Games spotlight China's disabled

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By Dinah Gardner in Beijing
There is little doubt that China put on a spectacular Olympic games. And, even though the bulk of the world's media packed up and went home when it was all over, the country has put its all into making the 11-day Paralympics just as impressive.

The opening ceremony was stunning; venues have been packed; records are being furiously broken; and China is still hogging the medals table. The motto for Beijing 2008, after all, has been 'Two Games, Equal Splendour'.

While some rights groups and many western media have used the event to criticize China on disabled rights, the country itself has been using the Paralympic stage to showcase just how much progress it has made in improving life for its 83 million disabled.

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In terms of Paralympians, no other country has come close.

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Fielding 332 athletes, a Paralympic record in its own right, China has dominated the medal tables whichever way you look at it - either in terms of golds or in terms of overall medals.

Second place Britain lags dozens of medals behind.

Such success is evidence that China invests a great deal of money into promoting and developing disabled sports.

Beijing is home to two state-of-the art disabled sports centres.

Many of the country’s paralympians have been working out at the China Disability Sports Training Centre in Shunyi in the east of the city, reportedly the world’s largest sports centre dedicated to the disabled.

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Two years ago, the capital also opened the Beijing Disabled Sports and Vocational Training Centre in Daxing in the south.

When a Canadian delegation for disabled athletes visited the Daxing centre earlier this month they were stunned. It rivalled the best that Canada had to offer, they said.

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Full-time training

It is the same nationwide determination to excel in international sports that propelled China’s Olympic athletes that has also boosted its Paralympic sports men and women.

"China's government-run sports system selects disabled athletes and trains them full-time compared with other countries where the athletes have other jobs and training is done in their spare time," explains an official from the Chinese Boccia team who did not wish to be named.

"The Chinese way is very systematic," she says. "Our best athletes are given intensive training to bring them up to international standards. So even though we often don't have enough money to buy the latest technology – such as motor-powered wheelchairs for example - our training is more intensive and so our athletes can excel."

She adds that Boccia players have been promised cash bonuses by their local government of up to 150,000 yuan each for athlete that reaches the finals.

Beijing, which has an estimated one million disabled people of its own, received a disabled-friendly facelift before the games.

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Most subway stations in the Chinese capital now come with chair lifts for wheelchair users, Beijing's new airport, which was only finished earlier this year, has a swathe of ramps, and a handful of taxis and some buses are now wheelchair accessible.

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Even the Forbidden City was upgraded with ramps and lifts this year.

However these improvements in infrastructure are limited in scope. Wealthy cities like Beijing can afford to make these cosmetic changes, especially ahead of a major international event for the disabled such as the Paralympics.

But most of the country, including the poverty-stricken countryside - where around three quarters of China’s disabled live – have neither the funds nor the political impetus to improve facilities.

That does not mean though that the general situation, including popular attitudes towards the disabled and access to education, has not changed for the better.

The Paralympic glitz may be confined to Beijing, but life for the disabled has been steadily improving over the past three decades, say disabled groups inside and outside the country.

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Thanks to China's economic development, civil society – there are 38,000 grassroots groups working for the disabled in the country – and legislative advances, there have been "remarkable" improvements in the living conditions and overall social status of the disabled have been made over the past few decades, a report by the International Disability Rights Monitor found.

China publishes Braille magazines, the majority of television programs are subtitled, and there are several media dedicated to the disabled including a radio station for the blind in Beijing.

Local groups, even those which sometimes have a shaky relationship with authority, agree.

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Changing attitudes

"Since reform and opening – 30 years ago – all of China's disabled people have experienced great improvements in how society treats them," Meng Weina, founder of Hui Ling, an NGO that helps the mentally disabled, told Al Jazeera.

"The best example is in how the term to describe disabled people has changed," she explains.

"About 30 years ago they were called 'canfei' [useless and disabled]. That became an offensive term and people now commonly call them 'canji' [literally disabled]. Most recently, a few people are starting to use the term 'canzhang' [handicapped], which stresses the obstacle of a disability rather than describing it as an illness."

One of the country's biggest champions for disabled rights is Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping, China's former paramount leader.

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The younger Deng, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a mysterious fall from a window during the Cultural Revolution, is the president of the China Disabled Persons' Federation.

He is credited with being the driving force behind improving life for China's disabled and, in the late 1980s, helped establish the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (CDPPAT) – a body that has evolved from a ragtag group of artists into a slick professional team that has played in venues from New York's Carnegie Hall to Milan's La Scala.

"Ten years ago our art troupe was not very mature and now look at us," a top media official for the CDPPAT, who declined to give her name, told Al Jazeera.

"We are now a very professional organisation and so from our own development you can see how things are changing for the better for disabled people in China."