These mega-events have few proven grassroots benefits, however, and are no replacement for the substantive, fundamental reforms the Chinese government itself admits are necessary to modernize the country. Moreover, this obsession with mega-events may be damaging to long-term development, and ultimately risks widening the gulf between the experiences of ordinary Chinese and the flag-waving, mixed-market utopia portrayed in state propaganda.

Since May 2008, eight distinct events on this scale have taken place in China, or one every three months. These have fallen into three categories: conventional events such as the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai World's Fair and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China; trophy projects such as the Chinese space program, which recently put the first Chinese astronaut in space, and the Antarctic exploration program, which last year dispatched the largest polar expedition ever seen; and natural disasters such as the Sichuan and Qinghai earthquakes, which are similarly co-opted as a vehicle for the Party's intended narrative of nationhood. 

These events receive wall-to-wall coverage across the state's propaganda apparatus. With the advent of new media, opinion-shaping campaigns have become even more sophisticated and pervasive. Mega-events and trophy projects are deployed to inspire national pride and unity, with event highlights repeated over and over to the point of mind-numbing multimedia saturation. The treatment of natural disasters is unashamedly emotive, glorifying state services and government responses, while marginalizing valid criticisms as unpatriotic. 

In China, much of what would elsewhere be considered conventional news is reserved forconsumption by Communist Party elites, forcing domestic media to rely on the endless stream of ceremony and hyperbole surrounding mega-events to fill column inches. Furthermore, with evidence of qualitative socio-economic improvement and substantive political reform increasingly hard to come by, the government has become increasingly dependent on these events to validate its rhetorical promises.

Of course, the image portrayed by government propaganda is incomplete. While mega-events may have some localized benefits, there is little evidence linking them to long-term,trickle-down development (.pdf). Furthermore, Chinese mega-events have been routinely accompanied by forced evictions, environmental damage and allegations of corruption. A developmental strategy based on short-term, highly localized objectives may do more harm than good, leading to unbalanced, badly managed change, as witnessed in Beijingprior to the 2008 Olympics.

With regard to the Chinese space program, while it is beginning to yield genuine military and communications advances, domestic coverage focuses on plans to put a man on the moon, perhaps as early as 2017. However, the mission's scientific justification is limited, so it is instead pitched by state propagandists as a symbolic display of technological parity with the U.S. 

The ostensible purpose of trophy projects such as the space program or Antarctic expeditions is not only to showcase national achievement, but also to foster a wider cultureof scientific excellence and aspiration. However, just as mega-events have limited benefits for grassroots development, so the wider impact of trophy projects is restricted by the underlying political environment.

An editorial published in the state media the day before Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize noted that "the overall environment for conducting scientific research in China is not improving, and if anything, it is deteriorating." Despite massive increases in funding, scientific development has been undermined by the perennial problems of corruption, political interference and a lack of accountability. Headline achievements such as putting a man in space have not been matched by the necessary back-end educational and institutional reforms necessary to create a genuinely dynamic culture of scientific innovation.

A revealing example is the flagship Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). The $34.5 million telescope is undoubtedly a world-class facility. But although China has excellent earth-to-space viewing locations in its remote Western territories, for political reasons, LAMOST was built at Xinlong, just 200 miles from Beijing. As a result, researchers at the site admit that advances in viewing capabilities have been effectively wiped out by local industrial and light pollution.

This penchant for eye-catching but essentially worthless projects is not a new phenomenon in China, but it has taken on new dimensions with the rise of new media, which have allowed for greater diversity and sophistication in the state's bread-and-circus propaganda. What's more, these events are becoming increasingly high-risk as Beijing is forced into more-ambitious projects to keep the bar rising. On the ground, however, socio-economic development is uneven and unsustainable, and reform to auxiliary aspects of the socio-political system has essentially ground to a halt. The Chinese people, deeply skeptical of their government's intentions at the best of times, are unlikely to be satisfied by Communist Party ceremonies if living standards continue to decline in real terms. 

The prioritization of national pride over national interest has long been a fundamental weakness of China's political elites. As they reach for the moon, grassroots development struggles, and the pomp and circumstance of party discourse becomes ever-further removed from the day-to-day realities of many Chinese citizens.

**Iain Mills is a Beijing-based freelance writer.