China, the Olympics, and Us

Listening to our first hour this morning, I was struck by several comments about the glossy postcard image of China as presented on TV.

On Point has spent a lot of time looking closely at China, from many angles, and as Tom noted today, we even took the show to Shanghai for a week in April. Now that we're in the homestretch of these Beijing Games, you might be interested to listen back to some of those shows, and others we've produced in the past year, for a many-faceted view of China at this moment in its history.

Two of our Shanghai shows, in particular, stand out for me. In a show we called "Young China," we talked with three Chinese students, two in Shanghai and one in Beijing, who gave us a full-throated, party-line perspective on their country that many were surprised to hear from mouths of students. No dissidents, these. (Later that week we spent an hour talking head-on about dissent in China with three top voices on the subject.)

And in our final show from Shanghai, we talked with two of China's most distinguished scholars of U.S.-China relations about the way forward for these two great powers. A memorable hour. That show, and Tom's parting thoughts from Shanghai, offered much food for further thought.

As always, there's so much more to be said. We can never exhaust this topic. Curious to hear your thoughts about our China coverage overall, and how the rest of the media has presented China in the long runnup to these Olympics, as well as during the Games. I have a feeling we'll all be chewing this over for a long time to come.