Olympics: China celebrates triumph in 2008 vote

By CALUM MacLEOD

BEIJING - Beijing's second Olympic bid has climaxed not in despair like 1993, but with the biggest street party China has seen since a million demonstrators packed Tiananmen Square in the most optimistic days of the 1989 democracy movement.

Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Tiananmen, streaming banners and flags.

The Avenue of Eternal Peace was jammed with a wall of noise as cars went bumper-to-bumper, blaring horns in joy. Even the police were smiling, nervously.

The Communist Party Politburo first took the applause at a heavily orchestrated event, playing to a hand-picked crowd, and a nationwide television audience, several miles west of Tiananmen.

But before midnight President Jiang Zemin and his cronies ascended Tiananmen Gate to witness the real party raging in modern China's political heartland. Peddlers did a roaring trade in Chinese flags, for sometimes the state and its people really are at one.

Jiang witnessed a spontaneous burst of real emotion rarely seen in China's capital. Beijingers ignored the government ban on firecrackers within city limits and set off explosive celebrations.

The streets were packed with people partying late into the night. But few among the joyful crowds could match the satisfaction felt by 86-year-old Zhang Wenguan.

In 1936, Zhang went to Berlin to perform Chinese martial arts, an exhibition sport at Hitler's infamous Olympics. The world remembers Berlin for the Nazi hijack of the Olympic ideal, a propaganda coup China's critics fear its Communist Party will repeat.

Zhang Wenguan remembers Berlin for China's humiliating failure. Only one Chinese athlete passed even the preliminary stages of competition.

"Before China was weak, and the world looked down on us," Zhang recalled yesterday from his Beijing home. "Our Olympic team was so small." The 1936 delegation wrote in their Games report "We were ridiculed as having brought back nothing but a 'duck's egg'."

But China is no longer the sick man of Asia. Last night in Moscow, the Chinese delegation brought Beijing the most precious prize of all. "Now China is stronger and the Olympic team is much bigger," enthused Zhang. "Of course China should host the Games!"

The emotional fireworks sweeping China were sparked by relief that the world's most populous nation had finally won its most coveted badge of global approval.

The country has followed a tortuous path to prosperity and strength, stalked by insecurity about its place in the world.

But now the greatest show on earth is coming to Beijing, as a hard-won status symbol of economic achievement and growing confidence on the world stage.

"This is a great day for China," smiled 23-year-old Zhang Baoqi. "We feel so proud to host the Olympics. We have waited so long, but now the world has recognised our development, in the economy, sports, even human rights."

At Beijing's Football Fan Club Restaurant, 26-year-old Liu Feng joined 200 cheering regulars. "It's China's turn," he shouted.

In one of the most lavish private displays of jubilation, property developer Pan Shiyi draped a huge "V" for victory banner around his 32-storey development, Soho New Town.

"Let the world know how China has changed," he said from his rooftop barbecue with a few hundred of Beijing's social elite.

The ghosts of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre still haunted IOC voters in 1993, and gave Sydney the honour over Beijing. This time the IOC gambled on a still unrepentant Communist China, ignoring the pleas of rights groups protesting against everything from genocide in Tibet to the breeding of St Bernard's dogs for restaurant menus. Yet the Olympics is a gamble for China's Communists too.

Beijing says its Olympic dream reflects China's "desire to become more fully integrated into the community of nations".

But joining that community implies playing by global rules, and just as impending membership of the World Trade Organisation forces China to liberalise its economy, so the Olympics should open Chinese society to unprecedented scrutiny.

Like many Chinese, Chen Fanhong, 27, an internet enthusiast in the eastern city of Hangzhou, believes the Games could have a profound impact. "It's impossible to separate sports and politics as the two are tangled together," she said.

"What I hope is that the Olympic spirit will make China a more open, democratic and civilised place. The government should be more accountable to ordinary citizens, and they should improve themselves too."

The first test of improved accountability will come when China begins evicting several thousand people from the site of the planned Olympic Green in north Beijing. Will global scrutiny ensure they are compensated fairly and treated humanely, or will their lives be bulldozed aside, like so many aggrieved Beijingers in recent years?

In 2008, sport will belong to Beijing, and businessmen are plotting Olympic-sized pay-offs. "We already have the biggest market share in China," boasted Zhang, whose boss Li Ning, gold medallist turned entrepreneur, is China's favourite Olympian.

"But the Olympics will make Beijing open up further, let the world know more about us, and help us grow on the international market."

The Western multinationals that bankroll the Games are drooling in the opposite direction, counting the years until China's much vaunted potential finally translates into billion-dollar profits.

- INDEPENDENT