Why China Has the Torch
IN THE AIR With the Olympic Games set to begin in Beijing on Friday, concerns remain over the air quality. Pollution is among the issues weighing over these Games.
“One World, One Dream,” is the official motto of the Beijing Olympics that open Friday, but the world has become considerably more complicated since the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Summer Games to China seven years ago.
That was long before China’s crackdown on Tibet this spring, before its support for the government of Sudan became an international issue and before air pollution became so threatening that the Ethiopian world-record holder in the marathon thought it better to run a shorter distance to protect his lungs.
It was also before the events of last week, when China restricted Internet access for reporters covering the Games (only to lift some restrictions following an uproar from the news media) and accused American lawmakers of “odious conduct” for making an issue of its human rights record.
The I.O.C. was well aware of the risks when it awarded the Summer Games to Beijing in 2001. But committee members believed in the inherent power of the Games — that they could foster change by focusing world attention on China, just as the 1988 Summer Games in South Korea helped advance that country’s transition to democracy.
Now the question looming as China prepares for the opening ceremonies is whether the committee made the right bet or took too lightly the possibility that protests or unforeseen events could divide rather than unite the nations whose athletes are gathering in Beijing.
Seven years ago, the prevailing attitude within the I.O.C. was that the world’s most populous nation deserved to host the world’s largest sporting event. China, after all, had acted with restraint after losing by two votes to Sydney, Australia, to host the 2000 Summer Games, even when the deciding votes turned out to have essentially been bought.
Speaking in 2001 about the political question, François Carrard, then the I.O.C.’s director general, said: “We are totally aware there is one issue on the table, and that is human rights. Either you say because of some serious human rights issues, we close the door, deliver a vote that is regarded as a sanction and hope things evolve better. The other way is to bet on openness. We are taking the bet that we will see many changes.”
Parsing the impact of the seven-year buildup is difficult. Even before its selection for the Olympics, China was, gradually, becoming more open for ordinary people. Yet, today, rights to free speech and assembly remain sharply restricted, ethnic minorities are repressed, the Communist Party dominates, and, in a report last week, Amnesty International said progress on human rights had been limited.
In some other ways, the bet has already paid off. Perhaps no other Olympics has been so intensely anticipated. China provides a shiny new wrapping on a package damaged by scandal, doping, the disappearance of Cold War rivalries and diminished public interest. “The Games are going to Beijing because it’s a show; the spectacle lives on and needs new and exciting places,” said Kevin Wamsley, a former director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
Another wish might be fulfilled — that giving China a home-field advantage would blunt the political and sporting dominance that the United States gained with the fall of the Soviet Union.
“We need China to act as a check on the U.S.,” Ivan Slavkov, then an I.O.C. member from Bulgaria, said in 2001. “The U.S. is the only superpower. It dominates everything, including the Olympics and the medal tables.”
As the Games approach, though, the Olympic committee faces criticism — from without and within — for relying too much on chance and not enough on leverage in trying to hold Chinese leaders to their amorphous statements about change.
Jacques Rogge, the Belgian surgeon who is president of the I.O.C., has given wildly divergent responses to the human rights issue, saying that he was engaging in “silent diplomacy,” before switching tactics under pressure and publicly reminding the Chinese authorities that they pledged to use the Olympics “to advance the social agenda of China, including human rights.” No one would claim that he possesses the diplomatic skills of his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch. Clearly, Dr. Rogge has been ill at ease in defining the I.O.C. as both a political lobby and a sports organization.
The Olympic committee did not sufficiently use its influence in setting markers for the Chinese to achieve on some issues, especially press freedoms during the Games, said Dick Pound, a committee member from Montreal, who stressed that he was speaking in general and not specifically about Dr. Rogge, whom he opposed in 2001 for the presidency of the organization.
“You can’t say, ‘You’ve got to free Tibet or embrace Falun Gong,’ ” Mr. Pound said. “And I’m not convinced that the way to get China to respond positively is to splash headlines in the Western press. But certainly some things are not so sensitive that they can’t even be discussed. We probably should have said, ‘Here are some minimum things we do need.’ ”
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