2008 Beijing Olympics

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were a spectacular display of China’s rise, but multiple scandals overshadowed them. The opening ceremony’s $100 million production, featuring 15,000 performers, was later revealed to have used a lip-synced child singer and manipulated fireworks footage—a crack in the perfect image. More damaging, China’s gymnastics team, which won 9 of 14 gold medals, included He Kexin, reportedly 14 years old at the time, below the IOC’s minimum age of 16. Protests over Tibet’s cultural suppression and China’s censorship of dissenting voices erupted globally, with clashes in Paris and London. The Games cost an estimated $44 billion, making them the most expensive in history, yet they generated only $1.8 billion in direct revenue—a loss 24 times greater than the 2012 London Games. Compared to #7, the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which suffered a 65-nation boycott, Beijing faced a full field but deeper ethical dilemmas, as human rights abuses remained hidden behind state control.