Beijing packed another pyrotechnic punch at the Bird’s Nest tonight for the closing ceremony of the 29th Olympiad. Drawing on China’s rich tradition of acrobatics, filmmaker Zhang Yimou playfully drew on the theme of remembering to sign off China’s long fortnight under the most high-voltage spotlight.

China ended the Games with 51 gold medals, signaling the strongest domination of sport by a country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The sport was intriguingly good at these Olympics, and — barring any distressing news that may come by way of doping — Beijing will be a marker for students of athletic excellence.

But for China, these Games have been as much about the staging of them as for the medal haul. China was keen to host them, and seven years ago made pledges to get them and asserted its ambitions for rapid development in preparing for them. The ledger on that score will be scrutinized by policy analysts and the rest of the world still trying to get an understanding of what the rapid rise of China means, and what it will make of that rise internationally and domestically.

When was the last time the rest of world so carefully tracked the Games for their political sideshow, and when was the last time that a host nation went to such amazing lengths to stage the perfect Games?

At least London, with its handover performance, showed that Yimou’s pageantry is not likely to matched four years from now. With a tacky backdrop of the Red London Doubledecker, it nonetheless got the stadium ecstatic with Jimmy Page’s appearance.

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