China’s Lie Of The Ages

We’ve been eluding to the fact that we had uncovered more data regarding the ages of the gymnasts that represented China at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Deciding what to include here has continued to evolve over the last many hours. This story has legs and now has world wide attention. Many websites are covering it and are posting their finds. All too often, once their finds are posted to the internet, they are either modified or entirely removed from the internet. Fortunately many of us have captured print screens.

No one wants this story to be true I’m sure. I know I don’t. All of the gymnasts have worked very hard to accomplish what they have, to achieve the level of skill they have acquired.

Yet the fact remains that rules governing the Olympics applies to everyone and each is there for a reason. There is a minimum age requirement for gymnasts to compete in the Olympics of 16 years. This age requirement is in place to protect the athletes themselves.

Many have read (one of) China’s excuses regarding the age conflict being due to the difference surrounding how ages are calculated among cultures.

The culture within any given country does not determine the age of an athlete. Some cultures calculate age differently than others. However this does not apply to law, it does not apply to the Olympics. Everyone is on the same playing field. Could you imagine if culture did play a part in determining age or any rule for that matter in the Olympics, and were allowed to differ by country in the Olympics? In the United States itself we have every culture imaginable pretty much covered.

Although China’s reasoning has no basis in law nor the Olympics, what they are referring to is often not explained so we’ll try to touch on it here.

I first became aware of the fact ages may be calculated differently among cultures via an article put up here in January 2008. That article was titled “19 Questions To Be Answered From All Over The World“. Input was received from all over the world; it was very enlightening. We saw what the media, politics, and propaganda doesn’t show.

One of the questions was:

11. At what age is it considered “standard” for a child to begin school?

This question led to discovering that ages could be calculated differently, depending on where you lived.

We received input from Katm, a teacher in Korea, who shared with us:

“Public schools start at about 8 here (which is closer to 7 given the way Koreans seem to calculate ages). But kids will start at private math/English/art/ect schools even younger. Our youngest students are 5 (more like 4).”

I was surprised, as you can see by my reply:

KATM wow this is so insightful!
We have Malaysia, United States, Japan and South Korea and there are interesting differences that I hadn’t even expected. WOW.

What did you mean by “given the way Koreans seem to calculate ages” ? How do they calculate ages? I would have always assumed everyone would calculate a year a year. But not so? Can you explain?

Thanks!!!!

Sulz shared with us this is in Malaysia as well:

oh yeah, katm’s right. we do that here in malaysia too, how could i have missed that? probably because it’s only the older, more traditional generation who count age this way and not the younger, more westernised generation like me who wants to stay young. i mean, i don’t want to be 23 when i’m not quite 23 you know!

Dissfunktional:

Son of a gun. That’s how Asians “live so long”.

Heck, they are a year older than everybody else beginning the day they’re born!

When is the “New Year” you mention? I don’t want to assume it is January 1st as it is in the States. However for sake of current comment here’s an example of what else is on my mind due to what you just enlightened -

Let’s say the New Year is January 1st.

A baby born on December 31st is already one year old.
The very next day (January 1st) is the baby’s second birthday.

By 3 day’s old in United State’s terms, this same baby is 2 years old and one day in Asian terms.

Do I understand you correctly?? This has me gasping for air.

Sulz:

oh it’s chinese new year, february 7 this year. go to chinatown, it’ll be really festive!

no, it only works as +1. if you’re not quite one year old, you’re considered 1 year old. if you’re 2, you’re actually 3. you don’t literally follow the new year rule as such because the date for cny differs every year. the +1 rule works better.

Dissfunktional:

Sulz - The date of the New Year differs from year to year - there is not a fixed amount of days in one year?

Sulz :

i don’t know how they calculate when is the next cny, i think it’s based on the moon or something! the date is usually around late january to mid february. cny is celebrated for about 15 days. on the fifteenth day we celebrate chap goh mei, which is the chinese version of valentine’s. the tradition is for girls to throw mandarin oranges in the lake with their names & numbers on it.

That was an incredible thread. Comments are still open there; feel free to read through them and even participate if you’d like. Some even sent that article to their international friends so they could participate. That was the coolest post. We even heard from Columbia , cool as. Many countries left to hear from though.

China General Administration of Sport Secretary Liu Peng’s

November 2007 Speech

In Liu Peng’s China General Administration of Sport Secretary’s speech he made it clear that the State Sports General Administration is fully aware of what He Kexin’s true age is.

Frustrated with the constant changes being made to history with the ongoing scrubbing of the internet by Chinese officials, we’ve taken not only to snapshots of the screens while they are up on the monitor as others have, but now also saving the entire cache file as a document. We hope this makes it easier to view for our readers as well.

This speech was made on November 3, 2007. The image is the cache location where the speech was located. Clicking on the image below will take you to the complete speech. The speech is in .doc format.

China Government Domain Website

One of the other excuses being used by Chinese officials is that the girls ages were mixed up while being transferred among divisions. There’s no confusion. The dates of birth are quite clear. This is also a .doc file, translated from Chinese to English. Gymnastics is listed first:
Sport.Chengdu.Gov.CN website as it appeared on August 1st 2008

Regardless of the numerous excuses the Chinese officials continue to come up with, it remains that the age of these gymnasts such as He Kexin is below the allowed age of 16.

The travesty however is not only to the countries that competed against these girls. It is to the families of these Chinese gymnasts and the Chinese gymnasts themselves. 

Lao Xiang said that what he calls China’s “devil training” began back in 1963 or 1964.

These children are removed from their families, unable to see them. They are forced to lie and terrified to tell the truth. Their appendix is removed, their first periods are medically postponed.

China’s children.

More has been exposed by discovering the ages of these girls than what lies on the surface. China’s children.

What Chinese officials will do to their own citizens, their own children, just to win a gold medal.

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