The Portrait of an "Olympic Host" : A Closer Examination Under the hood of an "Olympic Host" -- Beneath Olympic glitter, a 20th-century mindset

-- Micky's HO: To say that China's mindset remains at 20th century might be an underserving flattering, as a matter of fact, many Chinese, especially those among the ruling party, obstinately dreaming
about reviving the "ancent glory" of the Chinese Empire 2000 years ago, the appearance of those clay solders from the Qin-tomb at the Olympic opening ceremony shall be the true reflaction of China's
mindset in the 21st Century. --

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Security forces at a ceremony outside the National Stadium in Beijing. (Darren Whiteside/Reuters)

LETTER FROM CHINA

Beneath Olympic glitter, a 20th-century mindset

By Howard W. French
Published: July 24, 2008

SHANGHAI: The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing in a few days will turn Shakespeare
on his head. Suddenly from the whole world being a stage, China will own the entire stage - and the
whole world will be its rapt audience.

Such a big moment and grand opportunity is exactly what China has labored toward for so many years:
More than a chance to tweak its "brand," from the inception this occasion has been seen as a chance
to make a gigantic statement to the Chinese people and to the world that says, "Behold, for we have
arrived."

Modern Olympic Games have long been about making statements, and, more indirectly, they have always
said interesting things about the hosts' self-regard. In this case, few will escape the impression
of an overweening monumentalism in the way that China's grand old imperial capital has been rebuilt
for the occasion, with huge sums lavished on buildings that have been clearly designed with awe in mind.

Monuments, though, function on several levels, one of which is to ask questions. And the bigger the
plinth or pyramid, the bigger and the more irresistible the urge toward puzzlement.

As the authorities here would have it, the Beijing festivities are a celebration of an unprecedented
success story: the resurrection of the world's largest country and one of its older cultures, and
the placement of China on a breathtakingly fast track of wealth accumulation and economic
advancement - all of this, of course, under the leadership of the Communist Party.

That's plenty to chew on, and it doesn't hurt that, as far as it goes, this story line mostly
conforms to reality. Things don't really become interesting, though, until one starts thinking in
terms of what's worked well and what hasn't in China, and asking why.

For all of the rumble and vroom of the Chinese economy and all of the glitter mustered on behalf of
the Games, people who think with care will be hit with the unmistakable impression that China is
fundamentally a rather old-fashioned place, fast pushing forward by most of the standard yardsticks
used to measure global powers and yet, paradoxically, still far from any cutting edge. One might
even argue that the country remains woefully behind in terms of addressing its people's real needs.

What, you ask? This is a country that has just built the world's biggest airport in record time; a
place laying down new roads and highways at a pace matched by the speed with which it is throwing up
skyscrapers. And by the way, just this week, didn't a new poll by Pew find that the people, or at
least urban residents, are overwhelmingly happy with the direction of their country?

This is all true, and indeed even impressive, but this frantic activity merely raises a bigger
question - and it's one in which the Chinese people have not been invited to participate: What's it
all about?

Six decades ago, with Mao's Marxist revolution, China set out to create a New Man who would thrive
in a country where class distinctions had been eliminated. The dictatorship of the proletariat by a
vanguard party, applying arcane but scientifically sound dialectical reasoning, would ensure that
the country remained on a path of progress and triumphed over its capitalist rivals.

Marxism is above all a materialist ideology, and as the faith in this creed has all but vanished
from the society, the materialism has remained, propelled in equal part by Chinese enterprise and
thrift.

What are we left with? Since the time of Deng Xiaoping, the answer is a people who have been freed
to pursue wealth but encouraged not to meddle with bigger questions about their place in their own
society - or about their society's place in the world.

The state, meanwhile, has taken an utterly conventional approach to nation-building, racing in
headlong pursuit of utterly 20th-century goals - retracing old steps like creating a smokestack
economy or sending men to the moon, for example - even as the new and very different demands of the
21st century, from a revolution in the use of energy and respect for the environment to a
redefinition of human development, make themselves ever more pressing.

Channeling Nietzsche, who believed that Christianity was a disaster from which Western civilization
was still recovering, Kerry Brown, the author of "Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century," said
that China's industrialization "is a disaster we will never recover from."

Ironically, there is no better symbol of this before-the-flood mindset than the Olympics themselves.

project as a paean to the old-fashioned state, and although other comparisons to Nazism are not
warranted, the parallels with Berlin's 1936 Games are, replete with propaganda efforts that eclipse
those of Leni Riefenstahl and company.

The great tragedy is one of lost opportunity for China and for the world, which needs it to succeed.
Mao's death provided a rare chance for a tabula rasa, yet China seems to have settled for
conventionality. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the trauma of the previous decades, causing
people to avoid more ambitious experimentation and, above all, shock.

Part of it, though, is due to another very old-fashioned proclivity: the state's obsessive need for
control, which requires shutting people out of decision-making. For starters, a real reinvention
would require a stirring national conversation about goals and needs, but China's leaders are afraid
of this and seem to hide behind stiff masks.

Much of the arcane language of the past remains, even if few believe in it anymore. "I'm not
interested in the leaders, whose faces remain the same after all these years, as if they had been
copied by a machine," one prominent writer told me. "Ordinary people's lives have changed a little bit."

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