Chinese Are Paying People to Fill Empty Olympic Seats

The Chinese are not happy about TV shots of various venues showing multitudes of empty seats. Special Report says they're doing something about it:

Despite claims from Olympic officials that all 6.8 million tickets have been sold for the Beijing games, the first week of competition has featured plenty of unused seats and half-filled stadiums. Now, the BBC reports Olympic officials are admitting they have paid volunteers to fill those empty seats.

Beijing Olympic Committee Vice President Wang Wei says, "If local venue managers find that there are not enough people in the venue, or too many empty seats, they arrange for local volunteers as cheerleaders," adding that they cheer for both sides in order to "create a better atmosphere."

The Guardian newspaper reports several hundred yellow-shirted spectators were cheering the Venezuelan volleyball team when it took on the U.S. earlier this week. It has since been revealed that those spectators were in fact hired.

If the fans in the stand start forming themselves into exotic geometric designs, you can be pretty sure they're Chinese ringers.