The Olympic Games Begin!

The Olympics started today in Beijing. (Here are some superb photos of the opening events. Here are more photos and videos.) Mom, dad, and I plan on watching the opening ceremony tonight with Aunt Ruth before starting our journey back home to Virginia tomorrow morning. While I'm excited to watch the ceremony, I have less excitement than usual about the games thanks to the specter the Chinese government is casting over the games. Their government is incredibly afraid of losing face to the rest of the world and that is causing them to clamp down on the rights of their citizens (and athletes) in order to try to control how the games turn out. This is particularly problematic as this may incentivize groups to disrupt the games in order to bring world attention to their particular groups and/or issues. (At least one terrorist threat has already been made.) It remains to be seen what this means for the games, which are certainly the most politicized Olympics since the Cold War.

I think this year's Olympics are going to highlight much of what is good and what is bad in China right now.

The good:

• Increasing economic freedom.
  
• Increasing openness to the rest of the world.
• Rising standards of living.

The bad:

• Communism.
• Continued persecution of minorities, including many religious groups.
• Restricted political freedom.
• Extreme inequality of wealth.
• One-child policy leading to a problematic gender imbalance.
• Poor record on human rights.
• Rampant pollution -- especially in Beijing.
• Rising militarism.
  
• Many internal enemies held in check through government suppression.
  

Unfortunately, in many ways the bad seems to outweigh the good. I'm optimistic that the trends of the good may eventually reduce the magnitude of the bad, although I wish I was more confident of this than I am.

See my other posts on China and read more thoughts on what to look for during the Olympics from Gordon Chang.

To keep track of games, here are a number of resources:

Google has a website dedicated to keeping track of the Olympics:

Google unveils a 2008 Summer Olympics landing page, a clearinghouse for various GOOG tools that are tracking the events in Beijing. See a Google Map of medals, YouTube video highlights, Google News headlines, a 3D video tour plus Sketchup models of the venues, and add an iGoogle gadget that tracks medal counts to your Google homepage.

Wired Magazine has a round-up of where to watch the games online.

The New York Times has excellent coverage of the games, including a blog devoted to the Olympics.

Deadspin is a blog that looks to have excellent Olympic coverage.

The BBC has also set-up a website to keep track of the games.

P.S. -- Just for fun, here's a timeline showing the evolution of the Olympic torch. I have to agree with Gizmodo -- this year's torch which is designed (by Lenovo) to look like a red scroll just might be my favorite.