Dimsum has recently been disappointed by the amount of negative attitudes that the Olympics has generated in mainstream press and news. All over Europe, negative reporting has been rife but today this culminated in overt racism by the Spanish.

The Spanish Olympic basketball team recently posed as a team for an advert in a national Spanish newspaper. Both the men's and women's team were seen to be making "slit-eyed gestures" that no one, not the team members, the advertisers, or the newspapers in which the image was published thought would be considered offensive. For a country that hopes to host one of the next Olympics opinions range from seeing it as a considerable oversight, to simply shameful and ignorant racism.

The Spanish have been seriously warned over international racist issues in sports; most recently both football and Formula 1 but clearly such responses have had no impact on what is considered socially and politically acceptable. The Guardian may call it a "faux-pas" but for many Chinese this behaviour is more akin to the use of the dreaded 'N' word that The Guardian's left wing readers are so ready to shy from.

Reporting in the UK media about China and the Olympics has also been beset with negative stereotypes and gross hypocrisy. China the polluter, China the human rights neglecter, China the exploiter of Africa are just some of the few accusations that have been thrown at it. But fingers are pointing in order to deflect from realities at home. For a nation that is so fond of looking to the past for her greatness, reporting in the UK seems to have missed several vital things.

China is now the world's biggest polluter but is also the world's biggest recycler, whilst the UK has had over two hundred years of industrialisation, and significantly contributed to the environmental problems we have today. In fact if the developed world had the same pollution per capita as China then the environment wouldn't even be an issue in world politics.

If everyone had the same pollution per capita as the USA we would need several other worlds just to provide adequate resources.

As for human rights, the UK's track record is not so clean. In addition to sending its people to Guantanamo and other secret US camps, the UK has been complicit in recent atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has a rich history as a warring nation. In addition, today the UK is the biggest arms dealer in the world, selling landmines, bombs, guns and other weapons to the fighting countries that we see from the comfort of our televisions.

The Chinese may well be investing in African and building relations for its assets, but the British seem to have also forgotten the British Empire, in which many countries in Africa were raped for their people as slaves and their assets for British consumption. Instead of taking as the British did, China is currently working with African communities to build infrastructures for societies that continue to have problems as a result of the actions of the Empire decades previously.

The accusations and finger pointing continues daily against China, and range from accusations of swapping children singers, to a potential war through the use of (US invented) technology to disperse rain clouds. More insidious has been the visual links, with images of the opening of the Olympics coupled with imagery of tanks that clearly relates to the indelible imagery of the Tiananmen protests.

Paranoia may be one of the accusations thrown at this article, but Chinese and English friends have noticed an increase in such reporting and are dismayed by the uniform manner, both in tabloid and broadsheets left and right that this has continued. Is it really necessary to continue this barrage of complaints? What motivates such criticism - is it the lack of control, political direction from the US, spite or just plain old sour grapes?

Despite such attitudes, the Olympic Games may yet serve to break negative stereotypes of Chinese people. China has led the medals table from the first day of the Olympics, and this looks set to continue. In a move only paralleled by their rapid industrialization and ascension to power as the world economy, China has catapulted into one of the worlds greatest sporting nations. As an event, the spectacular opening, buildings, and medals, will be a hard act for Britain to follow in 2012, and signifies the pinnacle of Chinese achievement in the last twenty years.

The patriotism of the Chinese people in China and around the diaspora has not succumbed to such negative accusations, and in fact has only grown stronger. Whilst no country is perfect, China and her people at home and abroad should be very proud of the collective willpower to achieve such great success in all areas. As British, we should be generous in our congratulations of China's spectacular ascension and look forward to her dynamism and energy for change in the future.