The Olympics' Opening Ceremony

The Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing this week was lauded from all corners as the most magnificent in the games' history.

Not surprising, then, the furore surrounding the exposures of the various in ways in which the public were conned by this glitzy performance.

Most astonishing was the news that Yang Peiyi, the seven year old girl who was to sing a Chinese anthem to the television audience of over a billion, was substituted for a prettier model, who mimed sweetly to a recording of Peiyi's voice.

Whilst this is a shocking revelation, undermining the ideals of rewarding merit which the Olympics should reflect (not to mention a huge embarrassment for China), its treatment by the press has been rather unfair.

Many were keen to portray it as typical of China, the Telegraph referring to "the control exercised over the ceremony by the Games' political overseers" and the Guardian claiming that "Research by Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas, has suggested that the "beauty premium" in parts of China is far more pronounced than in the west for women".

In this editor's opinion, however, this behaviour is as worthy of any western country as it is of China; the US, for example, is known for its disturbing culture of child beauty pageants, and many nations might have opted for a thinly-veiled lunge at diversity or political correctness, which would have been an equally calculated presentation of an image.

Criticism of Beijing's Olympics from other corners is more justified, for instance its overbearing treatment of political protestors in the city; however, in this case, the critics may have been rather hasty in their judgement of China's actions.