The 2008 Beijing Olympics will indubitably be a sensational display of "East meets West" and a showcase of just how advanced and "Western" is the PRC. In the run-up to the Olympics, taxi drivers are learning to speak English, citizens are being taught not to spit and now are also apparently being taught how to smile. The unknowing Westerner will be welcomed into a cultured, developed Chinese state and perhaps naively led to believe that Chinese communism isn't so bad after all.
Yet upon reflection, the PRC's modernization campaign is perhaps the most pervasive of all types of communism: not only does it interfere with an individual's personal belongings, for instance, but also tells him or her how to feel and behave. Smile now. Don't spit. Sit up straight. What's worse is that citizens incur fines if they are caught doing or not doing whatever it is the state tells them they ought or ought not to do. The PRC has become like a nagging mother whom it is impossible to shake. For all talk of progress, too, the recent modernization campaigns differ little from those of the 1950s (as documented in this 1950s anti-spitting video ) And that, I think, leaves little to smile about.