Has China really changed that much?
Updated on 31 March 2008
Maybe this isn't the moment of great historical import the Chinese government and a hundred western commentators tell us it is.
The women in pink were told only yesterday that they would be acting as cheerleaders during the ceremony to mark to arrival of the Olympic torch.
They sat in neat rows wearing matching sweatshirts, waving golden pompoms whenever the camera-crane swept towards them.
They said they were volunteers, who dance in their local park every morning - a typical Chinese activity.
Their enthusiasm about the Olympics was tempered when we asked them for an interview on camera. "The foreigners might twist our words," they said.
This morning's torch relay celebration in Tiananmen Square felt a bit flat. It's the largest public square in the world, with a capacity of a million people, but only 4,000 invited performers and audience were there.
When the Olympic official announced that this was "a historic moment", and Xi Jinping - hotly tipped as the successor to China's current President Hu Jintao - proclaimed that the 2008 Games would promote "a harmonious world of enduring peace and prosperity," I didn't feel I was present at a moment of great historical significance.
Rather, I found myself thinking of a photo I have above my desk in my Beijing apartment, which shows a similarly sunny day 42 years ago, when the square was pulsating with Red Guards waving their copies of the Little Red Book.
The government appears to be reverting to old arguments and closing in on itself.
Mao presides, standing on the Tiananmen Rostrum, greeting the adoring crowd and - for the first time - sporting the red armband which came to symbolise the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution.
Of course, I also thought of 4 June 1989, and the iconic image of the small man with the plastic bag standing in front of the tank. Those were truly moments in history.
The Chinese government is constantly telling its people that the Beijing Olympics is a great symbol of China's renewed strength and vision, a marker to show the Middle Kingdom has regained its rightful place in the world.
But has China really changed that much? Economic development is phenomonal, but over the past few weeks, as the Tibet crisis has unfolded, we have seen old-style polemics against the foreign media and a re-emergence of Cultural Revolution language.
Premier Wen Jiabao talks of "freeing our minds", but - under pressure from unhappy Tibetans and world opinion - the government appears to be reverting to old arguments and closing in on itself.
The other day, a friend told me about Zhang Yihe, whose father was condemned as a "rightist" in the 1950s, and whose own books are still banned.
In her recent writings, she has reflected on the continued suppression of those who have alternative views and concluded that little has changed politically in half a century.
"This is just an insignificant transitional time in China," she says.
Maybe she's right. Maybe this isn't the moment of great historical import that the Chinese government and a hundred western commentators tell us it is.
