This from Time magazine's China blog:

For the past year everyone has called the Beijing Olympics China's "coming-out party." I'm beginning to wonder if the adjectives, if not the noun, are more suitable to the earthquake. It is as far from a party as you can get, but from the volunteer efforts to the government response to the official openness, I've seen China coming out in ways I never expected.

And from World Politics Review:

...in ways that are particularly evident this year, the global response to natural disasters has overtaken the Olympic Games as the primary arena of international solidarity. That's not to say it's an apolitical arena, since so many of the offers of aid carry very significant political subtexts, as reading through this list of donors makes clear. (Vietnam's offer of $200,000, for instance, stands out.) But whereas the Olympics still carry political overtones that often divide us, disaster relief gets down to the human urgencies that invariably bind us all together.