1936 Berlin, 2008 Beijing

I've never been a fan of televised extravaganzas. They always seem something caught in between events or commercials, seeking to persuade us that we can't live without the products they sell. But I knew that the Chinese investment of $40 billion in the Olympic Games, from trillions of wealth generated from supplying those products demanded by consumer societies at affordable prices, would be supported by a different kind of opening ceremony.

Along with the projected world-wide audience of 4 billion, I wasn't disappointed. The breadth of imagination applied to the performance of more than 20,000 individuals was breathtaking, even from a perspective in front of a television set half a world away. The Bird's Nest Stadium has redefined the linear spaces for public spectacles to which we are accustomed. It is an astounding achievement for the nation I visited first 30 years ago, when China was lost in the time and space of its own internal struggles.

As world leaders sat in 90 degree heat in fairly ordinary bleacher seats, the duration reminded me of performances when China's nationalism was expressed through interminably long and low brow filmed operas of the Communist revolution.

But even then, in the dawn emerging from the shadow of Mao, symbolism counted more than we know in western societies. Today China may be filled with plastic entertainments and hordes of young trying to figure out how to hack their way onto the free Internet, but still: symbolism is an enduring fabric binding more than 4 dozen nationalities and 1.3 billion citizens.

In comparison, the vicious nationalism of Germany in the 1930's, expressed through the gilded 1936 Olympic opening ceremony filmed to its own perfection by Leni Riefenstahl, must have seemed to the Chinese--then struggling through disorder imposed by Western nations-- crude yet frightening.

The opening ceremony yesterday was the opposite of crude. It was the result of magnificent application of technology and imagination to a mass viewing audience.

Yet it was frightening.

The truest reaction came during early network television coverage of the $300 million extravaganza when a NBC commentator blurted out that the synchronized movement of 2008 drummers was "a little intimidating". It started earlier.

The intimidation really began when reporters on the press plane accompanying President Bush were delayed more than 3 hours as Chinese customs officials made a symbolic pause to "decide" how to process the visitors who would report the Games to the world.

The Chinese were reacting to comments by President Bush--made to a small and indifferent audience in Bangkok, Thailand en route to China-- deemed insulting and an inappropriate meddling in China's internal affairs.

Watching the spectacular performance, I wondered if President Bush peering through binoculars had the same feeling as me: it put America's televised spectaculars funded by corporate advertisers-- like the Superbowl-- to shame. The marketing budget of many Superbowl advertisers is based on a profit model that incorporates, one way or another, low cost imports from China. Guess which nation is getting richer? It is not the United States.

I also wondered if President Bush ever reflects how the insecurities of Americans, in respect to the economy, our political leadership, war and debt, is so different from the Chinese, today. The Wall Street Journal gets part of the equation: "Among a huge swath of Chinese, the Games have taken on a meaning both more benign and more complex. Amid today's prosperity, opinion polls and individual conversations show a groundswell of unbridled optimism. In many ways, the Chinese have embraced the American Dream-- the belief that tomorrow will be better than today." ("For Chinese, Olympics cap a long march up", August 8, 2008)

Unlike Hitler in 1936 who was in the process of imposing imperial ambitions on the outside world, China's political elite (as opposed to the Chinese military leadership) is most concerned with managing its own internal stressors, including a significant percentage of citizens who still live in deep poverty. What Americans should be paying attention to, however, is China's growing competition for natural resources and commodities to fuel its own growth. It is hard to avoid the feeling that we are fat, dumb and lazy in comparison to billions in Asia who are hard at work to obtain the first fraction of what sustains our standard of living in America.

Today, US consumers are providing energy to the fastest growing economy in the world. Its government is run by a political elite that fully embraces Orwellian focus on security and control.

China seems to be saying in the Olympic Games it is a brand, new day based on resurgent, grand achievements. What kind of day it symbolizes for the United States, makes for an interesting and troubling question.