OLYMPICS:They are pulling out all the stops in 'Dancing Beijing', but threats of political protest, food toxins and city smog are exercising the minds of the organisers, writes Clifford Coonan

The first thing thousands of visitors arriving Beijing for the 2008 Olympics will encounter, after they land at the new dragon-shaped airport designed by Norman Foster, is the games' logo - an engraved seal, or stamp, of a dancing Beijing.

It's impossible to go anywhere in Beijing without seeing this dancing figure. It prances across your bank book and paper tissues in noodle joints, it's plastered on children's schoolbags, on top of brand-new skyscrapers in the soon-to-be-completed central business district and on tourists' T-shirts in the Forbidden City.

"Every emblem of the Olympics tells a story. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games emblem 'Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing' is filled with Beijing's hospitality and hopes and carries the city's commitment to the world," runs the breathless puff on the Beijing Organisers' website.

It's not only dancing figures; there is singing too. Organisers have released a song, We're Ready - and still a year to go.

As your taxi heads into this city of 12 million, the next thing you notice is the countdown clock ticking away the hours before the greatest show on earth rolls into Beijing at 8.08pm on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of this millennium. As you can guess, eight is a lucky number in China.

With a year to go, Beijing has gone into overdrive and there is already a palpable sense of excitement in the city, which has been transformed by an investment of €18 billion. Over half a million foreign visitors and around two million Chinese are expected for the games. You wonder how this intensity of anticipation can possibly be maintained for a whole year.

The taxi driver will have at least a few words of English: hello, goodbye, thanks and the numbers to tell you the fare - a major departure in a country where English is hardly spoken. The pervasive smell of garlic and stale tobacco is slowly being banished from the city's cabs - cabbies who sleep in their cabs or don't air them risk a day's re-education, which translates into a day's lost income. Citizens are being told to sharpen up their act: be polite, stop spitting and don't talk loudly.

The billboards that once lined the airport expressway advertising outlandish villa developments with nonsensical English phrases such as "Wonder of national cream" have given way to more demure ads aimed at presenting a fundamentally socialist image - any resemblance to rampant capitalism is purely coincidental.

Again, many of these billboards carry the Olympic logo or the five mascots for the games, known as the FuWa. Styled on Japanese cartoons, each of these figures has a rhyming, two-syllable name - a traditional device for expressing affection for children in China. Beibei is the fish, Jingjing the panda, Huanhuan the Olympic flame, Yingying the Tibetan antelope and Nini the swallow. When the names are put together - Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni - they say, "Welcome to Beijing."

The overall effect is overwhelming. The FuWa and the dancing Beijing figure are emblematic of the high expectations in the capital about the Games; they also show the level of micromanagement going into making the Games the biggest the world has ever seen. Nothing is being left to chance.

On July 30th, builders handed the keys of the Beijing Shooting Range Hall and the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park to the organisers, the first venues to be handed over ready to go.

The Olympic training centre has a building dedicated to nearly every sport and is already putting athletes through their paces at a very high level.

"We're happy with all the preparations, there are no serious problems," the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) site inspector Hein Verbruggen said. Just don't say the word "smog" too loudly.

In sporting terms, the Chinese want to qualify in every event and are looking for an unprecedented haul of medals. That means they want to extend their range beyond their traditional strengths in gymnastics, badminton, weightlifting, table tennis and diving - China's top sport in terms of number of gold medals won (20), followed by gymnastics and weightlifting with 14 apiece.

The Chinese won 32 gold, 17 silver and 14 bronze medals at Athens, second only to the USA, but track and field is also an area they are keen to excel in, as the win of hurdler Liu Xiang showed at Athens, and watch them scoop medals in other disciplines like sailing.

The Olympic Stadium, designed by the avant-garde Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron, will be ready next March, but already it is an astonishing sight, its interlaced birds-nest steel structure shimmering in the summer heat. Beside it is the Olympic Water Cube, the aquatic centre, a remarkable, marine-blue building.

Television ads featuring some of China's elite athletes, all clapping furiously, and thousands of awestruck onlookers, also applauding as if their lives depended on it, are running on the state broadcaster CCTV.

CCTV has employed the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, known as the Sid Vicious of modern design, to build its "twisted doughnut"-shaped headquarters in the business district.

To date, 560,000 people have volunteered to help with the Olympics. The organisers need 100,000. This shows just how deeply the Games have entered the popular psyche; they are a symbol for the country's re-emergence on the international stage and its strong development in recent years.

Olympics-related investment in Beijing has mirrored a simmering economic boom. China's economy has for several years been growing by nearly 10 per cent every year.

There has been strong demand for the seven-million tickets available to the public; the sale of the first 2.7 million was heavily oversubscribed.

The fact four billion people are expected to watch the 2008 Olympics on television will put the city on the map, and if the Games go well, the longer-term feel-good factor can translate into further economic boom and political prestige.

The Beijing games will, thanks to massive investment in urban renewal, transform the city, and in this respect they are similar to Barcelona 1992 and Seoul 1988.

Los Angeles 1984 and Atlanta 1996 were relatively low-investment games that left small footprints on the cities. Sydney hosted a great Olympics in 2000, but the long-term economic effect has not been dramatic and some of the stadiums are underused.

A priority for China is to use the Games to enhance the country's image. Research by Visa International shows nine out of 10 visitors are likely to explore other parts of China. For the Chinese government, the Olympic dividend is a long-term game.

But there are potential pitfalls. Activists for numerous causes are expected to seize upon China's hosting the Games to pressure the government on issues such as the conflict in Darfur, forced evictions to make way for the Olympic building programme and freedom of the press.

Beijing buys much of Sudan's oil and sells it arms; activists want China to pressure Khartoum over the fighting in Darfur.

The actress Mia Farrow has said Steven Spielberg, who is co-directing the ceremonies with China's Zhang Yimou, risks becoming his generation's Leni Riefenstahl, because his support for the Games while genocide in Darfur continues could earn comparison with the Nazi film-maker. Some French politicians have mentioned a possible boycott over the Darfur issue.

Just before the one-year countdown began, a group of Tibetans abseiled down the Great Wall unfurling a banner calling for a free Tibet, the Himalayan region annexed by China in 1950.

Five summer Olympics have been subjected to boycotts in the past 50 years, but while a boycott is unlikely, and China defends its position by pointing out its major contribution to UN efforts to resolve the Darfur conflict, the issue is set to dominate these next 12 months.

The evictions issue also refuses to go away. Though most people were moved a few years ago when the building programme began, forced evictions are still going on.

A survey by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) showed how China has fallen short of its promise to ensure full media freedom ahead of the Olympics, despite a relaxation of rules governing foreign journalists this year, and harassment of foreign reporters is still common.

Air pollution is also a potential problem. Smog has been a problem at many Olympics - 20 per cent of US athletes had problems with smog in Athens; the English runner Steve Ovett collapsed with breathing problems at Los Angeles, blaming pollution.

Although the organisers have promised "the Green Games", Beijing is one of the world's dirtiest cities, choked with smog and with air pollution often two or three times the maximum allowed for by the World Health Organisation.

Organisers are planning to remove one million cars from the streets this week to see if it reduces pollution. Many heavy industries and power plants have been moved out of the city and much of the city's industry will be shut down around the Games. But don't expect a world record during the marathon in Beijing.

The IOC president, Jacques Rogge, warned some endurance events at the Games may have to be postponed if the air quality is not up to scratch.

Rogge said the Beijing organisers had promised to close factories and take 1.3 million of the city's three million cars off the roads for the duration of the Games, from August 8th to 24th next year.

Security is a big issue and various tentacles of China's vast state security apparatus have been brought together in a single Olympic command centre. There will be more than 94,000 security personnel working at the Games. With few external terrorist threats to concern them, they will focus on the perceived domestic threats from adherents to the Falun Gong spiritual group and Tibetan and Uighur activists.

But it's not just terrorism that the organisers are preparing for - they are trying to counter every possibility. Imagine scores of athletes laid low by a mystery virus, reducing the Games to a hollow shell of the great sporting event for which everyone is gearing up.

While the security of major events tends to focus on counter-terrorism or protecting stadiums, a more potent threat may be sitting there on the plate - or rice bowl - in front of you.

"The health-and-safety aspect is going to be a major issue. I really believe, in real terms, that the risk of mass food poisonings from bad food poses a greater threat than al-Qaeda or some other terrorist outfit," said one security expert.

Food safety has topped the headlines in China for months and the government has been under pressure to do something after a series of deaths involving toxins in food.

There's going to be a lot of food at the Games - the forecasts are that athletes, coaches, officials and journalists will consume more than 75,000 litres of milk, 330 tons of fruit and vegetables and 750 litres of sauce during the Olympics.

"All the procedures involving Olympic food, including production, processing, packaging, storing and transporting, will be closely monitored," said Sun Wenxu, an official at the state administration for industry and commerce.

Earlier this year, the retired Beijing restaurateur Guo Zhanqi said he would buy flies for two yuan, around 20 cents, each to help clean up the city for the Olympics.

Mr Guo is giving out cash to anyone who presents him with the dead insects, and is trying to encourage a nationwide anti-fly campaign. He's got a snappy slogan: "No flies, new Beijing. No flies, great Olympics."