China's bid to host Games may bring government more than it bargained for

When the humid haze which enveloped the Chinese capital in July suddenly gave way to blue skies, sceptics suggested that an Olympics inspection team must be in town to assess Beijing's bid to stage the 2008 Olympic Games.

After all, in 1993, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) arrived during a smoggy winter to consider the city's application to hold the 2000 Olympics, factory furnaces and coal fires were extinguished so that the inspectors would see environment-friendly blue skies.

And, indeed, the sunny weather this time coincided, whether by accident or design, with a three-day tour of Beijing by Mr Michael Knight, the top organiser for the Sydney Olympics, prior to a vote next week by the IOC on which cities to consider for the 2008 games.

Olympic fever has gripped Beijing in anticipation of being shortlisted, with Olympic symbols appearing in shop windows and metal sculptures of Beijing's campaign logo - the five Olympic rings woven into a figure practising taichi - being erected on the streets.

Ten cities have applied to hold the next-but-one Olympics; Beijing, Bangkok, Cairo, Havana, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Osaka, Paris, Seville and Toronto, and China believes it has a very strong case. The summer games have never been held in the world's most populous country and China has a strong Olympic tradition, finishing fourth on the medals table in the last two summer games.

Supporters of Beijing over Paris or Toronto point out that Asia has only hosted the games twice, in Tokyo in 1964 and Seoul in 1988.

Beijing officials were bitterly disappointed in 1993 when a two-vote majority gave the 2000 games to Sydney and the city has promised this time to meet the standards set by the IOC to win the bid.

It has much to do. The World Bank has rated Beijing as one of the world's most polluted capitals, with emissions from 700 industrial plants, including the mammoth Capital Iron and Steel Co. A new 10-year plan costing $1.5 billion calls for this major polluter to be gradually moved 400 kilometres away, to the relief of the city's 12.5 million residents.

Beijing's roads are also choked with 1.5 million vehicles, with 15 per cent more each year, but the plan envisages two new metro lines, a light rail system and a fifth ring road, as well as 15 new sports sites. Much has already changed since 1993 when the city made a bad impression by erecting walls to hide rundown districts. Modern glass-and-marble buildings now line the main avenues, many people have been rehoused in new apartment blocks and once-chaotic traffic has been disciplined by new traffic rules. Hotels, airports and sports facilities have been built to international standards.

Chinese officials have also promised there will be no lavish receptions for IOC committee members if the city is shortlisted by the IOC executive at its August 28th-29th meeting, nor will there be a mass mobilisation of the population to create a favourable impression.

"Beijing has progressed so much in the last few years but people don't know about it," Mr Liu Jingmin, vice-mayor and executive vice-president of Beijing's application committee, told the Far Eastern Economic Review.

The Olympics belong to the whole world, he said, and "not yet holding an Olympics in China is one way in which the Olympic movement has fallen short". Also China's development would continue whatever the result but selecting China for the 2008 Olympics would accelerate the country's integration into the international community.

Mr Liu also promised that Beijing would comply with IOC guidelines on press freedom, but it is difficult to see how he can do so. Freedom of the press is still severely restricted in China. Just last week, police seized 2,000 copies of a literary journal and arrested the poet-publisher, Bei Ling (40), on charges of "subverting state power". However, on sports reporting there has been a big change. Rather than its customary blank denial of doping problems among its athletes, China now welcomes the media to its doping test and research centre in Beijing, where 14 chemists and doctors handled 3,500 tests in 1999.

Ten Chinese swimmers and coaches were suspended for doping offences last year and seven track and field athletes and five weightlifters were caught. China dropped its star swimmer, Wu Yanyan, after she tested positive for anabolic steroids in a May trial.

CHINA seems determined to clean up its record after a miserable decade, during which its swimmers lost nine of 23 gold medals at the 1994 Asian Games for drug-taking and four more tested positive at the 1998 Perth world championships, during which a swimmer and coaches were caught with a banned hormone at Sydney airport.

According to Shi Kangcheng, of China's anti-doping commission, some Chinese athletes and coaches think all other athletes are using dope and that they will lose if they do not. The problem was an over-emphasis in obtaining gold medals, he said.

Five cities will remain in the running after next week's "cut" and the winning bid for 2008 will be announced in July. If Beijing survives, an IOC delegation will return here early in 2001. That's when things get serious and when China's much-criticised human rights record may come into play.

The Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989 helped end China's hopes in 1993. Eleven years after the bloodshed, human rights groups are hesitant to urge a boycott as the best way to protect human rights, despite the ruthless suppression of organised opposition.

Beijing nevertheless faces another public relations disaster if the IOC feels it will hamper the work of international reporters and crack down hard on protests when staging the Olympics. But China's leaders will also be aware that in South Korea anti-government protests led to its first direct presidential elections the year before the Seoul games.

The Chinese government has distanced itself from Beijing's application this time, in case it is defeated again, but if it succeeds, and the games come to Beijing, it will face real pressure to ease up on human rights. In this respect a victorious bid could bring the communist government more than it bargained for.