WITH taxi drivers ordered to improve their personal hygiene, menus containing Saliva Chicken frantically eradicated of their mistranslations and rockets set to be fired into the sky to prevent rain, there's been no shortage of opportunities to poke fun at Chinese preparations for the Beijing Olympics. But last week brought a more significant portent of what awaits. The battle between the Internet and the Chinese government for control of the Games has begun. And it's first blood Web 2.0.
It was supposed to be a defining moment in the country's cultural history, as China re-launched its main sporting network as the Olympics Channel. Amid much fanfare, the nation's favourite sports presenter Zhang Bin - like Des Lynam without the moustache and a relationship with a transsexual - talked excitedly before a studio audience.
But the back-slapping was interrupted when a small woman clad in a brown duffel coat stormed the stage, grabbed the mike and, revealing herself to be Zhang's jilted wife, proceeded to find a metaphor in her husband's infidelities for her country's human rights record.
Declaring that if China's values don't improve then the Games will have been for nothing, she was quickly huckled off with Zhang looking as helpless as a political prisoner waiting for a bullet in the head. "Don't any of you have any conscience? Let go of me. We're very far from being a great country," screamed Mrs Zhang as she was led away.
Fortunately for the Communist Party the show was pre-recorded and the embarrassment could be edited out. Unfortunately for them, many of their subjects are keen to embrace liberal ideals like information sharing. In no time the footage was plastered across YouTube, having managed to sneak over the Great Firewall of China. The government had better prepare for plenty more of the same when the world arrives at its door in eight months' time.
The 2008 Olympics is going to be a seismic event, with China trying to flaunt a shiny prosperity to the Western world at every opportunity. But this is also the first Games since the Internet really took control, with information now readily shared around the world within seconds of its occurrence. As Zhang Bin proved, even an authoritarian government with a dedicated army of censors is no match for such a platform, which is set to be seized upon by citizen journalists and those who have waited years to make political points to the world.
So this summer, instead of a fat woman getting stuck in a lift door or a dog doing a hilarious impression of Dubya, the most viewed clips on your favourite video sharing site might just have a different hue. China's dirty linen looks about to be given a thorough airing in public.
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