Editorial: Olympics gamble worth the taking

Awarding Beijing the 2008 Olympics is a gamble. That much has been candidly conceded by Francois Carrard, the International Olympic Committee director-general. It could be the catalyst for improving human rights in the world's most populous country. Then again, it could be regarded by China's Communist leaders as a legitimisation of their policies and a means of entrenching their position.

The Beijing Olympics could be a vehicle for change, just as the 1988 Seoul Games sparked a transition from dictatorship to democracy in South Korea. And as the 1964 Tokyo Games allowed Japan to make a clean break from its wartime notoriety. Yet it is possible that the Beijing Olympics could be a vehicle for abuse, used for propaganda in the way that Hitler used the 1936 Games in Berlin.

On balance, however, there is reason for optimism. To gain the Olympics China has had already to change its ways. Eight years ago, it was the favourite to host the 2000 Olympics. It lost out narrowly to Sydney after stony-faced officials cut off questions on human rights and stumbled when pressed on the issue. This time, smiling officials promised that if Beijing won the Games, China would allow protests, lift restrictions on the media and improve human rights. They had learned the lessons of international communication.

The transformation, orchestrated by a Western public relations firm, could be dismissed as short-term cynicism. But it is consistent with the more open face China is projecting on the back of its surging economy. Admission to the World Trade Organisation is pending and this year China will host the Apec forum. Those developments, plus the Olympics, represent a vote of international acceptance - but also demand that China remain on its best behaviour.

Hosting the 2008 Olympics means the Chinese Government is effectively on notice for the next seven years. Human rights breaches will be seized upon by its opponents. Already, pro-Tibet groups have vowed to wage a seven-year campaign against the IOC decision. Success for them, and other human rights activists, would be for Beijing to lose the Games or, at the very least, for the event to be boycotted. A repeat of the withdrawal of many Western countries from the 1980 Moscow Olympics would severely devalue the Games and China's achievement in hosting them.

The selection of Beijing is risky on another level. China's sportsmen and women are justly infamous for drug abuse. In 1994, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president, declared that "Chinese sport is very clean." Six weeks later, the country's world 400m freestyle champion tested positive. Further positives soon followed. As Samaranch departs the IOC, describing the drugs problem in sport as "a mess," he need look no further than the Chinese for a major source of culpability.

Here again, however, the onus will be on China to clean up its act. Its athletes will be under greater scrutiny in the lead-up to the Beijing Games. And nothing could be more agonising to the Chinese than to have one of their own stripped of gold during an Olympics on their own soil.

The Chinese leadership will determine whether the Beijing decision is brave or foolhardy. It can still be remarkably insensitive, as in suggesting that the beach volleyball competition be held on Tiananmen Square. It also knows that it is very much in the interests of the Olympics' corporate sponsors for the Games to be in China, a huge, largely untapped market.

Certainly, it would have been much safer for the IOC to have chosen Toronto or Paris. The Olympic movement needs no further turmoil on top of the headaches with Athens' troubled preparations for the 2004 Olympics and the scandal of Salt Lake City's bid for next year's Winter Olympics.

The Olympic creed is all about fair play. The IOC, in granting Beijing the Olympics, spoke of the potential for transferring that spirit from the sporting arena to every avenue of Chinese life. It believes that human rights will be advanced by opening doors, not closing them.

That is a bet, not a certainty. China, proud of another major signal of world acceptance, will certainly emerge more patriotic and more confident. It is to be hoped that greater international contact will also imbue it with a sense of acceptable values.

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