Beijing 2008 ads with a nationalistic flair

When you get your average shower of commercial messages while walking in Shanghai, you wonder how effective those messages still are. There must be a limit to what we as humans can take, before our defensive curtains close our brain for more intake.
But what really makes a difference is when companies come with really sensationally good ads and increasingly that is happening in Shanghai. Last month I wrote already rather enthusiastically about the Starbucks commercial we see in the subways. My current verdicts is a bit less positive, since we got different stories and shortened editions of the first commercial. They distinctively look now more like a commercial, but that can hardly be an objection, since it is a commercial.
What I find increasingly disturbing is the way how an imaginary harmonious society is being promoted as a theme in such a way it starts to look like propaganda. According to me, but I leave it up to the real expects to disagree, propaganda becomes less effective if it is all too obvious propaganda.
I do not have that problem yet with the new Adidas commercials for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Their commercials look just fantastic (see picture) and TBWA in Shanghai has really done a great job. It obvious gives the chills to some of the ads professionals elsewhere in the world, but when you are long enough in China, you know that this nationalistic tone really works. Not so sure about the harmonious society, though.

(it works better when the screen is really huge)