"China after all is a beacon of the worlds economic future, until the shooting starts in the middle east anyhow"

I disagree with that statement. Most of the world sees China as a place to make a buck, both short term and long term. If China does indeed live up to their potential as a full blown military state with no regard to human rights, I think you'll see the rest of the world start to pull out regardless of the potential profit. Something akin to what happened to South Africa 20 years ago, but on a much grander scale. One thing that a lot of people don't know is that the Chinese stock market is by and large based on nothing. The majority of investors are little more than day traders, and there is almost no institutional investment as of yet. This makes China's beacon not much more than a brightly burning brush fire--out of control and likely to burn itself out.

Most Western investors have a dirty little secret--they (we) don't care if someone's rights have been violated, or if a 5 year old slaves away in a sweatshop for 18 hours a day making $1.50 per week, as long as they (we) don't know about it. Once it's out in the open, they (we) begin to wring their (our) hands and they (we) pull their (our) money out and start to demand change, even though it will make an enormous dent in their (our) portfolio.

2 months ago I would have thought an Olympic boycott unthinkable. Now I'm beginning to wonder if anyone will show up at all if China continues on their path, especially with regard to not allowing foreign journalists access to view any of the dissent. This is on top of some significant health concerns (google China and Hepatitis), pollution, what will likely turn into an enormous transportation and overall logistical nightmare, and the fact that there will be literally millions of locals in Beijing looking for nothing other than to scam Olympic visitors out of every possible Yuan they can. The Chinese black market is gearing up for their most profitable 6 weeks they've ever seen.

One of the things I learned about China last year as I was spending time in Shanghai is that the Chinese are natural born followers. There is almost an ingrained need to have someone tell them what to do and when to do it, it's just part of their cultural and societal DNA. For the last 60 years the Communist party has been providing the all-encompassing direction. Prior to that it was Japan's occupation, before that it was the Qing Dynasty for almost 250 years, before that the Ming dynasty, and so on and so on. This is a very very old culture where the methods of ruling the people haven't really changed in over 1000 years. Every so often there was a rebellion or an uprising where some element of the people, opposing factions, or Japan tried to take power. Overall the China as we know it has been ruled with a very heavy fist, with that fist retaining power through the excessive use of force, violation of human rights, and most importantly, denying that those events ever took place.

China's Olympics were expected to show the world, the West in particular, that the the Chinese government has become more transparent and cooperative, that China had finally caught up to the mid-20th century (in their minds to 2008), and that they could be a player on the world economic, political, and cultural stage. I'm not seeing it. I'm almost expecting a lot of international incidents, bloodshed, and an overall bad situation. I had the opportunity to be in Beijing during part of the Olympics and not only am I passing, I'm encouraging anyone who is thinking of going not to--unless they're a hardcore adventure junkie who knows how to take care of themselves.