LONDON -- How does "1.3 billion people" sound for an internal audience?  Worth digging out a budget for?

The Chinese Olympics this summer have been a great success.  By anyone's measure.  We are still in the 'good news glow' in the final days.  Undoubtedly the world will rush back in after the closing ceremonies and talk about drug test failures, athletes' dysfunctional relatives, and China's various misdeeds.  And many pundits will ask the question: Did this advance China's PR goals?

Has China -- the implicit question will be -- pulled the wool over people's eyes?  Have they managed to cause enough excitement and confusion to distract people from the long list of misdeeds that the media likes to drag out?  (Being a native of Canada, a mild-mannered people, annually demonised by our seal hunt, I can feel their pain.)

But it occurs to me that the game for China isn't external.  Or at least not entirely external.  There is a massive internal audience for these games.  As prosperity clearly starts to move across China, you can imagine people seeing their country succeed like for the first time.

The Chinese celebrated themselves in the lovely and lavish opening ceremonies.  They celebrate their athletes in the biggest medals haul ever.  And how can their internal audience not eat it up?

Who has ever seen a Chinese cheerleader before this month?  Where did the double-medal women's beach volleyball teams come from?  Or the sailing teams?

If I am sitting in my front room in rural China and looking at all this, I only have one thought: 'Man, are we good."

/df