anyone doubt the Games of the XIXV Olympiad was not the greatest of all Olympics when you have Athletics contested in the Bird’s Nest (National Stadium) and Aquatics in The Water Cube … coupled with the smiles and everyday kindness shown by thousands and thousands of youthful Chinese volunteers. From a sheer architectural perspective alone, both The Water Cube and The Bird’s Nest vividly represent the “coming out” of China onto the world stage and showcased a Chinese society that has endured for 2,000 years and will do so in like fashion far into the future.
If you want to take a glimpse into the future you don’t have to visit a Disneyland Park and trek over to Tomorrowland. Instead, just hop on a plane and visit Shanghai. At Pudong International Airport you can see the Batplane parked next to Millennium Falcon before you board a mag-lev train and travel 400 kilometers an hour into the heart of the city. If you are lucky, you’ll also catch a glimpse of Spider-Man as he web slings from high-rise to high-rise.
That is Shanghai.
China is simply a breathtaking place unlike anything in the world and its current rise as the leading political, economic and culture power in Asia simply cannot be denied. This nation and its people will never go away and clearly demonstrated so from the moment billions of people around the globe witnessed the Olympic Games that started at 8:08 p.m. on August 8, 2008.
The Olympic Games in China became the catalyst for a mighty change in a nation of more than 1.3 billion souls and a society that itself is changing and maturing every single day. Take for example the Olympic Education program, in which the values of sportsmanship, fair play and honesty were taught – without prior editorial censorship – to more than 500 million Chinese youth across the country. I know this because I was directly involved in the marketing of these programs. Without the Olympics in China, the worldwide international community would never have any direct influence to the youth of China. It would simply never happen. Does that mean that we should overlook the things in China that just aren’t so good? Of course not. But constantly hammering the Chinese people, to their collective “face”, about all of the things they are doing wrong will gain you nothing. In total, the people here will fold their arms and then stare at you.
Better to use a carrot than a mallet.
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If you saw the Opening Ceremonies of Beijing's Olympic Games, you are among the more than three billion people around the world who watched the Olympics in China either through the technological miracle of television or through the somewhat lesser miracle of being there in person in the Bird’s Nest. It was an awesome Opening Ceremonies, one that American TV host Bob Costas told the millions watching the Games begin that the Chinese “have re-written the book on how to do an Olympics”.
A few months later as winter firmed its grip over America and millions of families huddled together by a warm fireplace to celebrate the holidays, NBC TV replayed the Opening Ceremonies of these Beijing Summer Olympics as a TV special.
By any measure, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games was the greatest Olympic Games ever.
I can say that because I was in the thick of it all.
As the Senior Expert of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, I certainly wasn't part of any pro-Communist or anti-West political propaganda agenda; my work was in promoting the Olympic Games in China and innovative efforts used to make sure every major and minor print and electronic media outlet knew everything about the Olympic Games in China. One of the things you have to understand about Mainland China from the get-go is that China plays to win. And they always win. They are strategically calculating about what they want and how to get it. They have their weaknesses to be sure, but the first thing you need to know is that the Chinese Communist government is out to win. But win what?
In America, we think of "winning" in temporary terms, like personally winning a board game, or vicariously winning a baseball game that pits our favorite professional team against somebody else’s favorite pro team. Winning an election or a lottery, of course, is sometimes life-changing, but for most Americans, winning on any level just provides a brief epinephrine surge of intense pleasure that is just a fond memory within moments after our losing Monopoly opponent runs crying for Mom; finishing off the last of the homemade cherry pie during Thanksgiving or after the guy we elected shows us he is no better than the guy we unelected. In America, win or lose, most of us “winners” all just go back to doing our normal tasks and wait with hopes for the next game, next slice of pie, the next election, or for death.
Today’s modern Chinese culture - for sure, the Chinese Government - thinks of winning in a much different way. Like "forever" and "everything." China’s small, super-elite group of leaders that absolutely controls this enormous nation’s major and minor decisions, clearly does not think like most of America’s briefly important elected or appointed officials in intentionally confusing Washington, D.C., or just about anyone buying or selling or just strolling along on Main Street USA. In the People’s Republic of China, the 2008 Olympics meant so much more than the long-established Western sports concept of going out there and "doing your best, win or lose. It's not winning. It's how you play the game." Not so in China. With the Olympics held on sacred Chinese soil for the first time ever, "winning" meant winning more medals than any other team. It meant generating more corporate sponsorships - inflowing support money - than any other Olympic Organizing Committee in Olympics history. To the Chinese Olympic Committee - indeed - to every loyal Chinese citizen, from industrial magnate to rice-growing peasant with access to a television set, it meant showing the world that modern Communism not only works and delivers the goods to its people, but that its centrally planned economy, based on the original USSR plan, far surpasses the irrational, chaotic Capitalist concepts of multi-party democracy and all that theoretical nonsense about individual “freedom of choice.”
The same can be said with the unrelenting governmental commitment to bring its society to international standards as more than one-half of all the cranes needed to construct high-rise buildings are here in China. Very soon, a new skyscraper building will be opened in China every single day. More than 20 new cities are planned for 10 million people to live in where today nothing exists. What can you say about something like that? America has more than 1,000 airports. There are around 150 airports in China, and there is still a long way for the Chinese to catch up but when they want to build something it is built with the finest materials and on a massive scale. For the Beijing Summer Olympic Games, the largest free-standing airport terminal in the world can be found in the new Beijing International Capital Airport with a high-speed subway train connecting the airport with downtown. There is so much money being spent here in China and an unblinking commitment for a space-age, gee-whiz Buck Rogers future that it is changing the landscape of China forever. To describe a nation that is economically growing at nine percent a year can only be explained in one word. Frantic. Everyone is running from meeting to meeting; from morning to night everyone is running, moving and jumping from one project to another. The roads are clogged with trucks moving good from here to here. There is nothing impossible for the Chinese people to accomplish and the 2008 Olympics was just the start.
In the 1970’s, Chinese citizens needed a document with an official stamp of approval from a Provincial office to travel from one city to another. Today the freedom of travel is everywhere. Each of the three major national airlines now has frequent flyer programs with millions of members.
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Why do I think China has the latent possibilities to be the greatest nation on Earth?
Because I see so much positive potential within the people of this country. Having first travelled here in 1999 and then moving here full time in the Spring of 2007 to work for BOCOG, I have focused my life (and this book) on the positive rather than the negative. To have this “once in a lifetime” position at BOCOG, I left everything behind in America to come to China and work for these Olympic Games. I left my (then) wife and darling
