It is the Year of the Rat in China and the whole world smelled one last week at the Beijing Olympics.

As expected, the People’s Republic of China is hijacking the Games for its own political purposes, like the Soviets did in Moscow in 1980 and the Nazis in 1936. But while this Olympics is being used primarily to announce to the world the emergence of a powerful, “new” China, the ruthless, old, Maoist version still managed to attract a lot of attention.

The first misstep for the host country at the meticulously scripted and spectacularly staged Games occurred when its gold-medal winning women’s gymnastics team was accused of using underage competitors. Athletes have to be 16 to be able to compete in Beijing. But to many journalists and spectators the Chinese gymnasts looked so young, a U.S. Olympic coach believed one still had her “milk teeth.”

A New York Times story probably confirmed China broke the rules when it cited a speech the Chinese director of general administration of sport made last November. In it, the director referred to one of the women’s team members as “the 13-year old uneven bar gymnast He Kexin.” And while the pixie-like Kexin insisted yesterday she is sixteen, addition and subtraction are still the same in China as everywhere else despite what the Party might say.

In a way, for the girls’ sake, if the sports czars in China did engage in some form of shenanigans to hide their true ages, hopefully it only involves the less harmful and pathetic tactic of document manipulation, as is suspected. While unethical, that would not compare to the real crime of their possibly having been subjected to horrifying drug programs and gene-doping treatments to stop the onset of puberty.

If they really are 16, this may account for why they look so young. Such illegal doping is done to female gymnasts, so they can retain longer their more flexible, prepubescent forms that allow them to perform the more difficult manoeuvres.

Former Soviet block athletes were also subjected to drug mistreatments, from which some suffered greatly in later years and a few even died. It is known China hired a number of former Eastern European coaches to build their Olympic team powerhouse. It is highly likely some would be familiar with this method of obtaining impressive, medal-winning performances, on which Marxist-Leninist regimes have always placed such great emphasis.

Besides the doubts about China’s gymnastics team, observers are scratching their heads about that country’s first gold-medal win in the pool. Liu Zige captured first place in the 200 metre butterfly in a time of 2:04.19 his week, demolishing the world record by a full second and shaving five seconds off her time of a year ago. The Australian world champion, who finished third behind another Chinese girl who also seemed to come from nowhere, swam only 0.86 slower than her former world record time.

But the strongest reminder that things may not be as they really are in Beijing occurred right at the Games’ beginning. The breathtaking fireworks display people thought they were seeing live on their home television sets was actually “previously recorded footage that was provided to the broadcasters.”

The deceit, however, got worse. More fakery was reported involving the 56 children who paraded around the Olympic stadium in costumes of China’s different ethnic groups. It later turned out they were actually all from the dominant Han Chinese, which makes up 90 per cent of the population.    

But in what can only described as a case of perverted patriotism, the pretty nine-year-old girl, Lin Miaoke, whom spectators believed was singing “Ode to the Motherland” at the opening ceremonies when the Chinese flag was carried in, was only lip synching.

The beautiful voice millions of people heard was actually that of a seven-year-old girl, Yang Peiyi, whose looks were deemed too “flawed” to be seen by an audience. Her crooked teeth and chubby face, apparently, would not reflect the “perfect” Marxist-Leninist socialist system the Chinese government says it is building. And a bag over Yang Peiyi’s head would also probably have looked too much out of place.

But while the civilized world is troubled by how the Chinese government could so easily scar a child like Yang Peiyi, its conscience is troubled by nothing. In fact, the word conscience does not even exist in the Chinese Communist Party’s vocabulary, never has and never will. Seventy million Chinese murdered under Mao attests to that.

The episode with the two little girls and the gymnasts shows China’s Communist Party still has not changed its nature or ideology with the country’s growing prosperity. It is still a heartless ideology, according to which individuals like Yang Peiyi and Lin Miaoke are nothing, not even human beings, but only unimportant collections of atoms that are to be moulded and used by the Party for its own dictatorial purposes.  

When the opening ceremonies’ music director said switching the girls was due to the fact they had to put “our country’s interests first”, he really meant the Party’s interest.

And if it is discovered the gymnasts’ and swimmers’ were doped, that’s because their bodies do not belong to them, but rather to the soulless ideologues that run the state. They have destroyed all universal human standards and morals.

The reported harvesting of executed Falun Gong members’ internal organs for sale to foreigners exemplifies this barbaric ideology best. It also shows the Party is still practical in its fanaticism and criminality on all levels, from the Olympics to the gulag, from little girls to political prisoners, and is still capable of any crime.   

But by replacing one little girl before the crowds with another, prettier one, the whole world saw who really has the ugly face. And while the Party believes it is introducing to the world through the Olympics a new, emerging China, it is actually only showing a country that has yet to emerge from under the old shadow of Mao.