The Bejing Olympics is History

China's Summer Games and What the Country Needs to do Next

The Olympics concluded Sunday. The entire event seemed like a huge success, in spite of China's smog problem, human rights record and penchant for cheating in womens' gymnastics.

Critics of China have complained about world leaders and the International Olympic Committee, claiming that China's human rights violations are going ignored. It's as if President Bush et al have the leverage to do something about it. They don't. The next best option is to allow China to host an Olympics. If China wants to play a more integral role in the world, it will have to Westernize. Hosting an Olympics is a big step in indoctrinating China to the ways of capitalism. Major corporations like Wal-Mart and Nike have done their part to lure China toward a supply-and-demand culture.

Ultimately, Chinese leaders will have to scrap the human rights atrocities, the aversion to free speech and the cloak of secrecy to make any meaningful progress. They will have to scrap Communism, a rigid, inefficient Cold War relic that offers little hope for China's future. Like Cuba, China has squeezed every ounce possible from Communism, and there's no where to go with it.

If the current Chinese leadership hasn't learned anything from the Olympics, perhaps their successors did. It's just a matter of time before Communism falls for good and the holdouts adapt.