As London gears up for this summer’s Olympics, this documentary examines previous host China as it readied itself for the 2008 Beijing Games. The result is an insight into the opening of a forbidding nation to global scrutiny, and explores China’s image of itself and the world.

The 21st century is already being coined ‘The Chinese Century’, but the country’s economy has been growing steadily for decades, fed by the West’s insatiable demand for cheap goods and boosted by the return of Hong Kong. Early signs of Chinese spending power were seen in the world’s auction houses as Eastern Art grew in popularity. Clues to industrial power can be seen in the global stock markets, and language schools in Cambodia as people seek to accommodate the new superpower. 

But already the tables are turning. As China’s burgeoning wealth has raised an estimated 40 million people out of poverty the government has realised that now it is they that will need to find food and goods to import to satisfy demand. The slogan for the Beijing Games was ‘One World, One Dream’ but, from the vast new soy fields of Brazil to China’s growing influence in Africa it seems it may take the world to feed the 1.3 billion Chinese ‘dreamers’.