I’ve been boycotting the Olympics this year, but even while avoiding the actual coverage, one thing that’s grown harder and harder to do is to miss the stories about just how China is handling their hosting duties.
Or, rather, mishandling them.
The number of fiascoes, frauds, and failures by the Chinese Communists just keeps going and going and going. I’m going to just list the ones I’ve managed to hear about through my self-imposed Great Wall Of Ignore:
- Countless Chinese evicted from their homes in order to build the Olympic facilities.
- The exclusion of anyone suspected of wanting to express support for Tibet or Darfur.
- The computer-generated fake fireworks from the opening ceremony.
- The lip-syncing scandal when the officials decided that the little girl singing the Chinese national anthem wasn’t cute enough.
- The exclusion of foreign chaplains for athletes, forcing them to rely on Chinese government-approved and supplied clergy.
- Early claims that all tickets were sold out for all events, yet thousands of empty seats at the actual events.
- Underage gymnasts using faked Chinese identification.
Feel free to add in any more messes I’ve missed in the comments.
The only one potential mess that hasn’t emerged so far is the incredibly vile and foul air in and around Beijing. But I’m not giving up hope — the Games are still going.
What gets me is why anyone might be surprised by this. The Olympic Games were set up and are being run by the Communist Chinese government. This is the same government that also runs their exports, and we have a laundry list of how they’ve fucked that up.
This is what they Chinese government does. This is precisely what we should have expected the instant they were awarded the Olympic games. Indeed, this is precisely what many of us predicted when it occurred. The only thing we missed were the precise details of how the Chinese government would lie and cheat and fake things to present the image they want to project to the world.
Well, now we know. And I’d be willing to wager that there will be more revelations before the Games are over.
I have enough faith in the Chinese Communists that they have even more scams and frauds up their sleeves that haven’t come to light yet — but will.
Update: Commenter “sidgb” adds censored internet access and bugged taxis. How the hell did I forget about those? Thanks, sidgb.
