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Xi Jinping was groomed as an heir apparent during trying political and economic times. Much of the period was troubled by the global financial crisis and recession, social unrest, and the Jasmine revolutions of 2010–2012. Additionally, Xi’s career position was not unchallenged, and he still needed to show his mettle. Xi assisted Chairman Hu Jintao with the management of party affairs, directing the campaign to study Hu’s “scientific development” concept. Simultaneously, he was embroiled in various crisis management events such as the mounting of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, bloody riots in Xinjiang, and protests in Tibet. Xi’s profile was enhanced by foreign visits to Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong. He hosted US vice president Biden’s visit to China and subsequently visited the United States. Preparations for the Eighteenth Party Congress were thrown into disarray when leadership aspirant Bo Xilai, a high-flier and party chief of Chongqing, was purged for corruption.

This chapter considers how Zhang Yimou has reimagined traditional Chinese culture and history through the use of CGI in his blockbuster film Hero (Yingxiong, 2002) and his choreography in the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It examines but refutes the accusation that he has pursued a totalitarian or fascist aesthetic by looking closely at how the ‘digital multitude’ is represented in the film and the ‘mass ornament’ is manifested in the Olympics ceremonies. Ultimately, the mass spectacles organised by Zhang tell us more about the ‘harmony’ of contemporary China with globalised capitalism than about either totalitarian aesthetics or nationalist propaganda, and they demonstrate the logic of digital labour in a globalised economy.

Beauty is about economy; nevertheless, it is also about ideology. This chapter discusses the political implications of China’s booming beauty economy. A main driving force of cosmetic surgery in China is pragmatism. This pragmatism is not only produced by the instability of the transitional Chinese social structure, but is also channelled by the Chinese Communist Party’s pragmatic ideology as exemplified by its ”cat theory” and “xiaokang” concepts. It affects an individual’s choice to undergo cosmetic surgery and the state’s policy of developing its beauty industry. Moreover, using the Miss World competition and the ceremony hostesses of Beijing Olympics as examples, the author discusses how beautiful female bodies have been appropriated into a nationalist agenda in China. Female body image and alteration practices have become both a reflection of personal identity, and a site of ideological contestation, of which state power and market forces reconfigure their power structures to form a new bodily regime.

Melinda Liu was one of the first American foreign correspondents based in the PRC when she opened Newsweek’s bureau in Beijing in 1980. Her parents had emigrated from China after World War II, and Melinda grew up in Ohio. During her four decades in journalism, Liu has written stories on turning points in modern Chinese history, including the trial of the Gang of Four, the Tiananmen massacre, the Sichuan earthquake, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the impact of COVID-19. She has reported on the advent of the internet and the Great Firewall, China’s rapid economic growth, and the rise of nationalism. As past president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, she has contended with censorship in defending freedom of the press.

The political destiny of the Chinese and the Tibetans are intertwined. Yet, the increasing politicization in the Tibet Autonomous Region threatens to worse the conflict between them. The 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway are vehicles of such politicization. The Tibetans’ political future lies less with the Dalai Lama but more with the initiative to abandon wishful thinking and take up organizing. Self-immolation is futile sacrifice. If the Tibet question is not resolved during the Dalai Lam’s lifetime, the next riots will be much worse than those in March 2008.

The book concludes by showing how statements from leaders in India and China today still reek of victimization. Rather then emphasizing the fact that India and China were the victors in colonialism, they continue to emphasize the wrongs done to them. It shows how this book has offered a new way to think about both international relations theory and India, and China. It then offers new pathways for research.