[hakfoo]

I hear you entirely.

I tend to think there are countries which have reached the "no-win" stage of public relations. It sort of reminds me of when the UN sent inspectors to Iraq looking for the legendary WMDs-- even transparency wasn't good enough. The fix is in, and there's no reasonable sequence of definite actions they can perform that would get China on the West's good side. They could walk Joe Biden personally through the length of Xinjiang and someone would still say "they must have hidden the prisoners!"

Every positive story about China is always tempered with "but but Tibet/the Uighurs/social case-celebree of the week."

That slant, in particular, is particularly annoying. It's dehumanizing because we're treating a country of over one billion people as a single undifferentiated unit.

Did any of the tens of thousands of people who worked to deliver this event get up in the morning and think "Gosh, if I just paint these bleachers just right, they'll let people I don't know, 5000km away, get away with a genocide! Can't wait!" I doubt it. On the ground level, this is the work of ordinary people with ordinary motivations-- and the concept of "If we're going to be on a global stage for two weeks, let's do the best possible presentation we can." is not some malicious whitewashing conspiracy. They don't deserve the slander.

I have to wonder if we're in a situation where we're looking for an enemy. The Cold War was great for business-- it justified eternal defense spending and trade restrictions against a major economy. What a coup if they could pull it off against China!

[Graffur]

What positive story are you talking about? That the Olympics isn't that popular or is "terrible" as the OP describes it?

Who is talking about the people who delivered the event, and who is slandering them in this conversation?

You say "5000km away" but it is the same government.

Have a read through this https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037

[hakfoo]

I'm saying that building the facilities and hosting the ceremonies are a lot of hard work for tens of thousands of people. That they were able to pull the event off as smoothly as they have, during a global pandemic, is still an accomplishment, regardless of the TV ratings.

Maybe we can say that once in a while without having to frame it in the context of "TeH cCp EvIl AnD fAiLiNg"

Saying "it's the same government" is rather a broad-brush. When there's a new library or stadium built in Phoenix, do we belittle the hard work of the contractors and architects over what ICE is going with immigrant children?

You see that sort of coverage on a lot of news about China. "20,000 km of high speed rail built in a year" or "space program is proceeding smoothly" inevitably pivots to human-rights potshots, even when the actions in the story have only the most gossamer links to it.