Before we leave these Olympics, it’s worth noting that they’ve produced one record that shoots way past Michael Phelps’ eight gold medals.

According to the New York Times, this year the Chinese have compiled a previously unimaginable statistic: 77 protest permits applied for, 0 protests actually happening.

No doubt somewhere there’s a Beijing bureaucrat telling a TV reporter that nobody gave him a chance to pull it off, but he knew that if he just played his game, he could do it.

Not only have no permits been given, but the Times reported that two Chinese ladies in their 70s, applying for a permit to protest because they felt inadequately compensated when their land was taken for development, were sentenced to a year in re-education camp for “disturbing public order.”

It’s a reminder that as we approach the next two weeks and our national party conventions, which these days require massive security arrangements, demonstration areas, parade routes and detention facilities, there are worse things than a little public disorder.

Especially for the Democrats’ gathering in Denver, the conventions are likely to feature considerable upheaval. (New York, site of the 2004 GOP convention, is still plowing through the lawsuits and investigations of security preparations and police behavior, long after the convention’s economic benefits have been tallied and spent.) This year’s Democratic convention features a protest group called “Recreate ’68,” which as an agenda ranks with “Hurricane Katrina, One More Time.”

Not to mention the demonstrations threatened by Hillary Clinton supporters.

Still, even if you end up peeling the occasional demonstrator away from the police horse, and the whole occasion considerably distorts both the municipal budget and commuting schedules, the disorderly approach beats a system where people come to the police station to apply for protest permits and don’t actually come out.

Although theirs saves on the cost of signs.

To get this year’s games, China made a wide range of promises to the International Olympic Committee about opening up its society and access, promises the IOC believed because it was convenient to believe them. Nobody actually believed Beijing was going to open up – except maybe the 77 Chinese who showed up to apply for permits.

“In order to ensure smooth traffic flow, a nice environment and good social order, we will invite these participants to hold their demonstrations in designated places,” explained Liu Shaowu, the Olympics’ security director.

Can’t beat that good social order.

This week, Chinese officials told the Times that the reason none of the requests produced an actual demonstration in the designated places was that complaints were “properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations.”

Or labor camp sentences.

You’ve got to hope that word of this approach doesn’t get to the Bush administration.

These Olympics have, of course, produced other illustrations of how the Chinese government sees its society working.

The world was hugely impressed by the dazzling display of the opening ceremonies, with 15,000 performers functioning in concert. Afterward, the ceremony’s director, Zhang Yimou, proudly told a Chinese newspaper that only North Korea could have coordinated things better.

When your ideal for how things ought to work is North Korea, you’ve got a pretty demanding vision of social order.

This kind of outlook can give you a much friendlier attitude toward American demonstrators lying down in the middle of the street.