China sees this as its moment. As the electronic clock on Beijing’s busy Wangfujing Street shows, there are still more than 140 days until July 13, when the IOC selects the host for the 2008 Olympic Games. But the impressions gathered by the IOC inspectors, who will go on to four other cities vying for the Games–Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul–could be decisive. Hosting the Olympics is a coup for any city; it promises a sustained dose of pride, prestige and economic development. But for Beijing, and China, it would mean something more. “This is China’s chance to step onto the world stage,” says one American business executive who supports Beijing’s bid. “More importantly, it would ensure that the forces of good in China win out over the forces of evil.”
Perhaps. That is exactly what is at issue. The Olympics have never been solely about sports. But with Beijing leading the pack of contenders (bookies make it a 6-to-5 favorite), this year’s selection process has stirred a debate that goes far beyond the usual handicapping. Back in 1993, when Washington actively campaigned against China’s candidacy, citing continuing human-rights abuses, Beijing barely lost its bid to host the 2000 Games. Since then the country has modernized and opened up more to the world. But while Chinese citizens in general are freer than ever before, the government still cracks down ruthlessly on all forms of political dissent. So the question remains: will awarding the Games to Beijing strengthen the forces of liberalism and accelerate political reform? Or will it simply legitimize the regime’s bad behavior and feed its nationalistic fervor?
Nearly everybody who supports Beijing’s bid–including, apparently, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch–believes the Games could trigger constructive change. It “would be a way of anchoring China to the West for the next eight years,” says Orville Schell of the University of California, Berkeley. Supporters cite South Korea as a precedent. A year before Seoul hosted the 1988 Games, strongman Chun Doo-hwan released 2,335 political prisoners (including current President Kim Dae Jung) and stepped down to pave the way for democracy. As Samaranch has said: “The Olympic Games were the turning point for the country.”
Critics of Beijing’s bid point to another analogy. “It’s like the Nazis in 1936,” says Jin Zhong, the editor of Open Magazine, a Hong Kong-based review of Chinese politics. “The Olympics enabled Hitler to get on the world stage and improve his image at home and abroad.” Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing 2008 bid committee, told NEWSWEEK that “lots of things, including human rights, will be improved” if China wins the Olympic bid. But last week Amnesty International released a report detailing the state’s use of “widespread and systemic” torture against nuns and dissidents as well as tax evaders and members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. And then there’s the prospect of holding the beach-volleyball competition in Tiananmen Square. Will the sight of bikini-clad athletes be enough to erase the memories of the bloody 1989 crackdown on unarmed student protesters on that very site?
The IOC inspection team has been instructed to disregard the emotional debate and stick to technical issues: pollution levels, traffic, planned sports facilities. Beijing is adamant that it be judged on its merits, not on politics. It has mobilized 800,000 municipal workers, party cadres and students to spruce up the city, and commissioned the country’s most famous filmmaker, Zhang Yimou, to make a series of five-minute commercials to be shown to the IOC as part of the $1.5 billion bid. But the irony is that, if Beijing wins, it will largely be due to the IOC’s desire to pull China into the 21st century. “China doesn’t deserve the bid,” says one China-based foreign consultant who has seen the government’s plans. “It is precisely for political reasons that China will get the Olympics.” This week about a billion Chinese will be focused on whether their visitors think so.
