China Countdown: Current Gets Naked

I'm a little late noting Current TV's Naked China pre-Olympic documentary series, airing every night this week at 9 p.m. E.T., but Al Gore's journalism-for-the-young-people network is also going to post the episodes online after they air. The five-part series looks at the contradictions of a country that is both officially communist and in the midst of an orgy of conspicuous consumption—and not just capitalism, but, as Naked China describes it, "a form of uncontrolled robber baron capitalism last seen a hundred years ago."

Thursday's episode looks at the Beijing Olympics through the prism of the 1988 Seoul Games, during which South Korea was a dictatorship as well. It's hard to imagine any transition in China happening that quickly, which is just one the the reasons this Olympics will be an interesting story for more than athletic reasons.

(By the way, ABC is airing a Bob Woodruff special, China Inside Out, tonight, but didn't send me an advance screener in time for review; you can see Tom Shales' write-up if you're interested.)

Naked China's not all politics, though. In this preview from Friday's segment, we meet Barry Cox, a.k.a. Gok Pak-Wing, a Liverpudlian who came to Macao to become a Canto-pop teen idol: