China
I don’t know that I can even come close to providing the quality overview of the discussion that Rindy provided. The China discussion came second and everyone was pretty into the whiskey at this point and the conversation became a bit more free-wheeling.
What I wanted to get was a sense of what people expected/hoped for from the upcoming games. What I was hoping for was that the games would be a success but that China would be embarrassed at least a couple of times, hopefully on Tibet and the environment. I just wanted to see one group drop a FREE TIBET poster outside one of the stadiums before an event, not have some fanatic disrupt the opening ceremony at the Bird’s Nest; I wanted to see just one marathon runner from an inconsequential country, like Turkmenistan, keel over during a race, not die just fall over in front of a gang of press photographers, chocking on Beijing’s noxious smog.
Didn’t happen. The games went extremely well for China with no big PR snafus and the Chinese coming away with more medals than anyone. It’s probably a good thing too–the Chinese, in particular the youth, are so nationalistic these days that if anyone messed with their Olympic experience they would have completely freaked out. Maybe they will now start to truly get over their past grievances about colonialism and national humiliation. But then again, Red Sox fans have not stopped being whiny bitter donkeys even after they stopped losing and complaining about Babe Ruth. Sometimes groups just don’t want to give up being the underdog.
What was amazing was that even though the games were successful and the country is doing a great job of developing its soft power, it still remains paranoid and rigidly authoritarian. It was really outrageous that the Chinese government encouraged people to apply for the right to protest in designated areas and then arrested those who tried to, simply setting a trap for those brave enough to want to vent genuine grievances. Even Septuagenarian women were deemed a threat by the Chinese government.