Why does the Chinese government want so badly to stage the 2008 Olympics? 12/7/01

ADAM BROOKS:
For the People's Republic of China, the Olympics now appear tantalisingly close. This is the Shichahai Sports School in Beijing. Among these young athletes are China's Olympic hopefuls. Hosting the 2008 Games would be a Herculean task for China, but it's a task this country has a feverish desire to assume. Shichahai is a school for prodigies. This girl is a Ping-Pong prodigy. She's 11-years-old and like a bolt of lightning. She trains up to 30 hours a week. In 2008, she'll be at the very peak of her powers. She dreams Beijing's Olympic dream and she's already well versed in the language and sentiment that accompany it.

GIRL (TRANSLATION):
I'd be so proud to represent China here in Beijing in the Olympics. We could show the foreigners how strong we are, and they can see the dignity of China.

BROOKS:
The talent of this girl and her comrades is nurtured by the state for the glory of China. For the Chinese Communist Party, like so many other Communist parties before it, sporting success is proof of national vitality. But a Beijing Olympics would be China's first ever major sporting event. Is the country ready? The Beijing Olympic dream is epic in scale. The city government says if it gets the Games it will spend more than £10 billion on a vast Olympic complex. Stadiums, museums, parks, a forest. The Vice Mayor, Liu Jingmin, oversees the bid committee.

LIU JINGMIN (TRANSLATION):
We have more than a fifth of the world's population. We have the world's fastest growing economy. We should have the Olympic games.

BROOKS:
No-one can accuse China of a lack of commitment. In two years, the face of Beijing has changed profoundly. Much of the old city has been torn down, its residents relocated to the suburbs. New ring roads have cut across the town in the hope of alleviating the appalling traffic congestion. Hotels and residential districts have sprung up from nowhere. A bizarre beautification campaign has left the city's boulevards cleaner, greener and speckled with strange sculptures, all to win the hearts, minds and votes of the Olympic delegates. And among the citizens of Beijing, the enthusiasm is palpable. In parks, patriotic songs in support of the Olympic bid every day. There's a whiff of mass mobilisation about it all, of nationalist fervour. "A new Beijing, a new Olympics", goes the song. "Our Olympics is coming to Beijing". In reality, Beijing's bidding for much more than the 2008 Games. It's bidding for the world's attention and its approval. China wants us to see its capital as a new renaissance city, a place that's left behind grimy central planning and socialist oppression, and is on a triumphal march to cosmopolitanism, development and modernity.

LIN SHAOWEN:
(Journalist)
Why couldn't we be the hosts? People will recognise that China is more open and integrated to other cultures. Not just economically and financially, but culturally.

BROOKS:
Few voices inside China have questioned Beijing's desire to host the Games. But this man did. We filmed him four months ago amid the wreckage of his home, and the restaurant he used to own. Both were torn down to make way for an Olympic highway. He accused the Olympic Bid Committee of riding rough-shod over ordinary people's rights. He alleged that corrupt officials were using the bid to acquire property. He spoke to foreign journalists and petitioned the Government. Soon after, the police came for him. We've been unable to find out what's happened to him. Questioning Beijing's Olympic bid is a hair's breadth from subversion. Abroad, critics of Beijing's bid argue that China's human rights record should preclude it as an Olympic host, and they question whether China is politically stable. These women are in a re-education camp. They have been incarcerated without trial for anything for up to three years. They were followers of Falun Gong, a mystical sect with millions of adherers. The Communist Party decided two years ago that Falun Gong was a threat to stability, and banned it. In the camp, the women must renounce their belief in Falun Gong, they are re-educated into a scientific world view, one acceptable to police and party. Over the last two years, tens of thousands of Falun Gong followers have been arrested on the streets of Beijing. And in February this year, five Falun Gong followers set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. The immolations were caught by surveillance cameras. The politics of China are strained and unpredictable. They're becoming less stable, not more so. China insists the Olympic decision has nothing to do with politics.

SHAOWEN:
I hope the people can put aside politics, and think about what does it mean to be the host of the Olympic Games. It's for the whole sports field to have another beautiful gathering, to have another great Games, to have another gathering for young people to talk to each other and communicate with each other, and to see other cultures. If you call that politics, that's good politics. If you find other political voices in the way of hosting the Games, then that's bad politics.

BROOKS:
China's Olympic gold medallists, national icons borne aloft during a national day parade. The Olympic idea has always dovetailed tailed snugly with Communist triumphalism, with communism's love of the grandiose. "The people exercise", shout the marchers in unison, "the people build their strength". A Beijing victory in Friday's Olympic vote will fuel Chinese nationalism, and will strengthen the standing of China's communist leaders. But less clear is whether a Beijing Olympics could be a force for change in China or whether it would simply reinforce the status quo.