Olympic Games news

The opening of the Beijing Olympics in eight days' time will, as always planned, attest to China's spectacular material progress since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform exactly 30 years ago. The array of venues, the gleaming new buildings, the urban infrastructure installed for the Games, will also reflect the genuine pride of a nation that, while still far from rich by Western standards, has made more people better off in a shorter time than any country in human history.

But, unwittingly, the Olympics also reflect the downside of China's hectic growth story and contain reminders of the nature of the regime that presides over the world's last big communist state. This combination of progress and faultlines makes the Games an intriguing mirror of the state of China today at a time when it is becoming an increasingly important player in global affairs.

News yesterday that foreign journalists have found access blocked to websites with content that China dislikes is the latest in a series of restrictions that the Beijing authorities have introduced before the Olympics. A curfew has been slapped on bars; entertainers must submit scripts for advance approval; three rings of security checks have been thrown round the capital. Sites have been set aside for demonstrations, well away from sporting sites, and participants will have to get permission beforehand.

After official reports of terrorist plans by Muslim autonomists in the Xinjiang region of western China - which at least some observers are taking with a pinch of salt - people from that area are being shipped out of Beijing. While desultory talks are being held with representatives of the Dalai Lama, Beijing has in no way modified its insistence that Tibet is an integral part of China, and the Communist Party secretary there continues to take a hard line. China's cyber-police have been combing websites for material that they consider subversive, and arresting dissidents and human rights activists. How wide the net extends was shown by the detention of a lawyer wanting to represent the parents of children buried alive in school buildings in the Sichuan earthquake.

This is not a surprise. China badly needs the Games to be a success, and its natural inclination is to stamp on anything and anybody that might interfere, even if it leads to the “no-fun Olympics”.

Apart from the Communist Party's stake in the event, Chinese patriotism, which has a resonance rarely encountered in Europe these days, is aroused, something seen in the visceral reaction to protests against the Olympic flame on its way to China.

But, if one holds up a mirror to the Games, one can glimpse some challenging and unwelcome shadows that apply to China generally. For instance, concern about air pollution in Beijing interfering with the competition reflects the broader issue of China's huge environmental crisis. Or take water - the shortage endemic to northern China is leading to the diversion of supplies to the city to avoid any embarrassment during the Games, with farmers in the surrounding province going short. China also faces an electricity shortage this summer, a situation aggravated by the channelling of power to the capital to ensure no brown-outs during the Games.

The rebuilding of Beijing underscores the gap between China's urban growth centres and the vast rural hinterland. Although the Communist leadership seeks to promote a “harmonious society” that will lessen disparities, the wealth gap in China is greater than in the US or Europe, and is growing. Reports of corruption over Games projects strike another familiar note while rising prices echo the steep rise in inflation in China over the past year.

Internationally, the seesawing by Western leaders over whether to attend the opening of the Games reflects general uncertainty about how to deal with the hosts. Meanwhile, the leadership's micromanaged control and lack of concern for criticism of its human rights record come naturally from a regime that has taken an increasingly tough international stance, from its position in the abortive Doha world trade talks this week to its veto of UN sanctions against Zimbabwe, not to mention its continued support for the Government of Sudan, its latest big gas deal with Iran or its heavy involvement in Burma.

The 2008 Games will be held under the slogan “One World, One Dream”. As was only to be expected, the world and the dream will be defined by China. Hopes that the Olympics would change the People's Republic have been shown up as an illusion, just as the idea that economic progress would bring multiparty democracy on Western lines to China has been exploded by reality. The International Olympic Committee probably calculates that it has no alternative but to go along with all this. Now, as the Games reflect broader issues in China, the question is whether the IOC stands as a mirror for foreign governments' dealings with Beijing.

Jonathan Fenby's Penguin History of Modern China (Allen Lane) has just been published. He is China director at the research service Trusted Sources

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