Despite pollution and criticism of its human rights record, Beijing looks set to host the 2008 Olympics
Steven Mufson
Measured against Toronto, Paris and Osaka the other finalists bidding to host the 2008 Olympic Games Beijing leaves some things to be desired. Like clean air.
In the mid-1990s the World Bank declared the Chinese capital the most polluted city in the world. Beijing’s air pollution is several times the “safe” standard levels that even New York City meets, according to Bank estimates. Blanketed with smog, coal dust and construction dust much of the year, Beijing’s air spawns widespread respiratory illnesses and chronic coughs. Even with recent improvements, the air could keep sprinters and long-distance runners wheezing through their events.
So why would anyone want to hold the Olympics there?
Because of politics. Many Olympic Committee members think simply that China, as home to a quarter of the world’s population and a major trading nation, deserves a chance to host the games.
This is ironic because, in the face of international criticism of its human rights policies, the Chinese government has sternly warned other nations the United States in particular against mixing politics and sports by blocking Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics. “If we lose, we lose,” China’s ambassador to the US, Yang Jiechi, said recently in Washington. “If we win, we will be very happy. But if people politicise it, I think it will be most unfair.”
Yet were it not for politics Beijing would be a long shot for hosting the games, and not just because of its air pollution. Hot and dusty, the city lacks many of the amenities Osaka, Paris and Toronto can boast. Nonetheless, Beijing will be the odds-on favourite when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meets in Moscow this month to make its decision.
To be sure, China, like other candidates, is trying to polish its image. The government says it will spend $12-billion over 10 years to clean up the air pollution. “Beijing will have air quality as good as Paris,” said Xie Zhenhua of the State Environmental Protection Administration.
However, by the time the games are held in 2008, China’s economy will double in size at current rates, possibly foiling efforts to cut pollution.
Chinese officials don’t hesitate to make political arguments for giving Beijing the games even as they denounce politicising the decision. Citing the anger and wounded national pride the Chinese people felt after Beijing lost its bid to host the 2000 games, Yang said that China’s time had come. “The US has hosted three times and is trying to get the 2012 Olympics,” he said. “China has suffered a lot in modern times and is now making great progress. And now it wants to host the Olympics and I think people understand those feelings.”
Yang and other Chinese officials have warned the US Congress against passing a resolution urging the IOC to give the 2008 games to another country, and have raised the possibility of a backlash against the US if it is seen as denying the games to China.
So if politics is a key consideration, what is the right conclusion?
Many China watchers argue that, however politicised, holding the games in Beijing could have beneficial effects. They say the surge in angry Chinese nationalism during the 1990s was sparked, in part, by Beijing’s failure to win the right to host the 2000 games and by the perception that the US had used its Olympic clout to block that bid on political grounds. Giving Beijing the games, the experts say, might promote liberalisation and good feeling toward the US. It also could prevent China from taking rash military action against Taiwan for fear of an Olympic boycott like the US-led one of the 1980 Moscow games.
Such political forecasting is risky, however. Seven years from now, a new, more fragile ruling group might well try to harness whatever national pride would swell up around the games. Next year the country’s three top communist party leaders President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and National People’s Congress chairman Li Peng are expected to be forced to retire.
Rival factions in a new standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party are likely to be finely balanced, and Jiang, Zhu and Li could still play roles behind the scenes. In 2007 there will be another chance to rearrange the government and communist party line-ups.
Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the US House International Relations Committee, fears a Beijing Olympics would be a reprise of the 1936 Berlin games, opened by Adolf Hitler. “History shows that Olympic hosts gain immeasurably in international esteem. Hitler basked in the international limelight the games afforded him,” said Lantos.
Lantos has led a campaign to oppose China’s Olympic bid on human rights grounds. Along with others, he has introduced a House resolution calling on the IOC to keep the 2008 games out of Beijing another example of the decision’s politicisation.
“China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration,” says Lantos. “The Chinese people deserve the games. China’s repressive regime, however, does not.”
There is, however, a more likely scenario for a Beijing Olympics, one resembling the United Nations conference on women held in the city in 1995. That conclave was neither a triumph for the legitimacy of the government, nor an effective vehicle for those hoping to democratise China. The government, while allowing its most vociferous critics from abroad to attend, allowed few of their words to reach Chinese citizens via state-run newspapers, television or radio.
Still, choosing Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics would not be a complete departure from Olympics past. The IOC awarded the games to Seoul before democratic reforms were introduced, and to smog-ridden Los Angeles and Mexico City. When Soviet-run Moscow was chosen, no one objected that it was occupying half of Europe.
So if Beijing is marred by corruption, burning with commercial fever and eager to have a chance at self-promotion, maybe that makes it the perfect place for what the Olympics have become. What difference does a little air pollution make?