A year before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China’s
preparations are already well
underway. Earlier this month, a celebration
marked the one-year countdown to the Games, and already Beijing has undertaken massive
reconstruction efforts, tested the environmental effects of decreasing
car traffic within the city, and banned spitting.
While these efforts, and the economic
boom accompanying them, will produce comforts and amenities for Olympic athletes
and visitors, Stanford University Press author Ross Terrill argues
in an August 22, 2007 New
York Times Op-Ed that all of this spring cleaning has a sinister side as
well: “banished from Beijing for the Olympics will be not only fractured
English, but disabled people, Falun Gong practitioners, dark-skinned villagers
newly arrived in the city, AIDS activists and other “troublemakers” who smudge
the canvas of socialist harmony.”
Terrill compares the Beijing being build for the Olympics to
the impossible promises Mao made, such as “mak[ing] the sun and moon change
places,” promises he explored in Mao, A Biography. He
urges us not to become too complacent about accepting the façade being built,
less we forget the “Orwellian impulse to remake the truth” that lies behind it.
Mao teach to all of u how ought run the government wheel.
"Leadership is not being nice, Leadership is being right and powerful"
Posted by: Clever Presentations | September 12, 2007 at 12:21 PM