San Francisco Squalor Swept Under the Rug During APEC Summit

Commentary An old friend of mine from my youth in Michigan attended the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Returning to the states, she visited me out here in California. She said the Chinese Communist Party authorities had made sure the streets were clear of any homeless people or other troublemakers. The air she breathed, although mitigation efforts had been enacted, still caused her to choke. And numerous high-rise buildings were “totally empty.” She called Beijing a Potemkin City, derived from Potemkin Village, which Britannica defines as “any of a number of fake villages designed to impress the Russian empress Catherine the Great. The term has also come to be used to describe an elaborate facade designed to hide an undesirable reality.”...