Actually a less tedious read than I would have expected. While reflecting on changes in the world since 911, he underscores a point I’ve believed in for a long time: no matter how atrocious the CCP is – and I find them more atrocious now than ever, or at least since the Gang of Four were put down – and no matter how strong America is despite nearly 8 years of slow bleeding under Bush, there’s little doubt that China is rising as America sinks. Now, that may not be forever; Friedman thinks we now have a window to turn that around, and I sure hope he’s right. But the facts speak for themselves, and Friedman lays them out adequately.

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves.

I realize the differences: We were attacked on 9/11; they were not. We have real enemies; theirs are small and mostly domestic. We had to respond to 9/11 at least by eliminating the Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan and investing in tighter homeland security. They could avoid foreign entanglements. Trying to build democracy in Iraq, though, which I supported, was a war of choice and is unlikely to ever produce anything equal to its huge price tag.

But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.

Yes, I know – the Olympic Green is not China. For all the progress, many are more impoverished than ever. But the progress is nevertheless undeniable, and no one looking at China without Cold War-tinted spectacles can see that China is increasingly a power to be reckoned with as US influence wanes. (Whether this progress is sustainable is a whole different conversation. Still, it has proceeded uninterrupted for decades, something of a miracle in itself.)

In this respect, Mr. Hu, whom I both detest for his stranglehold on power and grudgingly and cautiously admire for his pragmatic ability to broker deals and get things done, has overshadowed Bush (not that that’s so hard to do) and turned traditional views on the balance of power on their head. No small achievement, so credit where due. A pity that a man who can reshape the political universe and move mountains can do nothing to restrain his corrupt officials from terrorizing their citizens and living in obscene and conspicuous wealth off the fat of the land.

And no, that is not “anti-China”; it is anti the plundering and brutalization and exploitation of Chinese people who deserve far better. More on that later when I review Philip Pan’s marvelous new book.

A commenter in the thread below points to an article in the Syndey Morning Herald about how the Sydney Symphony mimed its way through the Opening Ceremony performance for the 2000 Games in their home city. And it’s more than just synching/miming:

Even worse, it admits the backing tape was recorded, in part, by its southern rival, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

So the parallel with the China crooked teeth controversy intensifies. Not just faking it, but taking credit for what was the work of another.

I haven’t said much about this because of mixed feelings. I don’t like the practice of lip-synching because it’s deceptive – no matter how you parse it, you are fooling the viewers. So I understand the critics of Pavarotti and countless caught-lip-synching pop stars who felt they didn’t get what they paid for. At least what they heard was the artist him/herself, even if it was canned and piped in – if that’s any consolation.

It goes to a whole different level when you’re lip-synching and pretending to be the performer when you’re actually not. It’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t ruin the Opening Ceremonies of Sydney or Beijing. It just doesn’t look good, even when they have excellent excuses. It looks even worse when it appears the main factor influencing the decision is the real singer’s teeth. In Sydney, the excuse was lack of time to make a backup tape (or something like that). Whatever. It still looks deceptive, and certainly blows a big hole in the argument that “only China” would go to such lengths to cover up reality in the name of putting on a good show.

Let’s focus more on things that really matter instead of trying to make China look bad for what was a spectacular Opening Ceremony and a very well-hosted Games. There are plenty of other things to criticize China for.

Note: This is a blog post I wrote for another site, cross-posted here. I’ll share the link where it’s cross-posted once I know it myself. I wrote it yesterday afternoon as the rain was clearing up.

The crowds in the Main Press Center have started thinning and there seems to be a general sense of winding down. In just three days they’ll lock down the Olympic Green, which won’t open again until September when the Paralympic Games begin.

One thing I’ve learned about doing Olympic PR is just how top-loaded the 17-day event is. That is to say, there’s an unbelievable amount of effort expended in the days leading up to the Opening Ceremony and the week following. And then, the balloon rapidly deflates. You’ve prepared your materials, held your most important press conferences, run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to coordinate a seemingly endless stream of interviews with the very highest executives and then…. I don’t want to say it dies, but it sure slows down and gets easier.

I’m on the Olympic Green now and it’s packed. Visitors are lined up at the partner pavilions in spite of the on-again-off-again rain, gray skies and a sudden drop in temperature. BOCOG finally opened up the Green a few days ago after restricting access to non-ticket holders. Last week a number of sponsors were wringing their hands. They’d spent millions of marketing dollars building elaborate pavilions, and for the first few days after the Opening Ceremony the Olympic Green was practically a ghost town. The sight of televised events in stadiums that were clearly full of empty seats added to a sense of gloom among some sponsors and of mystification among the media in town to cover the Games. Every seat was supposed to be sold out.

There’s a lot more people now and the stadiums seem fuller, perhaps in part because BOCOG came up with a creative solution to save face. In any case, things are looking pretty happy at the moment.

I think the lingering question in the weeks (years?) ahead will be whether China saw a good return on its investment of tens of billions of dollars in perhaps the most ambitious positioning/branding project of all time. It was always about PR, about China’s “coming out,” about presenting a new image of China to the world. Instead of a hopelessly polluted Beijing drowning in its own traffic, newcomers would see a manicured city with relatively clean air and fast-moving highways, cops on every corner, smiling volunteers who all speak English, even recycle bins (very conspicuous all over the Green) so people can carefully separate plastics and bio-degradables. Of course, every once in a while we got uncomfortable reminders that perhaps something less delightful lurked behind the carefully constructed montage of happiness and love, but compared to the glitz and the glamor and the gold these and other inconvenient truths received relatively short shrift.

From the spectacular Opening Ceremony to the efficient crowd management to the prettying up of the city, I’d give China very high marks indeed. At the same time, I’m sorry (though not surprised) they didn’t seize on this as an opportunity to show the world they had lightened up, that they could extend some magnanimity to protesters, give reporters truly free access to pursue their stories and open up their Internet 100 percent. Such simple gestures would tell the world that China is truly secure, that it truly believes in itself. When it make grandiose displays and then tries clumsily to stifle all criticism, it leaves itself open to charges of creating a Potemkin Village and raises questions of whether the smiles and air of celebration is real or mere window dressing, to be taken down shortly after the crowds go home. We’ll know soon enough. It’s easy enough to generate a big burst of publicity when you have unlimited resources to create The Greatest Show on Earth. The true PR value can only be measured when we see how sustainable the image of The New China proves to be.

FP has put together their list of the top-10 worst laws on the books in the PRC.  Making the cut were Article 105 of the Criminal Law Code (subversion) and the Law on the Supervision by Standing Committees of the People’s Congress at All Levels, Article 3 (upholding the leadership of the CCP).

The full list and commentary can be found here.  Tell us what you think: Fair or unfair? Which laws should be scrapped, amended, or updated? Did FP interpret the laws correctly? Any on the books that didn’t make this list?

Breaking: A right achilles injury has prematurely ended Liu Xiang’s Beijing Olympic dreams.

Update by Richard: It’s being broadcast live right now on CCTV – his coach Sun Haiping is crying his eyes out explaining his injury. Everyone in my office is huddled around the TV set watching, visibly depressed. All that time training for this, four years, gone.

Raj

The following article from the Globe and Mail gives an interesting point-of-view on the controversy over the age of some of China’s gold-medal winning women’s gymnastics team.

What is really creepy about what’s emerged from the reporting of the gymnastics controversy is how state-owned agencies have rewritten themselves online to “correct” the record – in other words, rewritten history and attempted to expunge any contrary evidence…

What the researchers also found was that in several instances, the stories which had reported the ‘wrong’ ages – either written before the girls in question made the Olympic team or before anyone realized age mattered so much, the numbers were simply mentions in results-driven stories about various competitions – have been corrected to reflect the ‘right’, or state-approved, ages.

It is unlikely that a smoking gun will be found to prove that one or more of the Chinese girls was under-age, even if there is a lot of circumstantial evidence. The international gymnastics body certainly doesn’t seem to care, given it didn’t even query China’s story, which probably shows the depth of its “commitment” to stop young girls being exploited (one should note that there is no requirement on daily calorie consumption as the G & M observes).

So it makes the reaction of the Chinese authorities idiotic for two reasons – one as it only gives further fuel to those who doubt the official line and two because it demonstrates clearly to the outside world the Chinese State’s ability and willingness to manipulate the media. People only somewhat (or not at all) interested in China may have heard stories about censorship before, but with the attention this incident has caused around the world the subsequent “cover-up” has clearly shattered any possible reputation for media independence China has been trying to create (and will make it even more difficult to build any such status in the future).

The article finishes:

So, in the end, it’s not the Chinese gymnasts or how old they are that counts; it’s the Chinese censors propagandists and professional liars, and what they’re doing, that tells the tale.

One very said thing is that I doubt the Chinese authorities even realise the damage they were causing to how China is seen around the world.

It’s news to David Brooks. It’s okay for people to express their awe over things they experience for the first time, like Bush I and the bar code reader (a story that was much less newsworthy than made out to be). But Brooks seems to have literally no insight into what he’s writing about nor does he seem to have done any basic research. This piece has a”gee whiz” tone to it that I’d expect to read in a blog by someone visiting China for the first time, but not in a NYT column. At least he acknowledges that he’s completely ignorant.

Nevertheless, the story he tells and his interviews with Sichuan survivors are poignant, and I do tend to agree with his last sentence. The takeaway for me, aside from confirmation of my belief that Brooks should be demoted to beat reporter, is that even the Chinese who are vulnerable, even those with nothing, still look to the government with trusting eyes, knowing that their rulers are doing the right thing, wiling to sacrifice just about everything for what’s perceived as the common good. Thus, no bitterness over the lavish spending on Olympic pyrotechnics as they pick through the rubble of their demolished homes. These people see themselves as cogs in the vast machinery that keeps China functional. Lei Feng would be proud

Raj

Some interesting comments over the “crooked teeth” incident are available from or through ESWN. Roland himself seems to somewhat annoyed at the foreign media for some of their comments, claiming that they invented the term “crooked teeth” themselves.

But today, the world knows Yang as having “chubby/fat face” and “crooked/uneven/buck teeth” and Lin as having no singing talents. Well, who needs Politburo members when we have western media showering such ‘tender loving care’ on Chinese children?

I think that Roland is being somewhat petulant, given that most people think that Yang was cute enough to be at the opening ceremony and there is no noticeable ill-will towards Lin. Furthermore, he rather misses the point (or chooses to ignore it) over why this has been reported so widely. It isn’t so much because of what may have been said about her, more the fact that Yang was made to dub for a “more” photogenic girl. Whether the director said that she was less attractive or the other girl was more attractive, it is clear that a decision was taking over presentation. And presentation is a key party of the “story” of Beijing 2008. It’s why parts of the city have been demolished to “tidy” it up and domestic and foreign protesters have been blocked from holding demonstrations anywhere, let alone in a place where Chinese people can easily see them.

The “Fool’s Mountain” blog writes:

Lin Miaoke had no idea that the sound was being substituted and went onto the stage to perform in front an audience of billions flawlessly. Her composure under the pressure was something most grown-up could only dream of. She is the real deal!

First of all, if I was supposed to be singing something at an event and I then heard another guy’s voice come on the loud-speakers, I would either stop or look worried, ask the technicians what was happening, etc. Given that Lin didn’t seem to stop or falter it is quite possible that she had been told what would happen. But even if she was unaware or soldiered on, again most people are not angry at her for what happened. The general reaction was more one of surprise, and any ill-will was directed towards the organisers.

A comment from “Si Dai”, linked by Roland, was quite curious:

As for “fake singing” and “lip-synching,” they are better known as “dubbing” and “body doubles” in the terminology of movies…. Without the dubbing, those movie stars with pretty faces but are tone-deaf would have been embarrassed out of their careers.

Dubbing in movies has often been controversial, no less than Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, where fans who listened to recordings of her singing said it was actually quite good and that it was completely unnecessary to have Julie Andrews Marni Nixon dub her. But more importantly, this was not a movie and there was no need for Lin to be on the stage – no one knew who she was, so it wouldn’t have made a difference whether it was her or Peng in front of the cameras. The film comparisons are irrelevant because no one is objecting to dubbing in principle – it’s that it was used in this case.

As an example, for the 2012 Olympics, I doubt that any of the London organisers would have considered having one child sing and then another to act it out. The attitude would have been, “wow, a young singer – let’s listen to them and see if that’s what we need”. They would not have said “well, you’re a good singer, but so-and-so is more attractive than you so we’ll have them instead”. Maybe they would have been given some smart clothes, a nice haircut, or whatever.

A common complain from Chinese people, whether living in the PRC or outside of it, is that foreigners “do not understand China or Chinese people”. Yet with the sorts of reactions I have read on ESWN and through its links, I do not believe that these Chinese bloggers understand foreigners or their reactions here, because if they did they would understand why many people were so surprised by this. Or, in some cases, they may well be trying to deflect their strong embarrassment over what has happened by blaming foreigners instead.

As reported by Jon Watts and Tania Branigan in The Guardian:

Police in Beijing have detained a British journalist after he covered a Free Tibet protest close to the city’s main Olympic zone. John Ray of ITV News was pushed into a police van by officers and driven away from the scene.

Around a dozen activists from Students for a Free Tibet had gathered outside Ethnic Minorities Park. Police also forcibly removed the protesters after driving away the journalist.

Speaking by telephone from the back of the police van as he was driven away, Ray said: “I have been roughed up. They dragged me, pulled me and knocked me to the ground. Now they are filming me.”

He could then be heard asking the officers with him: “Why are you filming? I am a British journalist. I have all the Olympic accreditation I need.” Police officers could then be heard asking: “What’s your opinion on Tibet?” Ray replied: “I have no opinion on Tibet. I am a journalist.”

A police officer could then be heard telling him he was not allowed to use his telephone. The line went dead.

Police were also filming and taking pictures of other journalists at the scene.

UPDATE 9:19 p.m.

An official from the PSB claims John Ray was detained “by mistake” and that officers had thought Ray was a part of the protest and were unaware that he was an accredited journalist:

Ray, 44, said he was stopped by an officer and a small struggle ensued before things got more violent when more police arrived.

“They bundled me out of the park. They forced me to the floor, dragged me, manhandled me into a restaurant next door,” said Ray, who said he repeatedly told police he was a journalist but was not displaying his official Olympics media accreditation.

Later dragged to the back of a nearby van, a woman asked in English what his views were on Tibet and he repeated that he was a journalist, he said.

“Only at this stage am I able to reach in my pocket and show them my Olympic credential,” Ray said. “The van door opened and I just got out and walked.”

An official from the spokesman’s office of the Beijing Public Security Bureau said officers mistook him for an activist.

“At the time, he was among the protesters,” said the official, who gave only his surname, Zhang. “The police did not understand his identity. So they took him away to check his identity. After that, they let him go.”

No word on whether or not an official apology has been issued.

Unbelievable. But alas, all too believable.