The 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony: visual insights into China's soft power

Abstract

As sports media events, and especially Olympic Games, can be considered a public relations instrument, the 2008 Beijing Olympics allowed China to showcase its rapid economic development to the rest of the world and win respect and favour internationally. This paper explores how China used the Olympic Games as a soft power and international communication strategy by analysing particular moments and images of the 2008 opening ceremony. The ritual of the opening ceremony represents a concentration of features, qualities and messages that combine the local and global, the culturally specific and universal, in a complex production. For the purpose of our analysis, we adopted a thematic approach and focused on the images related to messages such as ‘harmony and peace’, ‘unity’ and ‘power and innovation’. These themes are mainly related to the revival of Chinese traditional cultural values based on Confucianism whose central element is the value of harmony.