China made all types of promises to land the 2008 Olympic Games, many of them focusing on a more open society and greater transparency with the media. So much for keeping its word.

From Beijing, Tini Tran of the Associated Press recently wrote: “With the glare of the Olympic spotlight gone, China has resumed blocking access to the Internet sites of some foreign media, reversing itself on earlier promises to expand press freedom as part of its bid to win the games. …

“Right now, the authorities are gradually rolling back all the progress made in the run-up to this summer’s Olympic Games, when even foreign Web sites in Mandarin were made accessible. The pretense of liberalization is now over,” said a statement from the press rights group Reporters Without Borders.”

No surprise, really. “I don’t think very many people expected to see the Olympics herald a whole new era in China, at least not as far as politics and media,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor who teaches about media and the Internet at the University of Hong Kong.

If the Chinese will renege so openly on their phony Olympic promises, how good is their word on equally important dealings with nations such as the United States, such as economic matters, for example, which are so vital to so many countries? We have to trust China for many reasons, but the old Ronald Reagan advice, “Trust but verify,” fits this scene perfectly.

Then there are our old adversaries, the Russians, who continue to drift, not so silently and invisibly, back to the days of Josef Stalin. New legislation backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would allow Russian authorities to label any government critic a traitor. Analysts are quick to call this a chilling throwback to the days of Stalin. Putin, of course, is a former secret police head who knows full well how to deal with “traitors.”

The Russian bill would expand the definition of treason to include damaging the country’s constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. That, say rights activists, would essentially let authorities interpret any act against the state as treason.

During Putin’s eight-year presidency, the government systematically rolled back Russia’s post-Soviet political freedoms. There are no signs of a turnaround under Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. As in China, so much for greater transparency of governmental functions.

Still, when it comes to media openness, we have the case of television reporter Muntadar al-Zaidi who became a hero to some when he hurled his shoes at U.S. president George W. Bush at a recent Baghdad news conference. Fellow reporters contend Zaidi reflected poorly on the profession, even if they agreed with his anti-U.S. and anti-Bush sentiments. Zaidi has apologized and says he regrets the action but he continues to be lionized by many in the Islamic world.

“The media did it” is a common theme when something goes wrong. Yet that will not be the case in China and Russia where media output is under the thumb of the head offices. As for Baghdad, it remains to be seen how much control the shoe-throwing produces.

Bottom line, for all its errors and excesses, the American media should be quite grateful they don’t have to cope with the kind of domination that is likely to keep growing in Moscow and Beijing.