I'm watching the Olymic Mens Gymnatic Finals rigth now, and there is no one in the crowd....

It's like watching a high school gymnastic meet in the US. I guess we're all ok with a government that would rather not provide access to their own citizens out of fear.

Then suddenly it was full.

I read an article on MSNBC the other day. Whoever handled ticket management screwed up big time. Lots of empty seats during the competitions, and lots of people outside pissed off because they can't get tickets.

There's more to it, but they touch on it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article4547323.ece
It's a pretty interesting article.
Duckie

Basically, what they want is to be like what Bush does with his town-hall meetings: everyone is carefully screened and pre-approved to present the appearance that 'normal' or 'typical' Americans are fully behind the Bush vision. The article states that the Chinese leaders found they couldn't have total control over really large crowds and so opted to just leave things emptier than usual rather than risk revolt.

On a side note, does the Times have a conservative bent? Or are their readers just particularly dense. Many of the comments complain that the story is 'China bashing'. Any nation that would do this:



and many other things so that they can have an athletic competition (which IMO isn't as important as human lives) deserves to be flamed.

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Ticket sales, were pretty poor across the board.