Next Friday thousands of people will gather at the Millennium Monument in Beijing to await a decision that will have a major impact on China's social and economic development over the next seven years.

At around 10 p.m. a big screen will relay live the result of the vote of 122 International Olympic Committee (IOC) delegates in Moscow on which of five cities, including the Chinese capital, will hold the 2008 Olympic Games.

For some of the other competing countries, Friday the 13th may not be the ideal day to be in receipt of good news. But the date holds no fears for the Chinese. In China, the number four is considered unlucky.

If Beijing is declared the winner, China will erupt in celebration. There will be a street party the likes of which Beijing has not seen. And behind the walls of their Zhongnanhai compound, China's leaders will smile with satisfaction that the country they govern has secured an event which puts it firmly on the stage of global respectability.

However, there are fears that another humiliation for Beijing, after its loss to Sydney by two votes in 1993, could result in bitter recrimination.

If the IOC delegates reject Beijing and opt for the safer bets of Paris or Toronto, would a disappointed China even turn belligerent?

Defeat will test the maturity of the Chinese leaders and the 1.3 billion people who have been led to believe that the 2008 Olympic Games belong to them.

China is obsessive when it comes to the Olympics and for the past six months there has been no getting away from the games. The Beijing Olympic logo, featuring a human figure in a tai chi (Chinese shadowboxing) position, has been emblazoned everywhere: on monuments, posters and the facades of large buildings. Yards from Tiananmen Square, huge posters declare "New Beijing: Great Olympics". They line the Avenue of Everlasting Peace.

In taxis, schools, shops and on the streets, the talk is of little else. There are nightly variety shows featuring thousands of flag-waving youths and local pop stars whipping up public support for the bid. Not that it's needed at this stage. Opinion polls show 97 per cent of Beijingers want the Olympics.

If Beijing gets the nod, the city's north side will be transformed into one big building site as work begins on the 1,215-hectare Olympic Green complex, which will include an 80,000-seat stadium and an Olympic village capable of accommodating 17,600 athletes and officials.

The influx of migrant workers into Beijing will become a torrent, and the authorities will be forced to do away with the restrictive and outdated hukou or work-permit system. For months officials in BOBICO, the official Beijing bid committee, have been bombarding visiting dignitaries and journalists with a litany of promises and commitments. But the message underlying them all has been simple: give us the 2008 Games and it will be the catalyst for colossal changes in China.

The promises are endless. By 2007, they say, Beijing will have cleaned up its act environmentally. Some 90 per cent of the buses and 70 per cent of the taxis will run on natural gas. Five new subway lines will reduce congestion in this city of 13 million people.

About 20 factories will have either moved out or switched to non-pollutant products. Half of Beijing's residents will be able to speak at least 100 English phrases.

THERE is a host of issues for the International Olympic Committee to consider when deciding which of five countries should be awarded the world's greatest sporting prize. But the topic foremost in people's minds when they think of China is the poor human-rights record of the authoritarian regime.

Human-rights groups, Western politicians and pro-democracy campaigners claim the communist state is brutal, politically intolerant and repressive, and therefore unfit to host the Olympics, which are, after all, supposed to be a symbol of global harmony and tolerance.

What is surprising is that China, so desperate to get the games, has not made any efforts to ease off on sensitive human rights issues in the run-up to the IOC vote. In fact it appears to have got tougher in many areas.

In April it launched a new "strike hard" campaign against crime and corruption which, according to Amnesty International figures issued yesterday, has resulted in 1,700 executions.

Fourteen female members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement died in a labour camp in north-east China in June. There are conflicting reports about how they died. The authorities claim they committed suicide, but the movement claims they were tortured to death.

On June 23rd police beat up an American photographer who had taken pictures of a man being detained outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, where the Three Tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, were giving a concert in support of the Olympic bid.

Since March the Chinese censors have been busier than ever. Not only have foreign publications had articles critical of China ripped out and websites blocked, but strict new regulations governing domestic media have been introduced.

The regulations make it illegal for newspapers to criticise the government or carry articles proposing political reform. It even prevents newspapers from independently reporting natural disasters and corruption. They must, in future, turn to the state news agency Xinhua for their information.

What will it be like in 2008 with 10,000 journalists descending on China to cover the games?

Opponents of Beijing's Olympic bid say bringing the games to China might well amount to turning a blind eye to continued repression. One such opponent, US Democrat Mr Tom Lantos, recalled that the Berlin Olympics in 1936 were used very effectively as a propaganda tool by Adolf Hitler. He believes China in 2008 will be no different and in March he introduced a resolution in Congress opposing the Beijing bid on humanitarian grounds.

But there are others who say China deserves a chance to prove to the world it can change, and that engagement rather than isolation is the way forward. As the world global trade family, the WTO, contemplates entry for China, it would be unreasonable, they say, to raise some political doubts about the staging of the Olympics in Beijing.

In 1993, Beijing lost out to Sydney by just two votes, with the events of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre still fresh in the public mind. Eight years on, China has certainly not cleaned up its act as far as the international community is concerned, but it may have done enough to get the nod next Friday.