Hurdles remain as Beijing Olympics near

BEIJING—Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have left nothing to chance for China’s “coming-out party” this year but a few tricky hurdles still lie in wait ahead of the opening ceremony on August 8.
All bar one of Beijing’s 31 gleaming venues have been completed and the 91,000-seater National Stadium, a huge new airport terminal, three new subway lines and a string of new roads are all scheduled to be in operation by the end of July.
The last Olympics in Athens were beset by last-minute construction problems, but with seven months to go before the start of the Beijing Games the city is primed for the world’s biggest sporting event.
But issues such as pollution, human rights, media freedom and Taiwan are not so easily resolved by cash or a pithy slogan and are likely to come more and more into focus in the run-up to the most intensely scrutinized Games in history.
“We know there are a lot of difficulties and challenges ahead and we must be ready for many contingencies and potential problems,” Beijing Organizing Committee executive vice president Jiang Xioayu said last week. “But with the support of 1.3 billion Chinese people, I’m confident that we will be able to overcome them.” The 21-city international leg of the Olympic torch relay, which begins on April 1, will be an opportunity for China’s many critics to make their feelings known in the full glare of the world’s media.
“There will be very much a coordinated campaign by all the Tibet support groups and Tibetans living in Europe and North America at key stages of the international relay of the Olympic torch,” said Matt Whitticase of the Free Tibet Campaign. China, which brooks no argument to its right to rule the Himalayan region it invaded in 1950, is braced for dissent in cities such as Paris, London and San Francisco but still hopes for a trip of “harmony, friendship and peace.”
“The Olympic flame represents the essence of the Olympic spirit,” Jiang said. “There are people who want to violate this spirit ... they will fail and be condemned by people around the world who support the Olympic movement.”
Whitticase said Free Tibet had also talked with groups who represent the interests of China’s Uighur Muslim minority and to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong.
Some believe, however, that it is too late now to leverage the Olympics to put political pressure on China. “China tends to entice and accommodate until they achieve their goals,” said Tsering Shakya, a Tibet scholar at the University of British Columbia.
“The Olympics will happen. The Olympics as a way of getting China to democratize or to make concessions is finished.” The chance of a major boycott like those which hit the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympics in the 1980s remains low, although some analysts think Taiwan might end up withdrawing its team.
The self-ruled island, which China says is a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary, has already disrupted Beijing’s preparations by accepting and then rejecting a spot on the torch relay.
Last year, China fended off a barrage of international criticism over the safety of its products. Worries remain about how Beijing will react to the sheer level of scrutiny the country will be under when some 30,000 media arrive for the Games.
Those who have lost their homes to make way for Olympic development and the many Chinese with other grievances will find a ready audience for their complaints. The vast majority of the Chinese, however, have no intention of letting such concerns cloud their enjoyment of China’s first Olympics and they will be packing the venues for the 16 remaining test events and the Games themselves.
The International Olympic Committee too has so far been fulsome in its praise for how the Organizers have gone about their work and there is nothing to suggest that will change after its final inspection in April.—Agencies