You guys are the kings of wasted wishful thinking. Who cares whether Beijing should have gotten the nod? It did. Period. Can you say "too late?"

China will most likely never regret it. While it's taking some hits on the international stage, it's going to be balanced out by news media coverage of the Olympics itself. The goal was probably never to show that they are a compassionate government, but rather to show that the country has modernized. Also, it's hard to overstate how much this is going to help domestic affairs. It's a wild mix of nationalism and fuzzy warm feelings about recovering from the colonial period that's going to translate into goodwill toward the government.

Olympics? It's a celebration of competitiveness, with ultra-professional athletes (who are supposedly amateurs). in 1980 it was in USSR, 1936 Nazi Germany and so on. The Olympics have strictly nothing to do with freedom.

China will never regret campaigning for the 2008 games because the West won't do squat about it.  Our credit crisis is bad enough without China calling in some of its chips  Besides, nobody here is willing to even talk about a private cultural boycott of the games, and look how divestment has fizzled.  Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion and nothing is different except this time there's no "we didn't know" excuse.  

What we could do is strengthen our hand in the future by adopting a sane energy policy and never allowing a nation like China to have such power over our economy.  Not a one of the 3 candidates has a plan for this.  

Again, basic reading comprehension seems to be on vacation.  The point of the post, it seems to me, was to wonder whether Beijing itself had reason to regret working so fiercely to get the Olympics only to have all these uprisings and protests pile up on them.  You might agree or disagree (and I suspect xurichd and lymon1 have got it right), but the point of the post was never about whether the Olympics should ever have been awarded to China or not; that's an entirely separate question.  

About six years ago, I was talking with an acquaintance of mine, an accomplished and successful businessman with a lot of experience in China.

He told me then that he did not believe that the present regime would survive the combination of the WTO and the '08 Olympics.

We shall see within a few years if his prediction was as astute as it seemed to me at the time.

csp: I think both questions are raised -- the one we address is in the first paragraph, the one you address is in the final paragraph.

lymon, I don't think one can blame candidates for the lack of a plan that, if a candidate was so dumb as to produce one, would push most of the electorate into voting for his/her opponent.  Significant numbers of Americans don't want to know things that would disturb their belief that this is the best country in the world, that everything we do is smart and all our actions justified, and that our credit-financed lifestyle can continue to vacuum up a large portion of the world's assets and goods without the bill ever being presented in some shape or form down the pike.

Just look at a few examples:

1.  A horde of otherwise intelligent people working in the auto industry voted for Romney in the Michigan Republican Primary on the basis of a plan to re-introduce the 1960s.

2.  Attempts to impose even modest fuel effiiciency standards are met with shrieks of horror, the likes of which haven't been heard since testimony in the Salem witch trials.

3.  An endless war is seen as a preferable budget item to a necessary major national infrastructural renewal to repair or bridges, roads, and utilities networks (see blackouts, collapsing structures, ancient gas mains etc).

Ironyroad -- I hear you, but I think this year might be different, i.e., that Americans recognize that the nation is at a turning point and unless something fundementally changes, special interests (retiring baby boomers, the auto industry, oil companies, and I'd argue the special interests supporting "green card amnesty" for illegal immigrants) are going to cause irreversable damage to the next generation and beyond.  I think Ross Perot did America a great service by putting the importance of deficit reduction on the table: he lost, but I think he enabled Bill Clinton to do more than they ever could have without him.  Obviously the candidates feel as you do -- not a single one tried to run as a "hard truths" candidate, not even the ones with slim hopes as it were.  But if "ask not what your country can do for you" is so dead on arrival that we can't even ask people to give up their gas guzzlers so we don't even try, we get what we deserve.  The electorate and the media have to at least take the plunge that Americans aren't so stooopid that we can't realize some pretty black and white facts out there and will reject a candidate that tries to speak truth to power.  

Channy, the present regime can not survive the combination of the 50 million unmarriageable men and the rapidly deteriorating environment. It has 20 years tops.

lymon, I don't think there is any kind of truth that is going to make a difference now anyhow. The titanic has already hit the iceberg, the truth "hey we are all going to die" ain't that attractive politically. I have watched the dollar go from 80 cents on the Euro to what now $1.55? All under Bush, in such a short time.

All those tax cuts for investment went for investment alright, right into China.

I don't think this year is any different, Obama is running on changing the tone and Hillary on returning to the 90's, and McCain, well he is just running because, just think of sharks moving is all. Nobody is running on truth, and cue Jack, nobody wants the truth.

blackie, can the WORLD survive 50 million unmarriageable men?

I've long thought that the reason Middle Eastern civilization is so violent and bizarre is because of the sexual constrictions and contradictions of Muslim males.

The consequences of 50 million, horny, lonely, frustrated Chinese dudes is truly scary.

sleepyavl nailed it. The Olympics is practically a showcase for totalitarianism and the amazing athletic results that a ruthless, darwinian, state-directed totalitarian sports program can achieve.

"By emphasizing that the 2008 Olympics will symbolize China's coming-out as a humane and responsible great power..."

Whoa...what makes you think "humane and responsible" is their "emphasis"?  The Chinese don't give a shit whether we're fatuous enough to think that changing human rights policy and foreign policy is part of the due diligence for hosting the Olympics.

The Chinese aim to show, first, that they can bag the Olympics, second, that they can bring it off.  Kinda like the cad we deplore, buying up the paper on our house, then bagging the trophy wife, then knocking her up.  We just can't stand it.

Ten years from now, while we're still deploring and condemning and whining, the Chinese will still be doing whatever they please.  So much for "Oil for the Lamps of China".

The New Yorker's review of the new film Blind Mountain, currently in theaters: The writer-director Li Yang's stunningly realistic drama, a furious denunciation of injustices in contemporary China, is designed to elicit from viewers a primal cry of anger

At the start of the Tibet uprising, I mused that the Olympics--far from being a Chinese propaganda coup