> The idea of some giant, oppressive machine staging an
> entertainment on a grand scale on the theme of universal peace and
> brotherhood just rubs me the wrong way.
Yes, me too. And it has more in common with 1936 than even you identify. There is a strong streak of supremacism in the Chinese middle/upper classes. This display was not so much an attempt to make a statement about the superiority of the socialist system (gag, if that's what you want to call the strange mixture of state dictatorship mixed with laissez-faire that exists in China), it was more a statement about "WE" as a people are superior.
-Thomas