Steven Spielberg’s decision this week to pull out of the Beijing Olympics in protest against China’s involvement in Sudan has attracted worldwide attention. China, however, has maintained media silence.

That silence is likely to be the first of many as China’s authoritarian leadership, accustomed to media control, finds itself in the full glare of the world media spotlight in the months leading up to the August 8-24 games. Indeed, it is not unusual for important international events to pass entirely unreported in China if they are seen by the Communist Party as inconvenient or as a risk to domestic stability.

The withdrawal by Mr Spielberg is a source of acute embarrassment for both the Beijing Olympic organisers and for China, coming just when the country is trying to present its best face to the world. Thus it may merit a domestic media blackout. But it also puts China on the spot when it comes to a response. None has yet been forthcoming.

Indeed, the organisers may decide not even to acknowledge Mr Spielberg’s announcement that: “I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual.”

China’s national prestige and some $38 billion (£18 billion) are at stake, with a games being presented as a glorious showcase of China’s rapid development from impoverished agrarian nation to rising industrial power.

But Mr Spielberg’s public distancing of himself as an artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies places centre-stage China’s anxiety that the media glare will shine on its human rights record, rather than on its sporting prowess and economic achievements. These are just the issues where Beijing tends to find itself on the defensive.

China has chafed at criticism from international rights activists, who demand that Beijing exert political leverage on Sudan's government to help to end a crisis in which government-backed militia have battled rebels since 2003, leaving more than 200,000 people dead and an estimated 2.5 million displaced.

Beijing's response has been to lash out at what it calls attempts to politicise the Games. In China’s latest statement late last month, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman reiterated China’s longstanding position. “To link the Darfur issue to the Olympics is a move to politicise the Olympics, and this is inconsistent with the Olympics spirit and will bear no fruit.”

China has highlighted its own efforts to mitigate the situation in Darfur, including the dispatch of engineering troops to prepare for the arrival of a hybrid peacekeeping force. It says its economic ties are helping to reduce conflict by alleviating poverty.

When assailed for its extensive investments in the Sudan oil industry and its imports of two-thirds of the country’s oil, Beijing cites one of the fundamental tenets of its approach to diplomacy – that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Signs did emerge last year that Beijing was becoming sensitive to its international image. It appointed a special envoy for Africa whose first task was to study the Darfur crisis, and it supported a UN resolution calling for a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Its inability to come up with a quick response to Mr Spielberg’s statement, however, coupled with the lack of reply to a letter sent by the film director to President Hu Jintao on the Darfur issue, indicate its public relations machine may by falling short. That machine is likely to face much more severe tests – from demonstrators, dissidents, activists and journalists – before August 8.

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