Jim Lampley, UNC Class of 1971, is working his 14th Olympic Games, summer and winter. So, following the stirring victory by the U.S. men’s basketball squad against Spain in North America’s pre-dawn hours, Lampley spoke with some experience in offering NBC viewers a few comments about the Beijing Games.

Perhaps most striking was Lampley’s observation, repeated following Sunday’s afternoon session, that the big winner at the XXIX Olympiad was not Michael Phelps or any single team or sport, but China itself.

The host nation, one of the more repressive governments in the world, was victorious in its efforts to put on a happy face, even if that required overtly manipulating images, as it did during the opening ceremonies.

NBC, having paid nearly $1 billion in rights fees, performed its part by papering over the forced removal of Beijing residents to make way for Olympic venues and its stifling of political dissent and intellectual and press freedom. Heavy police presence throughout Beijing was, like the hundreds of American-style cheerleaders, largely kept off-screen. An announcer lamenting the distance which fans were kept from marathon runners, who might have derived encouragement or intelligence from onlookers, was as close as NBC came to reflecting less-savory realities.

China is attempting to maintain what is likely a doomed dichotomy – cultivating a free market while stifling free expression. In the short-run, however, there are certain advantages. The government built a high-speed rail line in Shanghai in only two years, according to Glen Hiemstra, a noted futurist who follows and forecasts technical and social trends. Such alacrity is difficult to imagine in a democracy, certainly our democracy, where we promise to balance the imperatives of perceived public benefit against protected individual rights, including property rights, and environmental standards.

For all its deftness managing its image, China’s efforts would remain hollow were it not for the uncommon success enjoyed this year by its athletes.

We tend to focus, quite understandably, on the achievements of American athletes, who routinely capture more total medals than any other nation. We follow familiar stories and learn new ones. An especial pleasure is reveling in the golden exploits of folks from our neighborhood -- Wake Forest basketball’s Chris Paul or UNC soccer’s Lindsay Tarpley and Heather O’Reilly -- or learning of great athletes who largely eluded our notice while in our midst, like N.C. State swimmer Cullen Jones.

Many commentators witnessed Chinese achievement and got distracted by relative trivia such as the disputed ages of its female gymnasts. Far more important was the medal count for their nation, as Lampley aptly noted on the final day of competition.

Chinese athletes, winners of 63 medals at the Athens Games in 2004, had 100 this month, a 59 percent increase. “What we’re saying is, this was an explosion,” Lampley offered. Only the Americans with 110 medals had more in 2008, and they were second to the Chinese in earning gold by a decisive 51-36 margin.

China's medal production is not simply a function of enjoying home court advantage. The medal count has been rising steadily since 1984, when the world’s most populous nation returned to the Olympic fold after a politically-motivated absence spanning decades.

From commerce to athletics, post-Mao Zedong China has aggressively sought a prominent place on the international stage. Those efforts have met with increasing, and increasingly breathtaking, success. Back in 1996 at Atlanta, the Chinese finished fourth in the medal count with 50 behind the U.S., Germany and Russia. By 2000 at Sydney, Australia, the Chinese were third with 59. Now their medal count has hit triple digits, and only U.S. athletes are more decorated.

The rise in Chinese Olympic success is reflective of an even larger shift, as the economic and athletic clout of Asian nations has exploded. America’s corporations, increasingly international in production and sales, have both facilitated the economic explosion and benefited from it.

Many American companies are, of course, sports-related, and in embracing the Beijing Games are riding a highly lucrative wave. According to Clark Plexico, North Carolina-based president of International Strategies, Inc., a mere 100 million of China’s 1.3 billion citizens can be considered middle class. In India, the figure is 300 million (the population of the United States) out of 1.1 billion residents. That leaves plenty of room to gain customers for everything from autos to cigarettes, soda to fast food, athletic shoes to NBA basketball. Others countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Mexico are similarly positioned to step onto the world stage economically.

By comparison, the U.S. is, quite literally, old business.

Americans are accustomed to being atop both the economic heap and the Olympic medal count, but neither is a given. We missed registering altogether in Olympic competition by boycotting the Moscow Games of 1980 in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A dozen years later at Barcelona, Spain, the U.S. was edged 112-108 by a now-defunct creation called the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprised of 11 former Soviet republics that presently compete as separate entities.

For American athletes to remain preeminent in Olympic competition, individual sports federations must consider following the highly organized model of USA Basketball. (A task they will doubtless undertake with far fewer resources than the NBA’s alter ego.) Under Managing Director Jerry Colangelo, the U.S. built a program that commanded a three-year commitment from 33 NBA players. The result was golden.

Contrast that with members of our men’s and women’s 4X100 relay teams, who dropped their batons and incurred instant elimination. Those failures reflected inadequate attention to teamwork and detail; Doug Logan, the new chief executive officer of USA Track and Field, promised “a comprehensive review” of the organization’s selection, training, and coaching methods for relays.

The Beijing Games amply demonstrated that the time has come when a laissez faire approach must yield to concerted forethought and preparation if our flag is still to be raised more frequently than any other.