Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
10
The Twenty-First Century:
“China does not do small,” mused CBC Radio One's Jian Ghomeshi on
his cultural affairs talk and variety show “Q” shortly after the end of the
2008 Beijing Olympics and the grandiose spectacles of its opening and
closing ceremonies. But for China, the ceremonial and athletics of the
2008 Beijing Olympics were what they had been for South Korea
20 years earlier, in 1988: an international debut, a sassy and stylish
showcasing of the country's accomplishments, a way of saying to the
outside world, “We've come a long way, we're here, and we matter.”
In China, the fact that Beijing was hosting the games at all was widely
regarded as a significant symbolic victory over the United States, which
had led a campaign in the 1990s to deny Beijing the 2000 Olympics
because of China's human rights abuses.
Indeed, China neither does nor is small. It is a truly massive country
by just about any measure imaginable. It is now rapidly emerging as a
major world power, and historically, for approximately 2,000 of the past
2,500 years, China has in fact been the world leader economically, mili-
tarily, demographically, and culturally. China longs very deeply to
