OK, so they were smiling, but as they twirled those drumsticks in the air I couldn’t get the image of a horde of sword wielding warriors out of my mind. It was hard to escape the symbolism of that spectacular opening ceremony; China, a nation of 1.3 billion people, has emerged from the shadows of its 5,000-year history and is now a world power. The only thing missing was a musical number featuring a recording of Ethel Merman belting out the lyrics to "Anything you can do, I can do better."

Now don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed the Olympics. As a diehard sports fan, I stayed up well past my bedtime watching Michael Phelps and the other athletes.

But I’m also a political junkie and a history buff and there’s no getting away from the significance of the Olympics on both of those counts dating back to their origin when they served as a peaceful, albeit temporary, substitute for open warfare between Athens and Sparta. In my own lifetime this is the third time that the Olympics has been hosted by a totalitarian government and each time those political overtones have been clear.

The first of those was in 1936. I was 14 years old that year and I remember it well. There was no television, of course, and radio could hardly do it justice, but the newspapers were filled with stories of the event and newsreels at the local movie theater brought us black and white footage of the action. It took place in Berlin and Adolf Hitler, who only three years later would launch World War II by marching into Poland, obviously planned to use the occasion for propaganda. The stadium was bedecked in swastikas, goose-stepping Nazi Storm Troopers paraded, and loudspeakers blared the strains of "Deutschland Uber Alles." Only members of the "Aryan" race were allowed to compete for Germany in what Hitler believed would be a demonstration of the superiority of his "Master Race."

Hitler, however, hadn’t figured on a competitor named Jesse Owens who broke five world records in track. He was an American. He was also black; the son of sharecroppers, the grandson of slaves. So much for Aryan superiority. Hitler refused to shake his hand but Owens later recalled that while Hitler may have snubbed him, "I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either."

The next Olympics to be hosted by a totalitarian state was in 1980 in Moscow. Not a single American won a medal at that one for the simple reason that the United Sates, along with 64 other countries, boycotted the event to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an action some wanted to repeat this year to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and its overall poor record on human rights.

But to get back to those spectacular opening ceremonies in Beijing. Odds are that no other nation could have put on such a show, not because of the modern technology involved but rather because of the discipline required from the cast of 15,000 which executed the precisely choreographed program. China may be changing but make no mistake about it, it is still a dictatorship in which self-discipline and conformity is the national policy.

In 1992 when my wife and I visited China as tourists – I had previously been there in 1944 at the end of World War II – we climbed the Great Wall and I recall remarking to our guide that I was surprised that there wasn’t a larger crowd at such a popular attraction. Oh, he explained, that’s because it’s the tourist season and they regulate the number of Chinese citizens who can visit so foreigners can enjoy it better. Just imagine if you were told that you couldn’t visit the Statue of Liberty in the summer so tourists from Europe would have more elbow room.

But that was China then and it still is today, a place where the media is controlled, the Internet censored and where they can order the traffic to stop flowing and the factories to close in an attempt to temporarily ease pollution during the Olympics.

Hitler’s Germany lay in ruins at the end of World War II and the Soviet Union has disintegrated but China’s role in the modern world is yet to be determined. Frankly, I’m a little nervous. After all, China already owns more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes which means that every American currently owes about $4,000 to China. Those drummers may have been smiling but, if I remember correctly, so was the cat who swallowed the canary.