A corner of the Yuanmingyuan, the sprawling summer palace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) Emperors, has been opened to the public for the first time since it was set aside 301 years ago as an imperial playground.

Paths and bridges are still being laid among the ruins, but officials are determined to have it ready in time for Friday's opening of the Beijing Olympics, which China hopes will be the most spectacular Games of modern times.

Beijing has spent $40 billion (£20 billion) and spared no effort to achieve that goal. It seems the capital has come full circle.

The city was first built 700 years ago by Mongol invaders who founded the Yuan Dynasty as an imperial capital to shock and awe visitors. Preparations for the Olympics have been on a similar extraordinary scale.

As well as building a huge airport terminal, three underground lines and an ultra-modern theatre complex, China closed the heart of the Forbidden City, one of its premier tourist attractions, for more than two years for restoration to make sure that Beijing shows its best face to the world.

Hundreds of factories have been shut and half of the capital's cars taken off the streets in an attempt to clear its polluted skies.

Hu Jintao, President and Communist Party chief, in a rare meeting last week with 25 foreign journalists, urged the world not to confuse politics and sport during the Games. Members of his own Government have, however, painted a different picture.

Wei Jizhong, a former official of the Chinese Olympic Committee and a senior consultant for the Beijing organisers, said: “The Olympic Games is not simply a sports event and its meaning is beyond sports itself.”

The creation of two of the most striking sports venues on Earth — the Bird's Nest national stadium and the Water Cube for aquatic competitions — sums up China's ambitions.

The not-so-subliminal message that the venues are determined to project is that China is a force to be reckoned with, a nation that has left behind its humiliation by foreign powers in the 19th century and emerged from the chrysalis of communist central planning as a prosperous modern state.

Geremie Barme, a China scholar, wrote: “The 2008 Olympics will provide a unique opportunity for China to show the world a vision of itself, and what it has to offer as a nascent global power.”

Athletes from across the globe will fly into the biggest air terminal in the world, its roof jagged with golden triangles resembling the scales on the back of the dragon that for centuries symbolised imperial power.

They will run and jump inside a national stadium that cost £250 million to build and needed 41,875 tonnes of steel to create the lattice in which it is cradled.

The city they will visit has been decorated with 40 million plants. An entire forest has been planted in the Olympic Park, whose position was carefully chosen with the advice of fengshui masters so that it sits astride the north-south axis, or dragon's vein, on which Emperors based their capital and their right to govern with the mandate of heaven.

More than 100,000 volunteers, chosen from among nearly one million applicants, will be on hand to help tourists befuddled by the rules and the language.

A 110,000-strong security force has been mobilised, including 34,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army with 74 jets, 48 helicopters and surface-to-air missiles protecting the main stadiums.

The fireworks at the opening ceremony are being billed as the greatest pyrotechnics show the world has ever seen - in the country that invented gunpowder.

On rare display in the halls of the Forbidden City will be one of China's most renowned paintings, the 10th-century Night Revels of Han Xizai.

A day before the Games, Beijing will open the city's old merchant quarter, which has undergone a $1.3 billion makeover.

Amid these staggering achievements, however, the world's fourth-largest economy cannot hide a fit of nerves.

While some usually inaccessible websites have been unblocked, many more remain hidden behind China's Great Firewall or filtered by cautious censors.

Security is such that hardly anyone without a ticket is being allowed to travel to the capital and a teacher who posted photographs of schools that crumbled in the devastating May earthquake has been sent to a labour camp for a year.

The security blanket, the absence of tourists and a barrage of new rules and regulations are, however, stirring barely a ripple of discontent, although some among the elite voice a few doubts.

One prominent artist said: “I feel further and further away from the Olympics. Every day there is a new rule that pushes me away. I will just watch television.”

And a senior newspaper commentator said privately: “These are called the Olympic Games. Games means fun. But I don't see much sign of fun and games.”

An underlying theme has been whether China has been right to spend so much on a glorification project when 200 million of its citizens are still living in poverty.

What is striking, though, is that the Chinese are delighted to be playing host to the Games.

Liao Zhenzhi ferries tourists around Beijing's old alleys in a pedicab and is busiest at weekends. Yesterday he sat and fanned himself. “Business is bad,” he said. “There are no visitors and I guess there will be even fewer when the Olympics start. But,” he added, “this is a great moment for China.”

It is rare indeed to find anyone who does not take pride in the Games.

Back at the old summer palace, in a shallow lake where Emperors once frolicked far from the prying eyes of their people, four sun-baked workers stripped down to their underpants to clear beds of reeds.

One leant on his rake. “This place used to be forbidden to ordinary people like us. But now everyone can come. That's pretty amazing, isn't it?”

Thinking big

— 51 months to build the Beijing National Stadium, or Bird's Nest

— 91,000 spectators seats

— 7,000 extra buses will run in Beijing

— 137,000 miles will have been covered by the Olympic flame by the time it arrives

— 21,800 torchbearers

— 15,000 people are in the opening ceremony

— 10,708 athletes are competing for 302 gold medals in 28 sports at 37 venues in seven host cities

— 4bn are expected to watch

— 5,400 hours of broadcasting by Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, the official broadcaster of the Games

Sources: Beijingbirdnest.com, beijing2008.com, agencies, People's Daily