China's Olympic run-up shows weak links of emerging power Reuters, August 05, 2007
China's leaders hope to bask in a blaze of national pride when the Beijing Olympics open in a hyper-modern stadium next year, but reaching that moment has cast a harsh light on the vulnerable underbelly of the country's rise.
The ruling Communist Party has seized on the 2008 Games to show off its credentials as overseer of a fast-modernising global power.
"Successfully hosting the Olympic Games is a demonstration of a country's power and influence," Liu Qi, Party boss of Beijing and president of the Games committee, told officials on July 30.
"Make these Olympics a milestone recording the great revival of the Chinese nation."
But while China surely anticipated Western criticism of its tight rein on political dissent in the run-up to August 8, 2008, officials have been battered by unrelenting attention on pollution, unsafe products and labour abuses that reflect the government's own institutional shortcomings.
The Games preparations have indeed become a scale model for the nation's big ambitions, and have shown how the government's own often unsteady feet could lead to a stumble.
"The Olympics are vital for the ruling party as a symbol of what it can achieve. They're a huge source of legitimacy," said Zheng Yongnian of Britain's University of Nottingham.
"But when you want to project an image of power and responsibility, that means that when problems happen they can be that much more difficult to handle."
PLAYING ON THE RUINS
China's hope in hosting the Games is clear from a billboard in front of the centrepiece "bird's nest" national stadium.
The picture shows the game's cuddly "Fuwa" mascots playing on the ruins of the Old Summer Palace, the elaborate imperial pleasure grounds that French and British soldiers ransacked in 1860, making it a lasting symbol of national humiliation.
For China, the Games are a chance to show that after three decades of economic growth it has re-emerged as a confident power capable of hosting the massive spectacle.
"The Olympic Games are opportunity for China to shows its massive changes to hundreds of millions of people who normally don't care about what's happening in such a far-off country," said Guo Xiangang, Beijing-based editor of China International Studies.
"All the links -- the services, the transportation, food safety, the environment, crowd behaviour -- are meant to display those changes."
The Games have also become a focus for international criticism of China's human rights restrictions and its relations with Sudan, Myanmar and other diplomatic dark spots.
Beijing has responded by defending itself loudly and often as a "constructive" force in resolving international conflicts.
DOMESTIC STRAINS
But organisers have appeared ambushed by this year's torrent of mini-crises over pollution, food and product safety, and citizens' rights that have raised broader questions about the government's robustness.
A succession of scares, big and small, with toxic Chinese-made chemicals found in exported medicines and animal food, tainted seafood, and most recently toys have fuelled worries about what athletes and other visitors will eat.
The past months have also seen revelations of workers in slave-like conditions a day's drive from Beijing and children making Olympic Games merchandise in a factory in the far south.
For all China's promises to clamp down on polluters, Beijing's air is still a fetid mix of vehicle fumes, factory smoke and dust. Some foreign teams are worried how healthy the air will be this time next year, as they prepare to compete.
"If China is perceived as a risky place to eat and breathe, that's going to have reverberations and they know it," said David Zweig of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Problems with food and drug safety, pollution and labour exploitation were by no means unknown before this year; nor are they unique to China.
But they have underscored how a government ill-equipped to cope with ever more complex pressures is among the weak links troubling China's transformation.
A root problem is the inability of officials at the top to enforce policies across a vast bureaucracy that often heeds local interests focused on growth or self-enrichment.
"They are struggling to find ways of developing a more effective government without democracy," said Susan Shirk, a former U.S. State Department official in charge of China affairs and now at the University of California, San Diego.
The laser beam of attention on the Games has generated expectations that the government has the money and ability to surmount these shortcomings.
"What the Olympics changes is that it creates a timeline for dealing with all these problems," said Zweig.
Last week, Games chief Liu called for a propaganda counter-offensive against what he called a "crisis".
"Pay serious attention to media services and appropriately respond to this crisis in public sentiment," he said.
Officials have held constant news conferences seeking to defuse worries. But the preparations have already underscored problems that will linger long after the Games close.
"I think China's governance problem will only continue to be a problem as it grows in power," said Shirk.
