The joy of sporting contests is that anything can happen. When you are a totalitarian state, however, this makes it risky to host them. The Chinese government has responded by trying to control every conceivable element of the Olympics, often by rather dubious means.

The stunning, widely used footage of firework “footprints” leading to the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony was, it transpires, computer-generated. We now know why a film director was asked to run the event.