Thanks for the compliment and some good points raised, I’ll be interested to see the responses.

There are going to be problems and hassles and crises as there always will be with an event of this size, it’s the cost of doing business. But that said, China will be judged not just for what goes right, but for how the Chinese government handles the situation when things go wrong.

Very well said.

Re: Face – I agree with Froog. Eddie Izzard has a great comedic bit, involving a dog being thrown out a window, on how when we were kids we would deny we had any part in something that was “bad” even if it was strikingly obvious it was our fault. However, when you become an adult, at least in Western culture, it’s look upon as a sign of maturity if you can owe up to your mistakes and admit your faults.

Does everyone? Of course not. Is it more acceptable and common in Western culture, I would say so.

I also agree that this face saving division from reality happens at every level of society and in every day life.

@Jason: The Empire State Building was built nearly 80 years ago – the comparison is way out there. The world didn’t even have penicillin or a space program, never mind solid health and safety in the workplace seminars.

Of course the impulse to ‘cover up’ mistakes is a universal phenomenon, a worldwide problem; but it seems to me that the Chinese notion of ‘face’ makes this impulse particularly strong, dangerously so. It is both strangely abstract (often utterly divorced from the practical considerations that would usually prompt such behaviour from politicians or corporate bosses in the West) and so deeply ingrained that it seems to become an unconscious imperative.

Sure, I may be making a flippant exaggeration for the sake of argument here, but it does often seem to me as though, whereas your typical multi-national CEO might take some time to weigh up the pros and cons of a cover-up, in China lying almost always seems to be the automatic first response.

And you get that in everyday life, at every level of society, not just from cadres and businessmen. People caught out in any small goof will just lie their ass off rather than admit and apologise.

I agree that “face” is something that occurs in most cultures, American not excepted, however I would have trouble arguing that face isn’t especially important in the the Chinese cultural and political context.