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 This coming Sunday will see the start of the 13th summer Paralympics in Beijing so soon after China impressed the world with their hosting of the Olympic Games. However this time they face another, more internal challenge, the attitudes towards disabled people in China.
For anyone who has visited China, the lack of provision for disabled people may be shocking. Despite there being 83 million disabled people their needs are largely ignored.
Discrimination against disabled people is widespread and can be seen as shameful for the family, especially in urban areas. This is why many organisations that care for the wellbeing of disabled people in China are seeing the arrival of 4,200 paralympians as very important to help change attitudes.They hope it will be the catalyst for change in the country, leading to better understanding and opportunities for disabled people.
Pessimists however draw a parallel with Chinese human rights issues and the Olympics games. Protests failed to make any difference to the many that suffer fron such abuses in China. On the other hand residents have taken to the streets of Beijing recently to try to get the government to maintain the restrictions that has seen Beijing’s air quality soar. It is changes to attitudes like this that gives hope to disabled people in China.
Such prejudice is believed to have originated from the communist regime under Mao Zedong. The image that the average Chinese person was told to aspire to was one of a strong, healthy worker. Disabled people did not fit into this mould and were shunned by society. They were not allowed to marry and sterilisation of disabled people was the norm. It still exists in lesser forms today, college applicants are forced to pass a medical before they can enrol, but disabled people can’t do this exam. This is a legacy that China should not want to continue.
Yet negative attitudes were still evident up to this May when an official guide for Olympic volunteers described disabled people as “stubborn and controlling” and “unsocial and introspective”. This was later contributed to a translation error by the government but the Chinese version is said to be along similar lines.
So now there is a concerted effort by the government to reduce discrimination against disabled people in order for them to avoid embarrassment over the next few weeks. This is no mean task however as this would require with much of the population to change their fundamental thinking.
When I was in China this year I worked at school for mentally disabled children run on a voluntary basis. Many foreigners are shocked by the general attitude towards the children we were looking after. Most people stared and pointed, whereas some laughed at them. Still this wasn’t the most disappointing aspect of working there - it was the fact the government didn’t put a single Yuan towards the school.
Only now, because of the potential embarrassment the Party faces in the coming weeks, are they are taking the problem seriously. They are working on even the most basic forms of discrimination, trying to change the vocabulary the general population uses. More often that not disabled people are referred to as “useless cripple” but the CCP is trying now to promote the description “disabled person” instead.
Nevertheless some are determined to see that the positive effects of the Paralympics will continue into the future. One of those people is Deng PuFang president of the China Disabled Persons Federation. He is the son of one of China’s most famous leaders, Deng Xiaoping the man who began China’s opening up to the world. Deng Pufang was paralysed during the Cultural Revolution as he was thrown out of a window in this dark period of Chinese history. He believes that a successful Paralympic games would boost China’s disabled people and it would be difficult to argue with that.
China have 332 athletes for these Paralympics and will hope to repeat there performance in Athens, where they topped the medals table, on home turf. All involved will hope that this will show the rest of China that disabled people are a valid and strong part of society.
Andrew Mellor |
Life in China 
