History was the real winner of the 2008 Olympic Games. It was a conscious part of China’s agenda beginning with the bid process in 1999 through to completion of the $43 billion mega-project in August 2008. To be sure, China’s organizers had their eyes on the medal count, but this was subsumed under the broader purpose of demonstrating to the world that China was now marching on the right side of history toward growing prosperity and power. The major objectives of the course are to introduce students to the thinking behind China’s new nationalism and to ongoing problems in state-civil society relations, and to encourage students to consider on both counts what this might portend for the future.