The Chinese government doesn’t like little girls with “crooked teeth.” Little Yang Peiyi got a rude welcome to showbusiness last Friday when Beijing officials deemed the 7-year-old’s face “not suitable” enough to perform China’s National Anthem at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony last week.

Instead, another young girl Lin Miaoke, 9, who lacks Yang’s face but sports a perfect smile, lip-synced the words to “Ode to the Motherland,” over a track pre-recorded Yang.

“The main consideration was the national interest,” a Chinese official said in a statement. “The child on the screen should be flawless in image, in her internal feelings, and in her expression. In the matter of her voice, Yang Peiyi was flawless, in the unanimous opinion of all the members of the team.”

“We have a responsibility to face the audience of the whole country, and to be open with this explanation. We should all understand it like this, it is a question of the national interest. It is a question of the image of our national music, our national culture.”

“So we made the choice. I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi, after all, we have a perfect voice, a perfect image and a perfect show, in our team’s view, all together.”

Unspeakable! Thoughts on this?