Like most people, I’m not thrilled to be proven wrong. But here is one instance in which I’m glad: I said in my previous post that I didn’t think the Beijing Winter Games would withstand an actual geopolitical analysis of the host country, China. But I was wrong. NBC tackled the human rights abuse issues on Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, the day of the opening ceremonies.

Anchor Mike Tirico and “Today’s” Savannah Guthrie (back in the United States) were joined by China analysts Andy Browne and Jing Tsu, who will be with the telecast through the closing ceremonies Feb. 20 to address China’s human rights violations, among other issues. These include the detainment, indoctrination and even sterilization of the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority based in Xinjiang; the suppression of Hong Kong; the bullying of Taiwan; and the disappearance, reappearance and about-face of Peng Shuai, the tennis player whose Nov.2 #MeToo accusation against former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli — the man credited with bringing the Winter Games to China — sparked an international incident that has led the Women’s Tennis Association to say it will boycott tournaments there. (International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach is slated to meet with her.during the Games) Not to mention the lack of Chinese transparency over Covid-19, which originated in China.

NBC really had no choice. The charges against China are just too deep and too broad to ignore. China knows it, too. The opening ceremonies — always a heavy-handed, overly symbolic affair — included a group of children revealing images of people from around the world united in the struggle against the virus China gave us. And then there was the passing of the Chinese flag amid representatives of its 56 minorities in a “We Are the World,” “Kumbaya” moment that was immediately contradicted by goose-stepping members of the military.

The lighting of the torch by Dinigeer Yilamujiang and Zhao Jiawen — a minority Uyghur woman and a majority Han man respectively — continued China’s whitewashing of its reputation, as did the prominent role of children in the opening ceremony. The country that once implemented a disastrous one-child policy that selected for male babies and inadvertently put the too-few women in the driver’s seat a generation later now advocates that Chinese families have three children.

But no pro-family policy, no use of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” or Thomas Bach quoting another Lennon song, “Give Peace A Chance” — there was a lot of Western music during the opening ceremonies, most of it classical and in the public domain, avoiding copyright issues — can obscure the real message of that ceremony and these Games. It’s not about peace but power in the person of Chinese President Xi Jinping — whose ascent began 14 years ago with his orchestration of the Beijing Summer Games, Beijing being the first city to host both the Winter and Summer Games. Also on hand was Xi’s new BFF, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose athletes can’t even compete under the Russian flag, thanks to a doping scandal that has led to Russia being banned from the Olympics. (Its athletes can still compete under the Olympic flag, so not much of a punishment.)

If only Putin’s other BFF, former President Donald J. Trump, could’ve been there. But he’s back in the States still insisting that his vice president, Mike Pence, could’ve overturned the election — an idea so ludicrous that Pence issued a vehement rejection of it. In response, Trump said in effect that he was right and everyone knows it.

What everyone knows is that when with calls for justice, the world’s weak strongmen double down.

And that’s why peace doesn’t stand a chance.