Olympic Closing Ceremony Propaganda
The Olympics finished with a closing ceremony as choreographed and large as the opening ceremony. When the Olympic flame was extinguished only to be replaced with a flailing, flickering pillar of human bodies I was disturbed at the Communist propaganda of it all. I didn’t watch any of the opening ceremony with the lip syncing girl so I might be a little slow.
The united movements of the performers looked eerily like the creepy shows put on in North Korea. China and North Korea are both Communist countries so there’s some similarity there. Maybe it’s simply Asian Communism that puts discomfort into my mind. Or maybe it’s the fact that China uses sports to promote the “greatness” of the nation. Taking young kids away from their parents is done because “competitive sport is war without gunfire.” The prestige of the state is paramount; individual feelings and desires become secondary. Then there’s the question about the ages of the Chinese girls gymnastics team.
Melissa Clouthier sees something more cunning and sinister from the Communist Chinese:
Communists are impressive. Marshaling humans and using them like tinker toys, building blocks to make a piece of artwork, only to be sent away tomorrow, back to whatever lot they have in life. It is likely not a good one.
I get the sense that the vast resource the Chinese have that they want us, the West, to know they have is people. Millions and millions of people that can be used any way “the people” deem necessary. The people being the Dear Leader. This knowledge is meant to instill fear; they say respect. But it’s really fear.
And watching this, watching the little people crawl like ants, dehumanized in their vast numbers, used to create a flame, up the pyre in the middle of the stadium, I get the message China is sending. It is loud and clear: we are many, you are few. Beware.
On a lesser level when NBC played the role of the Beijing tourism bureau and highlighted some of the unique foods made by locals they mentioned scorpion and tripe but not dog. The Communists didn’t want to freak out Westerners. It was better for NBC to simply ignore an interesting bit of gastronomic trivia.
China is rising. There’s no doubt about that. Because of some economic reforms millions of people have risen out of poverty. With the right policies millions more will follow. The Chinese will add tremendously to the economic and cultural vibrancy of the world.
But they’ll need to be free to truly reach their full potential. A point will soon come when the Communist rulers won’t be able to placate the rising middle class or the unceasing numbers of poor Chinese coming to already-huge cities from rural villages looking for work. A centralized economy, even with large swaths of entrepreneurship, can’t perform as well as a free market economy. Having dictators in Beijing choreograph economic players like performers in an Olympic ceremony will eventually fail. China will have to evolve and change or it will implode with horrific geopolitical consequences. That means China will have to expand freedom of speech and religion as well as greater political freedom.
While China received sycophantic praise from NBC realize the USA beat the Chinese in the medal count. That was without a government agency for creating international athletes. Michael Phelps didn’t come up through the Chinese sports ministry. Could an authoritarian state like China produce such an athlete that achieves so much and be embraced by the world?
When i saw you call China as a communist country, I knew the whole article is based on some biased attitude over China. Ask any Chinese ppl in China now, esp the young ppl, to check how many of them think China is a communist country.
If you really want to associate the perform with N.K, ok, the Sydney and Athens also are the same. did you remember the united movements of Tap Dance at Sydney? Maybe you need a new pair of glasses.