Additional Comment: It is truly an engineering marvel to create a mammoth structure like the Bird’s Nest Stadium without any vertical supports whatsoever. To give credit where credit is due. But then again, that was the design point. To thoroughly awe and impress. It does.
Just as the government tries to mask the byproduct of explosive economic growth, air pollution for example, vis-a-vis shutting down industry and odd/even driving days these past few weeks to clear the air (smog) around Beijing, these games in the aggregate, are solely about garnering undeserved goodwill while masking intent. In fact, even more so than the 1980 Moscow Olympics, an Olympics the U.S./WEAST should boycott, on all fronts – from athlete to government leadership participation/presence.
Afterall, if the U.S. could symbolically boycott the Moscow Olympics due to Moscow intervention in far off Afghanistan, why should it not take an even stronger position with the Beijing games, given not only the human rights abuse/violation issues, but too the real, direct threat of Commulism to U.S. national and economic security. Ironically too, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was not a threat to U.S. national security. In other words, there is 100x’s more reason to boycott the Beijing Olympics then there was boycotting Moscow. Yet there is no Beijing boycott.
Essentially, unlike the intent of past Olympic competitions and other global city/nation bids for these games, as respects the host country, the 2008 Olympic Games are not about melding sports and the human spirit, but rather announcement - of China’s arrival – as the soon to be dominant world player – in everything.
Corroborating the assessed intent of these Olympics, in his June 13, 2007 USA Today article “China Ties Olympic Gold To Quest For Worldwide Esteem”, Calum McLeod cites the Chinese Olympic training program built upon the “rigorous training system modeled after the old Soviet sports machine”. Anyone who grew up during Cold War recalls that that program was hugely successful yet notorious for its abuses. Mr. McLeod further corroborates the training model linkage by noting there are “…thousands of sports schools in China, which together train more than 6 million young athletes. It's part of an increasingly aggressive sports program the Chinese hope to showcase in the 2008 Summer Olympics…..the Olympics represent a chance to announce itself as a modern athletic and economic power.”
Interestingly too, these Olympic Games will be packaged and trumpeted in a deceivingly clever and concealed Olympic theme or slogan, masking the real underlying threat. That official slogan being “One World, One Dream”, which as James Pethokoukis keenly reveals and focuses on in his July 29, 2007 Nation & World article, that Beijing views the theme’s clumsiness in Mandarin, preferring instead "Peacefully Rising China”. This analyst would then question from a (China) “sincerity challenged” perspective, might this then perhaps be derivatively analogous, if not tantamount to Iran’s facade “nuclear for peaceful purposes only”? If so, then should we not add in what Beijing conveniently and intentionally omits, “Peacefully Rising China….Then Watch Out”?
Within months or year(s), not decades, we can then expect a new and more ruthless Cold War (II) to be formally unleashed and ushered in, one where the U.S./WEAST is collectively challenged not only militarily but even more importantly for its own economic survival. The ability the Chinese (with the Russian (Soviet Union II?) alliance) will possess to hold and control the U.S./WEAST economy and hold their financial systems/markets hostage, will be more powerful than all the smart bombs the free world can muster; themselves rendered useless in this pure economic leveraged confrontation. It will make the 2007 credit crisis seem like a cakewalk.
The ever growing economic dependency (addiction) on China is so pronounced and troublesome that when the Chinese announce their real arrival and U.S/WEAST become stunningly aware, the U.S./WEAST will find themselves in constant “concession mode”, a position the Soviets never enjoyed, nor one U.S./WEAST ever had to painfully endure either.
CONCLUSION:
The 8-8-08 formal launch of China onto the world stage as the next (functional and sustainable) superpower is not a fluke, but rather a calculated, defined, complex and carefully orchestrated plan. China’s lightning fast transition and/or transformation from agrarian to industrial to service economy, AND all integrated too, is unparalleled. What has taken the Chinese 20-30 years to achieve in this regard, with the acceleration point being 1989, took the U.S. 100 plus years, noting too the U.S. now ironically and imprudently continues to jettison a core asset, its industrial base – to China.
For all intents and purposes as noted by the U.S. and WEAST inaction (at best) to thwart, and even recognize, and rather disturbingly even worse feeding it, this almost overnight transformation into a functional superpower on steroids, is effectively being disregarded and/or dismissed by the West; that non-recognition accentuated by its distraction with Iraq. When the curtain rises however, it will be a tragedy that will potentially bring the Broadway U.S./WEAST to its knees.
Unlike Bin Laden tried on 9/11, China will instead steal the show without ever having to fire a shot or physically harming anyone, and benevolently do to the U.S. and WEAST collective economies what Al Qaeda could only dream – control it rather than destroy it. Akin to a black hole in space, China will in effect, suck in the entire (complacent) world economy.
Of note, we should too expect to rapidly see the front page Al Qaeda terror threat give way to the more potent Commulism threat. This as violent terrorism runs its course and exhausts itself with cascading loss of support and even growing backlash, as religious fervor gives way to terrorism’s result - economic deprivation to those populaces that had embraced it.
Call this then a “peaceful” global economic coup - “Economic Terrorism/Warfare”, or more specifically coin it the “China Vacuum Effect”. In fact, take it one step further and perhaps even more collectively characterizing it as the dawning of the “Age of Benevolent Terrorism”.
“Benevolent” meaning peaceful or non-violent. Merriam-Webster’s (MW) offers several very different definitions of “terror(ism)”. In the case of “Benevolent Terrorism, the first two MW uses are derivatively appropriate. These are 1) creating a state of intense (author add – “economic and militarily”) fear and one (author add – (“China”)) that inspires that fear.
In other words, “benevolent terrorism” yielding non-violent, yet intense economic fear. That benevolent terrorism embodied in what the Author will coin “Chinanomics”. Or perhaps an even better characterization, call it “Pandanomics”.
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