Claims of wiping fakery from the Chinese Internet

The Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on August 8 has been revealed to have had its share of special effects (or fakery as some have called it).

On August 8, Xinhua claimed that 9-year old Lin Miaoke had "lent her voice" to "Sing a Song of Praise to the Motherland" as children representing China's officially-recognized 56 minorities carried the national flag. Lin presumably represented the culturally, politically and numerically dominant Han ethnicity and accordingly occupied the center spotlight onstage.

Olympics music director Chen Qigang later acknowledged that the final order to replace orthodontically-challenged Yang Peiyi with Lin Miaoke came after a Politburo member attended a rehearsal. According to the AFP:

""The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation," Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China."

The New York Times also reported that government censors were wiping many, but not all, online debate over cute Lin and snubbed Yang.

With his disclosure, Chen may have subtly indicated his displeasure with this decision. However, his words haven't been so easily wiped off the Net. While Sina.com links to the story are no longer available, a search on Baidu easily led back to Chen's interview.