Lip-Syncgate gives voice to Western concerns about Chinese totalitarianism

The first scandal of the Beijing Olympics is in, and the loser, apparently, is China. As the assembled global media reported this week, Chinese officials last week quietly made a little switch at the opening ceremonies, replacing a 7-year-old singer with a child deemed more attractive, who passed off the first girl's recording as her own on TV.

Which raises a question: Lip-syncing is an international scandal?

One answer: Under the circumstances, maybe it should be.

On the face of it, lip-syncing is no big deal. Most performers in music videos or movie musicals use it. Singer-dancers do it in live performances, too, given the difficulty of dancing and singing simultaneously. Heck, even the Beatles did it in their early British TV appearances.

Using a glamorous stand-in for a more accomplished singer has a fine tradition, too. Didn't Hollywood do it when it hired Natalie Wood (dubbed by songbird Marni Nixon) to star in "West Side Story"? Didn't it do the same thing with Audrey Hepburn (Nixon again) in "My Fair Lady" or Deborah Kerr (yep, Nixon) in "The King and I"?

So what's wrong with the Chinese doing the same thing during their $100 million floor show?

The difference might be that from the West's perspective, the Chinese story plays into a larger narrative of totalitarian control and perfectionism. Although barely visible in NBC's glossy prime-time coverage of these Games, the lip-syncing episode taps a deeper suspicion about China's authoritarianism and groupthink. Lip-Syncgate seems to expose the iron hand behind the smiling faces in Beijing.

The decision to bench 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who had won a kind of "Chinese Idol" contest to sing at the opening ceremonies, was reportedly made at the last minute by a member of China's politburo. That alone sounds both odd and chilling. Imagine, if possible, the Western equivalent: On the eve of a big Broadway opening, the secretary of commerce emerges from the wings and overrules the show's director on the big finale. More chorus girls! the bureaucrat orders.

L'affaire Lip-sync reminded the world that such state control is business as usual. "This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make," the ceremony's musical designer, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Associated Press Television. "Our rehearsals had already been vetted several times. They were all very strict. When we had the dress rehearsals, there were spectators from various divisions, including, above all, a member of the politburo, who gave us his verdict: We had to make the swap."