China

From an international standpoint, this was the best thing that could have happened. China opened it's arms to the rest of the world. They opened up the doors and welcomed in people from all over the world and said come on in. For just a brief moment, they stopped living behind a wall.

It's really too bad that so many people decided to use this years Olympics as a forum to make some kind of political statement. They just don't seem to realize that all of their political rhetoric is just going to fade into the background noise. If they thought that they could make more noise than a billion people saying; " Hello world! Just take a look at us!", then they were sadly mistaken.

If there's one thing that China has in it's favor, it's people power. I'm really convinced that the people of China would just as soon leave the past behind them and get on with forging a better future. They really aren't interested in hearing a lot of protests and demonstrations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the communist system. I'm just saying that China is a country in a state of change. They are undergoing a metamorphosis into what they were meant to be, and while it's not going to be what they were in the past, they're not going to abandon their identity as a unique and distinctive nation either. They will never be American wannabes. China will always be China.

These Olympics were simply an opportunity for them to show the world that they can play the game too. I think that they're going to be much bigger players in the game than they've been in the past.