The Olympic games are now done.
We, in the West, can sit comfortably pleased that this bastion of commercialism and democracy, the Olympics, was brought to China. However, the fact remains the Communist Party of China won the greatest medal over these two weeks.
These games had nothing whatsoever to do with bringing China into the new century or the global family. Anyone who thinks China’s push to claim the 2008 Games was a strategic gambit to enter the international family of nations is living in la-la land. These Olympics were all about inward-looking, not outward-looking strategies. China could care less what the West thought of the awe and spectacle. These games were all about wowing their own citizens. Nothing more.
The Communist Party of China succeed in pulling off a spectacular set of Games and have rekindled Chinese pride and proven to their populace just how important and needed the Party is to the nation.
And so, as the sun sets on these Games, the Party’s position and power is rekindled, enlivened and invigorated. The farce of One World One Dream must be viewed from the perspective of the Communist Party and indeed, their view of One World (a Chinese ruled one) One Dream (a communist state) has been strengthened.
Tomorrow, and in weeks and months to come, the Party will resume its pogroms to oppress Tibetan and other Chinese minorities, Chinese Christians and other faiths, the Falun Gong, free speech, free press (the list goes on and on)….
… and we all remain guilty accomplices for letting it happen.
AppsScraps 
Chinese nationalism, though, is a hot potato that the Communist party realizes can turn against them just as easily as it can support them. Will be interesting to see how things develop. You’ll be glad to know that Tawn and I, not having a TV, did not watch any of the games. While not an intentional protest, we did our part not to get swept up.
yeah, it kinda sucks. I was reading about the permit “protest parks” which never got any submitted permits approved. Even two old Chinese grandmothers who applied for a permit got slapped with a year in a “re-education” camp for trying to bring up their case of losing their homes to the government. I actually disagree in the idea that we (as in us as world citizens totally let it slide by). There were a lot of people who made efforts and attempts to bring up the issues and organize communities. I even did what I could with what limited resources or skills too help out with protests around burma. But despite calls to boycott the games, reflecting on such calls for action, I have to wonder what impact it does considering how regulated media coverage is in China. Even minimizing my own personal viewing of the Olympics as called for by Activists this year didn’t seem to make such impact in Beijing, and if it did. If it had an impact, it would have only affected NBC who profited from network coverage, not China Yes, it seemed more inward looking and not outward considering that most Chinese people likely never heard the outside press that was blocked from reaching their ears. If it did, media was not fully informative or spun in a way to turn social activists into the enemy. While activists may have succeeded in getting worldwide support and organizing massive global protests, in the end, the support they needed was from China’s own citizens. Most remain uninformed and ill-informed of various issues. The Beijing games is supposedly said to be some of the most watched games so despite the calls to boycott or tell people not to watch them, they still were the most watched. It’s not surprising as a majority of the people in the world are from China. It got me to wonder about what happened to all the Chinese protesters & their supporters from the 1980’s? Where did they go? Were they “re-educated” and taught not to get involved in protests? Perhaps the issue isn’t that we all let the Chinese government get away with abuses but rather, our efforts weren’t effective. Some of the best campaigns that were waged in the world took well-coordinated and effective efforts. It wasn’t about just the protesting but organizing the people, and not just any people, but the people that needed to be organized. In this formula, organizing Chinese people in China was minimal. An internal call from it’s own people would have been more effective rather than rallying calls from outside foreigners. Given the limited personal rights in China, I wonder how much that was possible though. Rather than focusing on protests in Beijing, I now think it would have been more effective to spread out the protests in other parts of China, after all, most of their resources were concentrated in Beijing Games so making protest there could only last at the very least only a few minutes or seconds. I’d imagine protests and efforts in other cities would have allowed for ample time for education as well as dialogue with the people. It would have provided more opportunities for organizing and of course make impact where it truly mattered-in changing the hearts on issues in the Chinese people. I guess this is just the strategist in me writing this entry = p
I do think the Olympics did distract the world from the problems China faces or should I say the people face. The show great and after every great show comes the cleanup and return to the everyday problems.