China and Fake Singers

I think that the US and World media is starting to get a little desperate to make their point that China fakes things. The most recent example is that the cute little girl who sang during the opening ceremony was not really singing. It was actually a chubby little girl behind the curtains.

"So in a last-minute move demanded by one of China’s highest officials, the two were put together for the Olympic opening ceremony, with one lip-synching “Ode to the Motherland” over the other’s singing. The real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, wasn’t good looking enough for the ceremony, its chief music director told state-owned Beijing Radio."

Like the computer generated fireworks, I don't think that people should really care about this. I watched the Opening Ceremony and it was glaringly obvious that she wasn't singing. I could have cared less whose voice it was.

Here are some Chinese citizens' thoughts...

“The little girl is a magnificent singer,” Chen said. “She doesn’t deserve to be hidden.”

“The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest."

"The organizers really messed up on this one,” Luo Shaoyang, 34, a retail worker in Beijing, said Tuesday. “This is like a voiceover for a cartoon character. Why couldn’t they pick a kid who is both cute and a good singer? This damages the reputation of both kids for their future, especially the one lip-synching. Now everyone knows she’s a fraud, who cares if she’s cute?"

"They want the best-looking people to represent the face of China. I don’t blame the organizers for picking a prettier-looking kid over the not-so-pretty one,” said Xia Xiaotao, 30, an engineer."

So, I'm torn. It seems that China is really worried about portraying this (false)image of perfection to the world, yet as I mentioned before, they don't seem to care that they are fanning the "everything in China is fake" flames.

If I were to give advice, I would tell the world media to calm down and realize that we already know what China reputation is. Let it go. And China should stop trying so hard as well. It makes them look desperate for acceptance. You're a major world player, you're nowhere close to perfect (like all nations), so stop lying to yourselves.

Olympic Focus

It will be pretty slow politically this week as the Olympics begin and Obama and Congress go on vacation. August is always the slowest political month. We are left with a solid 5-9 point Obama lead, no VP announcements and a series of upcoming ads during the Games. Obama had always planned on airing millions in ads, but McCain had to shore up the cash at the last second to combat his rivals airtime. I'll occasionally report what's happening, but as I said, it will be slow.

The Olympics are much more interesting at this point. We are already getting some pretty juicy repressive stories coming from China.

From the AP with a hat tip to One Free Korea,

The beating of two Japanese journalists by police in western China drew an official apology Tuesday, but Beijing also set new obstacles for news outlets wanting to report from Tiananmen Square in the latest sign of trouble for reporters covering the Olympics. [….]

In the latest restriction, the Beijing city government said on its Web site that Chinese and foreign journalists who want to report and film in Tiananmen “are advised to make advanced appointments by phone.” It said that will help ensure orderly newsgathering amid what are expected to be large crowds in the square on each day of the games, which start Friday.

Beijing’s thousands of taxicabs are being fitted with video cameras and satellite technology that transmits a live audio feed of what is being said in the cab back to a computer for monitoring and linguistic analysis, according to industry sources.

“It was about two or three months ago. All the taxis in our company had this fitted,” an employee at a major Beijing cab company said. “There is a screen which displays the exact location of the vehicle. The taxi is also able to send information back to us at the control station. All the taxis registered with us have had the modifications.”

Sounds like a blast! Permission to film and no trash talk in a taxi.

More and more Olympics to come!