Were the 2008 Beijing Olympics a "victory for China," as the headline on this front-page Washington Post story claims? That probably depends on, um, what the definition of "victory" is. China won more gold medals than any other country. The games demonstrated China's new economic power and ability to coordinate not one but two gigantic propaganda displays. But China did nothing to allay the concerns of Americans, and some American policymakers, about its "peaceful rise." Here's John F. Burns:
In weighing my own wonderment at all this, and what it has conveyed of the power and confidence of the new China, I've reproached myself often enough for credulity. In truth, some of the worst instincts of the old China have poked through the dazzle, most egregiously in the substitution of the pretty little girl in a red dress, and a voice-over, for the 7-year-old whose voice, but not her uneven teeth, met the Politburo's standards. Then there was the female dancer paralyzed in a fall during rehearsals for the opening ceremony, whose tragedy was suppressed lest it, too, spoil the harmony of the opening night.
Burns also calls attention to
the dark underside of Chinese life that has changed little since Mao - the suppression of minority rights in Tibet and Xinjiang; the archipelago of labor camps, with perhaps two million prisoners; and other outrages, like the unspeakable trade in human organs that, at least in some cases, are suspected of having been taken from executed prisoners. Little of this has featured, at least with much prominence, in Western coverage of the Games. Just as the Chinese leaders gambled, the 20,000 journalists accredited to the Games have marched onto the front pages of the world's newspapers and into the television newscasts with stories of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt and other astonishing athletes.
It's a credit to Burns's news organization that it covered China's treatment of those Chinese brave enough to apply for applications to protest at the Olympics. (The government detained them.) The games are over, and the show moves on to London in 2012. But the questions surrounding Beijing's ability to peacefully and responsibly join the liberal international order will endure for a long time to come.