An excellent look at China and the upcoming Olympics from Functional Ambivalent. Good stuff.
An excerpt:
The Chinese wanted the Summer Games for the same reason everyone else does: the P.R. value of having everyone in the world stop by when the house is clean and the kids are in their Sunday best. The Chinese government promised, in effect, to not be itself — abandoning it’s longstanding policy of horrifying oppression and cruelty in pursuit of a perfect society. Landing the games was a triumph, but I wonder now if there aren’t a few high in the bureaucracy massaging their foreheads and asking themselves, “What were we thinking?”