China pulling out all the stops

By Mihir Bose

BEIJING, MAY 12: In February, when the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission visited Beijing to make a technical inspection of the city's facilities for staging the 2008 Olympic Games, a curious thing happened. Traffic lights were also green whenever the commission's motorcade arrived so the commission members sailed past while other motorists sat in traffic. According to one resident, the Beijing authorities had made sure that the lights would always turn green as the commission's motorcade approached.

This minor, but telling, incident illustrates the meticulous preparations Beijing is making to ensure that it gets the Games when the decision is made in Moscow on July 13. Seven years after it lost to Sydney by two votes after the Australians offered `sports scholarships' to two African members of the IOC, Beijing is leaving nothing to chance in its bid to bring the 2008 Games to China. But, like the tampering with traffic lights, it is being done with a subtlety that mirrors the slogan of their bid: New Beijing, Great Olympics.

As Jim Riordan, professor emeritus at the University of Surrey and author of books on sport in the Communist world, puts it: ``When China made its first bid in 1990, it was fairly new to the Olympic spirit - China only started taking part in the Games in 1984 - and it made a number of mistakes. China had inherited the Soviet attitude to the Olympics. Now a lot has changed in Chinese sport: the Chinese have cut down the sports ministry, they have privatised a great deal of sport and they are also able to keep out of the drugs scandal by masking its usage, as we do in the West. They are just as keen, but it is not linked so obviously to the communist propaganda.''

Now when the propaganda comes, you feel the velvet touch but not the fist within it. My hotel in the centre of Beijing was just minutes from Tiananmen Square, the notorious site of the bloody 1989 crushing of the pro-democracy student demonstrators and around which Beijing plans to stage the marathon, triathlon and cycling competitions.

It could not have appeared more normal in the evening sunshine with children and adults flying kites and parents taking their families for a stroll. However, I noticed a number of young men wandering about holding what looked like handbags that I later learnt concealed radios. Should a sudden pro-democracy demonstration have erupted, these men would immediately have called reinforcements, swooped on the protesters and snatched cameras from the tourists. It is a familiar story for foreign correspondents in Beijing.

Yet little more than five minutes away was a pedestrianised street, so intensely commercial that it was more like a Middle Eastern bazaar. Not only did it have some excellent goods available at low prices but I found the latest Western books at a fraction of what they cost here. These ranged from Jeffrey Archer and Michael Crichton to books quite critical of China.

The regime is undoubtedly authoritarian, but it now has a certain confidence. I was allowed to visit the main streets of Beijing although officials were embarrassed when we encountered beggars outside the Summer Palace. Oh, said one, some of them like to beg. And in one bar, a group of drinkers - described to me as high-tech office workers drinking after work - said they supported the Olympic bid. However, within minutes of my asking the question they all got up en masse and left. Just going home, said my guide, although I had the impression they were uncomfortable talking to a foreigner.

Defenders of the regime will discuss China's human rights record and even accept that it could be improved. Liu Jingming, vice- executive president of the bid, said: ``I would like to mention that Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics will do good. Every country has their own human rights problem and China will certainly pay more attention to human rights.

``I don't say China has no human rights problem but we should see the development of human rights in China, the improvement in the living standards of the people. And I would like to talk about the rights and the wishes of the 1.3 billion Chinese people. The majority of them support the bid. They are workers, farmers, students - being part of the Olympics is one of their rights and their rights should be respected.''

This is the sophisticated official reason why Beijing should get the Games. In essence, supporters of the pounds 20 million bid argue that by giving the Games to Beijing things can only get better, not only in terms of human rights but also in improving the city's pollution problems and its infrastructure, including the building of a fourth ring road to complement the two recently completed.

And although Chinese dissidents claim that Beijing 2008 would be an action replay of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, others, including Prof Riordan, argue that it could be like South Korea in 1988, where the staging of the Olympics helped to modify an authoritarian society.

Others are also doing their bit for the bid. The Beijing Shi Shahai sports school, which was started in 1958 and run by a People's Army soldier, takes children as young as six from their homes to be trained in table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, volleyball, tennis, in a style reminiscent of the old Soviet regime. A similar hot-housing takes place not far away in the diving gym. Here, beneath walls decorated with slogans, men and women are aiming to maintain China's remarkable Olympic record in diving.

Bid officials present the public face of Beijing in accomplished style, but they admit that some of the facilities are old and many have yet to be built - unlike those of some of its competitors, Paris or Osaka for example. The 47-year-old national stadium has been renovated but only 13 of the 37 competition venues in Beijing are already in existence. From a high hotel window, I was shown an extensive plot of land that would have to be bulldozed before building began on the Olympic stadium and village. Other sports, including sailing, will be in Qingdao City, an hour's flying time away.

For the IOC, it is such technical considerations that are more relevant than human rights. Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch chairman of the evaluation commission, has made it clear that it is not the commission's role to consider politics. Dissidents have criticised the body for being more worried about the size of swimming pools than human rights, but Verbruggen did persuade the Chinese to relocate beach volleyball from Tiananmen Square to a park some miles away.

China is sufficiently worried about its image to have hired American and British public relations firms in an effort to ensure success when the IOC decide between Beijing, Osaka, Paris, Toronto and Istanbul in Moscow.

Beijing is confident that it can win. But for all China's careful planning, another incident such as the spy-plane affair with America in April, accompanied by renewed American complaints about human rights, could still scupper their hopes. -

Copyright: Telegraph Group Ltd., London - 2001.

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