In 1787, as the story goes, the minister in charge of the successful Russian campaign to conquer Crimea, Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, erected fake villages to impress the visiting Empress Catherine II with the new conquests. Thus a new expression entered the lexicon: Potemkin village. It means to give a false veneer of progress or success in order to mask an undesirable reality.
Anyone who has followed China’s preparation for the 2008 Olympic games will immediately appreciate the parallels. The Olympics are tremendously important to the country, in the eyes of its leadership. They are a chance to show the world how far it has advanced toward modernity.
To be sure, China has indeed made huge strides, but as story after story has amply documented, the underlying reality apparently is not quite up to the standard China’s leaders hope to convey. And so, no effort has been spared in order to correct the “deficiency”.
The latest example to come to light is the performance of the little girl who sang “Ode to the Motherland” during the Opening Ceremony. It turns out her voice was considered not suitable, in the minds of China’s supremely image-conscious leaders, and so another was subsituted in its place. Only her face was fit, so she was required to lip-sync the performance. It was “in the national interest,” rationalized a member of the Chinese ruling circle.
Small potatoes, you may think, but this is merely the latest string in a long pattern. Just a few days ago, we learned that parts of the Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. China’s Potemkin efforts have not been restricted to simple enhancement. Entire sections of Beijing have been walled-off as too unseemly for foreign eyes. Information on the Internet considered unfriendly to the country has been blocked by the Great Firewall, even to visitors. Even some Olympic athletes had their visas revoked for fear they would speak critically of the hosts.
And so it goes. Our view of China during these Olympics has been carefully managed by its censors and propagandists. The real China? Who knows. But a country which needs to manipulate its image more carefully than a Hollywood star is not a modern one.
I’m skipping these Potemkin Olympics.
Making My Way 