Foundinchina.com

This morning I read an article here that mentioned tonight’s BBC Panorama documentary about the promises China made in order to secure enough votes to stage the 2008 Games. They made those pledges seven years ago, and they’re still making them today. Beijing does this in order to mollify and pacify a weak-assed IOC who have been played like a fiddle by Chinese authorities from the start.

The IOC, in common with most foreign governments, are still struggling to comprehend a culture in which the ends justify the means and where getting what you want through deception and lies is not accompanied by the same moral imperatives and judgments as other countries.

Another good online article entitled Political Lies & Olympic Games for those interested. 

For China’s part, she fails to understand that recognition in a positive light by other nations (which is deeply craved) is not dependent on grand buildings, pyrotechnics, or athletic supremacy, but rather through the more human qualities (and more in keeping with the Olympic spirit) of friendship, compassion, honesty, openness, tolerance, and human rights. 

It is absolutely right that Panorama make such a program in order to record a side of Beijing’s Olympic story that the authoritarian hosts are trying to hide. China is still not conversant in the use of a wide-angled lens. Time to learn, boys.

If anyone sees the documentary let me know what you think.