be more environmentally and ecologically awareHowever, while there may be a focus on Chinese culture and what it may bring to the Olympic Games, there is also an eco-nomic imperative to the ‘human’ goals for the Beijing Games. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) suggests that the Games offer opportunities to ‘improve your health through sports and better your soul through culture’
(BOCOG, 2003). However, they also emphasize the potential to
‘invigorate the economy with the Olympics and enrich the capi-tal with civilization’ thus building Beijing into ‘a modern global city with concentrated cultural talents, complete cultural facili-ties, developed cultural markets advanced cultural industries and rich cultural styles’ (BOCOG, 2003). Thus, Wei and Yu (2006:392) describe the ‘human’ goals for the Games as to ‘present to the world a new image of Beijing as an emerging global city, with prosperity, advanced civilization, and highly motivated citizens’.
Such goals are clearly related to the economic development strate-gies described above. Enhancing the image of Beijing as a wel-coming place to live, work and visit is a key aspect of the state strategy for the 2008 Games. However, to be successful in this respect, the city must explore ways in which the perceived ‘cul-tural distance’ (Hofstede, 1980) between Beijing and many other regions of the world can be overcome.
people from different nations: power distance, uncertainty avoid-ance, individualism/collectivism and masculinity/femininity.
Hofstede (1980) claimed that such differences could influence the likelihood of business links developing between companies and corporations in different countries and/or could influence the success of such links. In later work, Hofstede (2001) added a fifth dimension: long-term/short-term orientation. More recently, studies have applied these concepts to tourism (e.g., Chen, 2000;
Crotts and Litvin, 2003; Pizam and Jeong, 1996), with Crotts (2004) finding support for the proposition that travel and travel behaviour will be affected if tourists are travelling, or consid-ering travelling, to countries that they perceive contrast greatly with their own cultural norms (i.e., where there is greater cultural distance). The concept of cultural distance clearly resonates with the discussions of Leiper’s (1979) model of the tourism system in the second half of Chapter 3. Leiper’s model examines ‘travel propensities’, a macro-concept relating to the propensity of the population of a ‘tourist generating region’ to travel to a ‘tourist destination region’ (Boniface and Cooper, 2001:13). The travel propensity of a tourist generating region is influenced by local contextual and personal factors and, significantly in this case, also by contextual, personal and supply factors local to the tourist destination region. In particular, populations in tourist generat-ing regions will be influenced by perceptions, often generated by a global media, of tourist destination regions that may either positively or negatively affect their propensities to travel. The multiple influences on travel propensities appear similar to the four main elements of culture, identified by Ng, Lee and Soutar (2007) that were likely to contribute to perceptions of cultural distance and thus affect travel behaviour. These influences (Ng, Lee and Soutar, 2007:2) were:
1. The tourist’s national culture
2. The tourist’s individual (internalized) culture 3. The destination’s culture
4. The ‘distance’ between a tourist’s home culture and a destina-tion’s culture
As noted earlier, Beijing, both historically and contemporarily, has had its development shaped by a municipal and central gov-ernment that has evolved from ‘state socialism’ to an emphasis on a ‘socialist market economy’. Undoubtedly, despite reforms, Beijing remains a society strikingly at odds with Western liberal-ism (Wei and Yu, 2006). In this respect, Hill and Kim (2000:2188)
point out that ‘emerging global cities’ such as Beijing are differ-ent from global cities such as New York and London because of the state function:
The economic base, spatial organisation and social structure of the world’s major cities are strongly influ-enced by the national development model and regional context in which each city is embedded.
Consequently, this engenders ‘cultural distance’ from the West-ern societies with which the state govWest-ernment wishes to promote trade, business and tourism links. In the latter respect, Wei and Yu (2006:383) note that the number of foreign tourists to Beijing tripled between 1990 and 2002. However, the 3 million foreign visitors to Beijing in 2002 still falls short of the 12 million visitors to London (ONS, 2003) or the 6 million to New York (NYCvisit, 2007) in the same year (particularly as Beijing is approximately twice the population size of both London and New York), and suggests that travel propensity may be affected by the perception of cultural distance.
ITIM International (see www.itim.org) have attempted to quantify Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) five cultural dimensions (see Table 9.1 for a description of each of these dimensions) for indi-vidual countries, and this allows a comparison between countries and regions. For the purposes of this chapter, therefore, it is useful to examine the differences on each of these dimensions between China and the key markets for both trade and potential Olympic tourism. Consequently, Table 9.2 and Figure 9.1 com-pares the scores on each of the five cultural dimensions for China with the averages for Europe, North America and Australasia, as well as the world averages.
Table 9.2 and Figure 9.1 show that on all dimensions except masculinity/femininity there are significant differences between China and the key tourism generating regions of Europe, North America and Australasia, and the world average. As such, there is considerable evidence for the assumption that there is clear cultural distance between China (and by extension Beijing) and the key markets for trade and tourism that are the targets of the Chinese state and the Beijing municipal government. Crotts (2004) suggests that a key aspect of cultural distance is unfa-miliarity, which leads to a feeling of uncomfortableness with that with which people do not know. Re-inforcing this is some evidence that populations in countries that score high on indi-vidualism (which includes most of the key Olympic tourism generating regions) tend to choose similar destinations (Jackson, 2001). As such, an important role for the Beijing Olympics of 2008
Table 9.1
Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) cultural dimensions
Power Distance Index (PDI) that is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society’s level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that ‘all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others’.
Individualism (IDV) on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, that is the degree to which individuals are inter-grated into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The word ‘collectivism’ in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group, not to the state. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world.
Masculinity (MAS) versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of solutions are found. The IBM studies revealed that (a) women’s values differ less among societies than men’s values; (b) men’s values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women’s values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women’s values on the other. The assertive pole has been called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole ‘feminine’. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men’s values and women’s values.
Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) deals with a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it ultimately refers to man’s search for Truth. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.
Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; ‘there can only be one Truth and we have it’. People in uncertainty avoiding countries are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervous energy. The opposite type, uncertainty accepting cultures, are more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to; they try to have as few rules as possible, and on the philosophical and religious level they are relativist and allow many currents to flow side by side. People within these cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and not expected by their environment to express emotions.
Long-Term Orientation (LTO) versus short-term orientation: this fifth dimension was found in a study among students in 23 countries around the world, using a questionnaire designed by Chinese scholars. It can be said to deal with Virtue regardless of Truth. Values associated with Long-Term Orientation are thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one’s ‘face’.
Both the positively and the negatively rated values of this dimension are found in the teachings of Confucius, the most influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 500 bc;
however, the dimension also applies to countries without a Confucian heritage.
Table 9.2
Comparison of cultural dimension scores
PDI IDV MAS UAI LTO
WORLD 55 43 50 64 45
Europe 44 60 57 74 N/A
North America 40 85 57 47 26
Australasia 36 90 61 51 31
CHINA 80 20 66 30 118
Sources: Hofstede, 1980, 2001.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
PDI IDV MAS UAI LTO
WORLD Europe North America Australasia CHINA
Figure 9.1
Illustration of cultural dimension scores.
Sources:Hofstede, 1980, 2001.
is to reduce the perception that cultural distance is a barrier to tourism (and, indeed, to trade) in key markets around the world by increasing the familiarity of these markets with the city, the country and its culture.