Why is hong kong in the olympics

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Team or Enterprise Premium FT. He went home, and a few days later, was arrested , under a law introduced last year that criminalises insulting the Chinese flag or national anthem.

Other controversies surfaced during the Tokyo Games. Badminton player Angus Ng Ka-long, a great medal hope, kicked off a political firestorm simply for wearing a plain black shirt. Ng, a normally reserved and media-shy athlete, immediately clarified that it was not a political statement. He had recently left his sponsor, he said, so had used his own shirt, and had chosen it only because it was comfortable. But on the other hand, to strip Hong Kong of its team when its uniqueness is already under attack would be another morale-bashing blow to its identity.

Crowds have also sent that message by gathering in Hong Kong shopping malls to cheer on their medal winners. Malls were places of protest in Although Hong Kong is unusual in the Olympic movement, it is not alone in being both separate but not entirely so.

Should athletes from the Pacific Island of Guam or the U. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean triumph in Tokyo, the anthem their Olympic champions would hear would be the U. American Samoa and Puerto Rico also have their own teams. But for how long? That was why even after Hong Kong made its debut in the Helsinki Games — the first to allow colonies to compete — some of the record-setting athletes chose to represent China — to bring glory to the motherland.

In a city without any professional leagues, the return to Chinese sovereignty has proved positive for sport, bringing in an influx of immigrant career athletes from the mainland. By in Athens, two mainland-trained ping-pong players clinched silver for Hong Kong in the doubles table tennis.

Over the past few years, so many sports fans took to booing the anthem to give voice to their dissent that legislation was enacted last year to criminalise any disrespect of the Chinese anthem. Still, that did not stop some fans from jeering when the anthem played during the ceremony where Hong Kong fencer Edgar Cheung was bestowed the gold medal.