China is not gay, despite all this tedious talk of the Olympics being its “coming out” party. Coming out of what, precisely? Sure, there is an internationalist dimension to these Games - China's emergence on the world stage and all that - but we should not allow that to obscure the other, more subtle, agenda.

Stripped of the hyperbole, this Olympics is also about domestic politics - or to be more explicit, about perpetuating a government that, like any dictatorship, faces a continuing crisis of legitimacy.

That is the gold medal on offer for the ruling classes: the opportunity to sustain their many privileges against the inexorability of reform. Few doubt that within 50 years China will be democratic in one form or another, but these Games are about proving to China's vast citizenry that all is just fine with the system - for the time being. How could it not be when the system has delivered such a meticulous opening ceremony and might soon take its athletes to the top of the medal table?

The central irony, of course, is that this $40billion (about £21billion) propaganda coup has been paid for by the masses that the politicians are seeking to keep in check. The average income is less than £3,000 per year and few will get a chance to see in the flesh the futuristic stadiums that have been built at their expense.

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But it was ever this way. Since Joseph Stalin overcame his distaste of what he saw as the bourgeois values of the Olympic movement, the world's dictatorships have used the Games as a vehicle of domestic propaganda. Successive Russian leaders spent vast sums on elite athletic performance, aware that sporting success could provide one of the few objective demonstrations of international superiority.

As Natasha Kuchinskaya, the Soviet gymnast, said during a memorable interview on American television: “Because sport was considered the prestige of the government, if sport was strong, government was strong.”

Fidel Castro, too, got the point, investing an annual $80million of his impoverished Cuban people's cash on athletic glory and taking personal credit for their success.

After an impressive showing in 1996, the old bruiser could not resist the temptation to gloat: “In Spain we finished fifth among 169 countries; and in Atlanta, in 1996, we finished eighth among 197 countries. Could anyone refuse these figures?”

But no regime in history has thrown such vast sums on elite sport than China. It is estimated that more than 3,000 full-time athletes have been on the payroll of the state in the build-up to these Olympics, the costs associated with this mini-army coming over and above the lavish costs of staging the Games. No democratic government at China's stage of economic development would have had the will or the gall for such extravagance.

Yesterday's opening ceremony was just one more piece of profligacy - hugely enjoyable for those who got to watch it - but paid for by millions of ordinary Chinese citizens who had no choice but to cough up.