A changed China? Olympics opening ceremony showcases a different nation from 2008 Games

BEIJING – More than a decade after it hosted the Summer Olympics in what was a celebratory coming out party for China, the winter Games officially kicked off Friday as the Asian power sought to assert its political and industrial presence even as it tries to crawl out of a pandemic.

The opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Games had all the elements of a well-rehearsed spectacle: flag-waving athletes from the 91 countries greeting the crowd, an impressive light show, foreign dignitaries on hand.

But there was no mistaking the difference from the 2008 Summer Games: the crowd was much smaller this time due to the pandemic as was the presence of dignitaries from key world powers, including the U.S, in a show of protest over China's human rights abuses. But the host country also showed how its own profile has changed in 14 years.

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The opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing kicked off at 8:08 on the eighth day of the eighth month because in China the number eight is associated with good luck. Some 9,000 couples chose the date to get married. A few hours prior to the ceremony, President George W. Bush and Russia's leader Vladimir Putin gave each other a hug, then headed to a lavish banquet hosted by Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao.

Confidence, openness, a country determined to showcase its growing economic talents, a desire to let the world know that China's future was bright, its culture dynamic and welcoming – these were among the things the Communist Party sought to project when China last hosted the Olympic Games on Aug. 8, 2008.

An estimated $43 billion was spent. At Beijing's new latticed shell National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, 90,000 people packed in to see 15,000 acrobats, dancers, musicians and trapeze artists put on a four-hour long elaborately choreographed spectacle that featured performers on a giant calligraphy scroll and 29 different sets of fireworks. There were various allusions to 5,000 years of Chinese art, history and music.

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Li Ning, China's three-time gymnastic gold medalist, was magically hoisted to the roof of the stadium by thin, invisible wires and then completed a lap of the arena in mid-air, before lighting the torch tower. One hundred state leaders and royals attended. Beijing's organizers kept the sky rain-free by firing more than 1,100 iodine-laced rockets into the sky. And more than 2 billion people – almost one-third of the world's population in 2008 – tuned into watch, ratings company Nielsen later estimated.

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Almost 14 years later, Friday's opening ceremony for China's second Olympic Games was far different. (Beijing is now the only city to host a Summer and Winter Games.)

For a start, while the Bird's Nest was once again the venue for the opening ceremony, coronavirus measures and freezing winter temperatures meant the ceremony took place with select public spectators and lasted about an hour and a half.

There were 3,000 performers, not 15,000. According to the organizers, they were all students, not professional actors, dancers, singers and soldiers like the last time around. There were impressive ice-cool blue lasers that spelled out the names of previous cities that have hosted Winter Olympics and a large Chinese flag was passed along a line of colorfully dressed adults representing the country’s 56 officially recognized nationalities.

Zhang Yimou, the 71-year-old Oscar nominated movie director of Hero and Raise the Red Lantern who directed Friday's ceremony and the one in 2008, said in the run-up to the event that his new work – in keeping with the motto of the 2022 Games, "Together for a shared future" – reflected the need to overcome global challenges as a community. It's not hard to see a reference to the coronavirus pandemic in that.

But it may be more accurate to say that the ceremony reflected China's self-sufficiency.

In 2008, China wasn't a fully-fledged world power.

It is today.

It has aircraft carriers and bullet trains. Vast cities with futuristic skylines. It has a space program that's reached Mars and the Moon. It has built artificial islands in disputed waters in the South China Sea. China's economy is no longer geared just for exports. It is financing ambitious infrastructure projects all over the world. It has huge companies that serve a frenetic consumer society, much of it connected by smartphone.

"China doesn't need any longer to prove to the world who it is. Everyone knows," said Andy Mok, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a public policy think tank based in Beijing, citing its modern cities, tech innovations and powerful military.

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China's state media reported that 5G, the Internet of Things, AI and other hi-tech wizardry accounted for about 60% of Friday's performance. Tools used to launch satellites and rockets helped control digital ice cubes and snowflakes and other winter wonderland tropes that were handled with art and sophistication.

Unlike in 2008, diplomatic boycotts over Beijing's human rights record in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and its stranglehold on domestic dissent kept leaders from the U.S. and other western nations away. Though this time Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping's de facto guest of honor for the 2022 Games, was not effectively "late" despite being accused of threatening to start a war in Europe by invading Ukraine.

In 2008, Russia's leader was the very last statesmen to show up to the red carpet, meet-and-greet lunch hosted by Hu on the opening day of the Games at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, an important venue for state affairs. Putin was late because he was busy sending tanks into Georgia, where a five-day conflict ended with Moscow reasserting some control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, breakaway territories that like Georgia and Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union. (Putin annexed Ukraine's Crimea region on the Black Sea in the final days of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.)

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Still, precisely who and what China is may not always be easily discernible.

The ceremony deployed uplifting music and cute kids holding doves while incorporating the Chinese characters of "peace" and "happiness," pushing the theme that "a truly wise person sees the whole world as a family." Yet since President Xi Jinping took over in 2012, he has overseen a harsh ideological crackdown, most notably in the Chinese government's forced assimilation of ethnic Uyghurs in the northwest. Hong Kong has been stripped of many civil liberties. The war drums over Taiwan are beating.

Were the colorfully dressed adults who passed the flag around for real this time? In 2008, children from China's Han ethnic majority dressed up to represent all these groups. In 2022, China's self-assuredness was evident in its choice of final torchbearer: Dinigeer Yilamujiang, an ethnic Uyghur from Xinjiang – a cross-country skier and China's only Uyghur athlete on the Olympic team – where the assimilation claims extend to rape, forced abortions and imprisonment. China denies this.

Also in 2008, to show off China’s new openness, protest parks were added to the official Olympic sites. They proved just for show: no protests were approved, and two grandmothers were punished for applying.

But in 2022, there are no protest zones and athletes were advised to bring "burner phones" lest they fall prey to Orwellian surveillance that highlights the nation's totalitarian turn over the past 14 years.

"Perceptions about China's government have hardened," said Arthur Dong, a professor at Georgetown University who specializes in legal and business engagements between the U.S. and China. "I think China is well aware that with this ceremony it is catering to two audiences – both an external and internal one and for the internal one it's a moment to reflect on China's greatness and reinforce nationalistic sentiment."

Watching from his home in Shanghai, chef Derek Wong, 38, said that the ceremony did a good job of representing "togetherness" in a time of political uncertainty and amid the global pandemic. And Tao Jiali, 32, a teacher from Shanghai, said it shows how powerful China is because it was able to organize an Olympics during a pandemic.

For the next two weeks, and far beyond, Beijing looks set to brush off external criticism, and play by its own rules.

For the hosts, there’s less riding on these Olympics than in 2008, and the Games are not even the biggest deal in China’s capital this year. That’s the Communist Party Congress this fall, when Xi will extend his rule for a third term.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Beijing's opening ceremony touts a different China from 2008 Olympics