What will it be for the Chinese Olympiad?: Berlin '36, or Tokyo '64?.

What ties all three of the above mentioned Games together? In each case, the Games symbolize(d) a global coming-out party for the host countries concerned. Berlin of 1936 and Tokyo of 1964 were both eager to prove that their respective countries had fully recovered from recent wars that had ravaged them.

In both cases, the recoveries were seen as nothing short of miraculous. After World War 1, the Germans were a beaten people, forced to push around wheel-barrels of near-worthless currency to buy bread. With many Japanese cities left smoldering in World War 2's aftermath, Japan found itself under foreign occupation.
From here, however, the two aggrieved states depart from one another. Hitler, fresh from his swastika-bedecked Games, went on to start World War 2 in Europe. By 1964, Japan was already the world's third-largest economy, but she contented herself on eventually becoming the second, brought about by a postwar version of bushido practiced in boardrooms and on factory floors rather than battlefields.

And here now is China, a country with her own historical baggage of past wrongs committed by predatory foreign powers and self-inflicted economic and social misery. Presently, China can boast about 10% GDP growth and a rapidly growing middle class. Already the Earth's 6th largest economy (based on it's own accounting), China is well on her way to global economic super-stardom. Alarming though, is the fact that with some of the proceeds of her surging economy China is rapidly adding technological sophistication to the hordes of the People's Liberation Army, and it cannot be forgotten that Beijing is committed to bringing Taiwan under it's control, one way or another.

Which path then, will China choose? The bellicosity of Berlin, or Tokyo's benign economic assent?. A hybrid course is equally plausible. It's indeed a funny thing how these Games tend to find powers on the rise. The United States hosted her first Olympiad in 1904, the dawn of what is widely considered the American Century.