Are You Ready for a China Century

The XXIX Olympiad as Road Map

The Beijing Summer Olympics Games 2008 has now come to an end - and end marked by a lower key fireworks display than those that opened the game and a handing of the torch to London for the 2012 games. At least, though, the fireworks that ended the games were real...we think.

How instructive was it that so much of the pageantry behind the games was just that - pageantry - a thin veneer covering a darker reality? A computer-aided fireworks display and a lip-synched Chinese National Anthem for the opening ceremony. How perfectly symbolic were these to kick off the games: the nation that invented fireworks, put on a display aided by technology and covered up the perceived imperfections of a 7-year old girl because she wasn't attractive enough. Add to this the possibility the Chinese government aided the Chinese Olympic Committee in putting under-aged gymnasts on their team and you have a pretty clear picture.

As part of the International Olympic Committee's approval for the Beijing games was the requirement there be protests allowed, and the Chinese government complied through providing an official protest area. There were 77 applications to protest received - a disproportionally small number to begin with, none of which were approved. There were also apparently 22 more inquiries. No wonder, then, that protesters took the show on the road and protested the torch relay. Curiously, 74% - or about 55 of the applications - were withdrawn because whatever the petitioner concerns were, they were "properly addressed by authorities." Yeah, things like labor abuses and government repression are usually just handed through having been addressed through proper channels. One Chinese pair - two women in their late 70's from the Chinese provinces - were sentenced to 2-years "re-education through labor" for having simply applied to protest.