The Biggest and probably most controversial games in history.

It’s a big day for China today. With its opening ceremony of the Beijng Olympics, it hopes to definitely settle its desired image of superpower in a world of shifting power, scarce resources, diverging trends of democracy and varying definitions of human rights.

While several world leaders will gather to attend the opening ceremony, conflicts are still real in other corners of the world, be it Darfur, Iraq or Palestine. Olympic sportsmen try to contribute their part of the pie to raise awareness about China’s role in these conflicts. But that has a price. Yesterday, Joey Cheek, 2006 Olympic gold medalist and co-founder of Team Darfur, has been denied entry to China for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Another prominent guest shining by absence is the iconic Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. In a comment in The Guardian and an interview in The New York Times he expresses his anxiety about Chinas ‘pretend smile’ of the Beijing National Stadium, a ‘pretend smile’ because you can’t celebrate the freedom of expression and liberty in a country that doesn’t have a democracy, according to him. His biggest disappointment is that China has fallen short of its promises, which is, “One World One Dream”. This expression is quite unique for such an artist with a Warhol-like fame in his own country. Nevertheless, exactly this fame safeguards him to make such ‘political’ expressions.

Read more in the Guardian article ‘Why I’ll stay away from the opening ceremony of the Olympics‘.

Read the New York Times article ‘China’s Olympic Crossroads: Bird’s Nest Designer Ai Weiwei on Beijing’s ‘Pretend Smile’’

Read the openDemocracy article ‘The Olympics countdown: Beijing to Shanghai’

The huge constructions of steel lattice surrounding the Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed the Bird’s Nest. Photo ©2008 by Iwan Baan.

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