Beijing's Olympic

In September 1993, China was about a year into its policy of aggressive economic reform and opening to foreign investment and four years on from the devastating crackdown on student-led demonstrations that in 1989 threw the country into turmoil with demands for end to corruption and for more democracy.

The country badly wanted validation that it was a true world power, validation that the period of Western punishment for the harsh and bloody crackdown was over, validation that the human rights story would become a development story, validation that China had the world respect it felt it deserved.

All eyes were on the race to host the 2000 Olympics, the Millennium Olympics.

For months, Olympic Committee officials were wined and dined and toured through the capital, Beijing.

For months, the focus of reporting – I was midway through my term as Reuters China bureau chief — was on the PR battle between China’s wanting to assert itself and human rights groups demanding that it still pay the price for abuses.

The mood in Beijing in September was tense.

As the International Olympic Committee voted, China started out the favourite. It won the first round and then the second, but never got the needed majority to claim the Games. In the end, they went to Sydney.

The sense of deflation in Beijing and throughout China was palpable. It felt like a slap in the face. It felt like a humiliation. It felt like a wrong that had to be avenged.

And avenged it was.

Beijing regrouped, lobbied hard and won the 2008 Summer Games, and then immediately began a frenzy of construction and development that transformed the capital, turning whole areas from nearly medieval twisting alleyways to gleamingly modern architectural whimsies.

The long-awaited Games start this August.

Yet, ironically, the original need for validation is gone.

China’s economic development roared at record-beating levels throughout the 90s and through the first years of this century, making it the envy of developing economies and the rival of developed ones.

China’s economic might and diplomatic importance combined with its freeing of all but political control caused Western country after country to drop sanctions and dampen human rights criticism, welcoming Beijing as a partner if not a close friend.

China’s dissidents went overseas, and its people expressed themselves through entrepreneurial energy.

China claimed its hold on the century regardless of the Games.

There are plenty of problems for China to solve in the future:

• Economic development has caused dreadful pollution.
• Unequal growth has created severe social tensions.
• Inequality is rife.
• Political control by the State and the Communist Party is strong.
• But one thing China does not lack any more is world respect.

These Games will not be a quest for validation. They will be a celebration of what China has accomplished, and how it is facing the future.

This blog will chronicle the months to the opening ceremony, and the frenzied, last-minute preparations for the Games that Beijing still wants to be perfect but in fact no longer needs.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief
January 8th, 2008, filed by David Schlesinger
(Reuters.com)