The conversation Jeremiah keeps hearing from Han acquaintances:

A: You teach Chinese history?

GS: Yes.

A: In Beijing? Really?

GS: Well, I teach students from American universities.**

A: Ah! (relieved) That makes sense. (Furrowed brow) What do you teach about Τibet? Do you teach your students that Τibet has ALWAYS been part of China?

GS: No.

A: Why not!?!?! …

Ze Xia’s letter to the editor disagrees with an optimistic article in the Guardian:
“I am very disappointed to read the article by Fu Ying, the Chinese ambassador in London (Bringing out the best in us, September 4). I feel that Fu has taken advantage of media freedom in this country to spread lies and Chinese communist regime propaganda. He does not speak for the Chinese people. In my view, the Beijing Olympics were not successful because they did not represent the real Olympic spirit, even though China has won many medals. It has been used by the communist regime as a showcase, in the same way as last century’s Berlin Olympics were used by Hitler. Behind those shining medals, there were blood, suffering, arrests, torture and even deaths of innocent people…”

UC Irvine prof. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom looks at the image-making tactics shared by Chinese and American political parties:
“When the media spotlight shifted instantaneously from Beijing to Denver last week, it was easy to focus on things that the Olympics and the Democratic Convention had in common as spectacles, especially since each ended with a big party in a stadium where rock music played and fireworks exploded. But if there’s a real American sequel to the Beijing Games, it’s the Republican Convention underway in St. Paul.

It’s true that in Denver one big story involved long-term rivals working together to achieve a new goal. This is definitely an Olympian theme in the era of ‘Dream Teams’ made up of members of competing NBA squads.

Beijing-Denver similarities pale, however, when placed beside the deeper links between China’s first Olympics and the latest GOP Convention…”

Columnist Thomas Boswell makes a hard point about Beijing through his vivid impressions of the Games:

“However, I can barely believe what I saw Saturday when, by accident, I had to return to my hotel at 1 p.m., when almost no reporter has reason to leave the Olympics. Several football fields full of buses all pulled out simultaneously, headed to hotels all over Beijing, theoretically transporting media.

But I was the only rider on any bus I saw. Dozens were empty.

They still made their runs. They still wasted fuel. They still clogged traffic. But nobody, in an activity as state-controlled and Communist Party-scrutinized as these Olympics, would deviate from the original plan, no matter how stupid it might be.

In decades at The Post, this is the first event I’ve covered at which I was certain that the main point of the exercise was to co-opt the Western media, including NBC, with a splendidly pretty, sparsely attended, completely controlled sports event inside a quasi-military compound. We had little alternative but to be a conduit for happy-Olympics, progressive-China propaganda. I suspect it worked.”