The People’s Daily, the flagship of China’s state-run media empire, tried, in all honesty, to make sense of the opening ceremony at the London Olympics—an event, the paper noted, that cost not only a fraction of the opening ceremony four years ago in Beijing, but even less than a quarter of what Qatar spent on the opening of the Asian Games in Doha. “This might have something to do with British frugality,” wondered the voice of the paper’s official social-media feed. Or, it went on sympathetically, “it could be the result of the European debt crisis.” The government news service was less generous in its assessment, headlining its review: “Opening Ceremony Very British, Not Very Olympic, Lacking Vital Elements.”