Dialogue: Chinese Government on notice to clean up its act

Having won the right to host the Olympics in 2008, China is on a good-behaviour bond that bodes well for regional stability, writes PAUL CLARK.

The selection of Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics sent up a huge sigh of relief in the city. Eight years ago, Beijing lost the opportunity to host the games of the millennium to Sydney so it was determined to win this time.

The rest of the world must have distinctly mixed feelings about Beijing's win, but there are several good reasons to share in its joy. The Chinese leadership invested its prestige heavily in this successful effort. Beijing has been covered in giant billboards supporting the city's bid.

Popular interest has been encouraged with Olympic quiz shows on television, rallies at sports events and the hosting of the World University Games this month.

Ring roads encircling the city have been widened and unclogged, and a new subway line was opened last year.

Chinese media discussion of Beijing's bid had an unreal quality. Instead of political factors, the discussion focused on the problems of air pollution and traffic congestion in the city.

Communist Governments have ways of dealing with these issues. For celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic in October 1999, entire industries were ordered to close down for days to clear Beijing's skies. Photographs and films of the event could thus show almost blue sky.

I remember being in Shanghai in early 1993 on the day when IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch came to visit. The newly established Pudong industrial zone to the east of the city had a planned power cut that day and half the other businesses in the city were ordered to close and their employees told to stay at home. All this was to give the Olympic chief a false sense of how smoothly traffic flowed in a modern Chinese city.

Nowhere in the state-controlled Chinese media could there be acknowledgment of the core problem in Beijing's bid in both 1993 and this year. There was no mention that human rights concerns torpedoed the city's chances against Sydney.

Last time, only four years had elapsed since the Chinese Army smashed through the streets of Beijing in June 1989 to seize back control of Tiananmen Square from student squatters.

Looking for a new face for the new millennium, the International Olympic Committee chose Sydney.

Human rights issues have again been to the fore in international discussions of Beijing's Olympic ambitions. Twelve years have elapsed since the killings in 1989, which has helped ease Western consciences. Yet Beijing's human rights record has been besmirched by newer phenomena.

Thousands of followers of the Falun Gong meditation movement have been arrested, and dozens have died in prison in questionable circumstances.

China's somewhat spotty record on the drugs-in-sport issue has also not endeared the Beijing bid to many international sportspeople.

Some Chinese have applied to international sport a prevalent domestic attitude to law in a rudimentary legal system which is open to abuse - if you're not caught, anything goes.

Despite these two concerns, it has been recognised that this time it was probably Beijing's turn to play Olympic host. So now the world must make the best of the matter.

But there are reasons for the world to celebrate Beijing's success. These relate directly to those human rights and drugs-in-sport concerns. They also have a wider, strategic importance in our region.

The Chinese Government is now on notice for the next seven years. If human rights or drugs-in-sport abuses gets worse, the world could threaten to stay away in 2008.

Winning the hosting race means that China's feet are now held to the fire on how it conducts itself at home.

Having won the bid, China's sportsmen and women will now come under even closer scrutiny when participating in international events. Here is another inducement for China to clean up its act.

But there is an even wider benefit from Beijing's success. Having virtually abandoned communism and embraced the market, China's leaders keep their grip on power by two main means.

First, economic growth has raised 200 million Chinese out of poverty in the past two decades. Keeping delivering on promises of prosperity has helped preserve the political status quo.

The second means by which the Communist Party maintains its position is its appeals to nationalism.

We saw in April during the spy plane debacle on Hainan Island how most sectors of the Chinese leadership were anxious to play the patriotic card. The United States' accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 saw a similar outpouring of nationalism in the country's media.

Students were even bussed into downtown Beijing to demonstrate at the American Embassy, wearing their Nike T-shirts and Converse sneakers, all made in China.

Hosting the 2008 Olympics provides a new channel for China's leaders to encourage patriotic pride.

It may not smack of the tensions of Hainan and Belgrade, but it offers a nationalist diversion that is internally focused and will not harm the strategic relations in our region.

Sabre-rattling over supposed Taiwanese plans to declare independence, or over unproven and over-ambitious US missile defence shield plans, destabilise the Asia-Pacific balance of tensions. Nationalist fervour directed at running the best Olympic games ever will be directed inwards.

A China that feels more confident can enhance regional stability. Generals feeling an urge to mount wargames to worry Taiwan will be told to play things down for the sake of the 2008 Games.

So hosting the Olympics, like the expected entry into the World Trade Organisation later this year, marks a further step in China's integration into the international community of nations.

These steps, and all the other, less noticeable moves in this direction, have the potential to bring international values and standards to Chinese society and political practice. Human rights will get better. We have the International Olympic Committee to thank.

I just hope the Games' organisers spare us a Maoist opening ceremony, with massed regiments of gymnasts and tumblers that Stalin would have liked, but which the world doesn't care for any more.

*Paul Clark is professor of Chinese in the University of Auckland's school of Asian studies.

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