12 Aug 2008
Beijing schmeijing
So the spectacular fireworks at the Olympics opening ceremony that everyone was ooohing over on a wet lunchtime last week turned out to be fake. Apparently some diligent CGI monkeys spent a year making downtown Beijing look like the Hollywood version of downtown Tbilisi.
Which of course makes my all too literal mind turn to what else might have been faked about China's big moment in front of the world's TV viewers.
Like the bizarre idea that hosting the Games would somehow help China become a more open society, maybe by some sort of osmosis of the democracy molecules mixed in with the EPO and growth hormones in all those Western athletes - the Pheromones for Freedom programme.
An alternative suggestion for becoming a more open society would include things like allowing the people who inhabit China to vote in regular elections with actual, real choices. Then they could be called 'citizens' for real. Add in a bit of judicial independence (no more bullets to the back of the head for selling fake Viagra); at least listening to minorities, including the ones acquired in the Tibet hostile take-over, and maybe doing something about the systemic corruption from the Communist Party down.
But given that bringing US-style capitalism to the biggest Communist nation on Earth did nothing for democracy there, maybe a few thousand Lazer Razer-suited obsessives and digital fireworks will do the job.