Thursday, May 17, 2001

Can you imagine watching a beach volleyball game in Tiananmen Square? No? Well, better start trying. If Beijing wins the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, as now seems likely, the site of the 1989 massacre will be one of the main venues. City officials plan to use it, not just for beach volleyball, but for parts of the triathlon and marathon.

The reason is obvious. The whole point of the Beijing bid is to erase the memory of what happened in Tiananmen. By hosting the Games, China's leaders hope to show the world their formula of political repression combined with economic growth has produced a China that is competent, progressive and strong. More important, they hope to show their own people that the world considers their government worthy of such an honour. An Olympics would give the frightened old men who rule China what they crave most: legitimacy.

Will the IOC hand them that priceless gift? After this week's glowing technical report on the Chinese bid, it looks more and more likely. While Toronto and Paris also got high marks for their readiness (Osaka and Istanbul did not), Beijing is a favourite in the Olympic movement because China has never hosted an Olympics. In 1993, when it last bid for the Games, it fell just two votes short. Eight years later, boosters of the Chinese bid say that as a rising sports power and the home of nearly a quarter of the world's population, China deserves the Games.

But hosting an Olympics isn't a right, it's a privilege. It should go to cities that embrace the Olympic spirit, not just offer the biggest stadiums and the best funding schemes. The Games aren't only about athletic competition. One of the objectives listed in the Olympic charter is "encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with human dignity."

That's not a sentiment usually associated with the men who ordered the troops to open fire on unarmed demonstrators 12 years ago. And they haven't changed much since. According to a recent report by the U.S. State Department, the Chinese government continues to commit "numerous serious abuses," including extrajudicial killings, torture, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, mistreatment of prisoners and denial of due process. In the past couple of years, Chinese authorities have rounded up, jailed and sometimes tortured thousands of followers of the Falun Gong spiritual [group]. They have also intensified their crackdown on nationalist dissent in Tibet and carried out scores of executions for crimes such as fraud and car theft.

China boosters say none of this should matter. The Olympics are not about politics and, anyway, things would improve if the Olympics came to Beijing and China found itself under an international magnifying glass.

But would they? It's true that life for many ordinary Chinese has improved dramatically over the past generation. Those who don't directly challenge the [party name omitted] regime are generally freer and richer than they have ever been. Hosting the Olympics might force the regime to watch its Ps and Qs. China has already promised to spend billions improving air quality in Beijing, and that certainly wouldn't hurt the people who live there.

But, where human rights are concerned, it seems unlikely that the Olympics would make much difference. In fact, it might even make things worse. If Beijing has the winning bid, China might well conclude that the rest of the world simply doesn't care much about its deplorable human-rights record. That is certainly the message China's leaders get when trade delegations from Western countries beat a path to their door.

You could argue that trade delegations should go to China anyway. Trade helps ordinary Chinese by lifting living standards and, of course, it helps trading countries, such as Canada, too. The same can't be said about the Olympics. Ordinary Chinese will not suffer if Beijing loses its Olympic bid, though the city may lose a chance to spruce itself up. The only losers will be the unelected leaders of the [party name omitted] regime, who will miss out on a golden opportunity to showcase their bankrupt ideology.

China's leaders want the Olympics because they hunger to be accepted by the world as the legitimate leaders of a great power. Denying Beijing's bid would show them that until they stop abusing their own people, they never will be.