KEY POINTS:
Walk around the Bird's Nest, surely one of the world's great stadiums, and you are struck by the vast scale and modernness of just about everything - right down to the disabled access.
There's just one thing. During the Beijing Olympics, now being followed by the Paralympics which open today, I saw not one of China's estimated 80 million disabled people.
China is expected to top the Paralympics medal table as it did the Olympic medal table but a nagging doubt remains whether the Paralympics will usher in a new era of understanding and enlightenment for the 80 million.
You read that right; 80 million. The entire population of Germany. Not all of those are wheelchair-bound, as the term 'disabled' can cover a wide range of conditions.
But, in the world's most populous nation, the numbers are gobsmacking. China has an estimated 12 million blind people, for example - three times the population of New Zealand.
So it is a little disquieting when you walk around the Bird's Nest and see world-class disabled facilities. You just don't see any disabled people, even though Beijing is supposed to be home to a million.
Most of the 80 million live in China's rural areas and the conspiracy theorists flock quickly to the conclusion that they have all been moved there by officials.
I am not one of those who believes that China deliberately hides away its disabled; that they are rendered invisible by some sort of official policy designed to mask their little "accidents" behind an artificial cloak of goodwill, harmony and a nation of happy, shining people.
But there is little doubt that China struggles with its view of the disabled, perhaps a hangover from the tyrannical days of Mao Tse-Tung, who banned marriage between disabled people and also employed forced sterilisation.
When we covered the Beijing Olympics last month, we heard of one euphemistic term for the disabled that translated as "people without everything ... ".
There are worse. Another term translates pretty much exactly as "useless cripple".
The international media also climbed spectacularly all over China when a written brochure for Olympic volunteers hit the news. It characterised the disabled as "stubborn and controlling" and "unsocial and introspective" - and created a media fire storm of Biblical proportions.
The embarrassed Chinese blamed a translation error and, having been to China a few times now, I know only too well how well-meaning translations can go dangerously wrong.
But, even accepting that explanation, there is no doubt - none - that the disabled are an attitudinal problem for many Chinese. That is not to say that China is not making steps to understand and recognise its disabled; it is. But the major problem is the institutionalised thinking surrounding the disabled.
This is not exclusive to China. I lived in Singapore for many years and you could still find some examples in that much more Westernised society of families who subscribed to the view that they were somehow being "punished" for some indiscretion or sin.
Disabled people in China are often greeted with frank stares of astonishment or embarrassed lack of eye contact and other measures of avoidance.
If any of you are wondering what all this has to do with sport, let's get back to the Paralympics. Unlike the Olympics, there is some hope that these games may make a difference.
Anyone who thought the Beijing Olympics would result in improved human rights in China needs to stand out in the rain for a while to clear their thinking before coming indoors to renew their Flat Earth Society membership and donating money to Winston Peters.
Sport can be a powerful impetus for change in society - like the anti-apartheid stance taken by cricket and (eventually) rugby against South Africa; like the black-gloved salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics which drew international attention to the plight of blacks in the US; and I still live in hope that the cricket world will discover the necessary cojones to send Zimbabwe cricket packing, along with its direct links to the evil Robert Mugabe regime.
If China heads the Paralympic table, maybe that will be the shake-up needed to wrench away old attitudes from the minds of officialdom and general populace.
If even a few million minds can be changed at the sight of disabled people competing, winning and otherwise enjoying themselves, then these truly could be the most important Paralympics ever held.
One other thing. This will likely be the last major sporting event at the Bird's Nest. Over $630 million to build and it will be a white elephant after the Paralympics, as Chinese sport just doesn't raise the 90,000-100,000 crowds the Bird's Nest accommodates.
So it'll just sit there after the Paralympics - big, bold and empty. Especially if it has also left empty the promise of change to the "people without everything".
