I'm sitting here flipping through the channels tonight and there is yet another documentary on China.  I'm yet to figure out if this one is like the SBS stuff which seems to marvel at the country through it’s less recent history or something that explores the darker side of the dictatorship (which could take decades really).  They have briefly mentioned the genocide of the Cultural Revolution, to their credit.   It's suddenly occurred to me that every station has been flooding our screens with various forms of infotainment about China.  The stations did not show the same level of interest in other recent hosts of the games - Spain, America and Greece (I'll skip Australia as we need no introduction to ourselves).

Whilst China is a controversial at the moment, I'm not entirely sure the publicity is all made up of critical exposes.  I think that some of it is buying just a little bit into the propaganda that China is a fascinating, misunderstood place.  Whilst I am all for learning as much as possible about other cultures, it is important to maintain a critical view.  Other cultures, like our own, are not neutral and not without ideology, politics and agendas.  Equally, just because something is not the same as the way we do it, does not mean that it is naturally fascinating or better.  There are dangerous, perverse, subversive and destructive elements to all cultures.  I say this not in criticism of China, but also as someone who has lived in Japan.  Japan is a wonderful country and completely alien to everything in our culture.  And whilst it is fascinating, I could not throw myself into the culture the way others I knew over there did.  The culture is still rampantly misogynistic, somewhat racist and embraces some values which I do not.

As I have already mentioned, I don't really intend to embrace anything about this Olympics.   I think that the IOC has made a controversial and possibly damaging choice.  China is not a democracy, it is not a free country, it is not an open economy.  It is a dictatorship which centrally controls some things, and gives totalitarian power to regional bureaucrats, giving no power to the people or the workers.  China has grown rich off the open economies of the West, whilst remaining closed and failing to reduce the central command of the economy.  I am not saying that there is not good in the country and I am certainly mean no disrespect to the people.  However we do need to approach our media with cynicism at present, as there does seem to be an awful lot of propaganda out there at the moment.