Posted on: Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Ferd Lewis
It's time to give China Olympics

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympic Games, launched their return, they were envisioned as a movement that would bring the world together and touch all its people.

More than a century later, the world's most populous country is still waiting for its opportunity to reach out and touch the five rings.

Which is one of several reasons China should be awarded the 2008 Summer Games when the International Olympic Committee casts its votes Friday in Moscow.

The main rival to Beijing's bid, the handicappers tell us, is Paris. The City of Light would be at once a stylish and safe choice for the IOC, which has had its share of controversies. Though it would hardly break any new ground or contribute to any significant change. Paris has already had the Summer Games twice and Europe is down to host both the next Summer Olympics, 2004 in Athens, and a future Winter Games, 2006 in Turin, Italy.

Meanwhile, China, which represents a fifth of the world's population, clamors for the opportunity to host the games — Summer or Winter — for the first time.

As repressive as China's government has been — its record is abysmal on human rights — this is an opportunity to open wide its capital and reach its people directly. This is a chance to bring the Games and all they mean into the backyard of a populace that can glimpse a lot from the rest of the world and vice versa.

Opponents of putting the Games in Beijing argue the IOC would be rewarding the abuses of a heavy handed regime and legitimizing its policies. Never mind that the awarding of the Games has never represented a human rights seal of approval. The trains were running to the Gulags when Moscow was awarded the Games for 1980. The Nazis were in power when Berlin served as host in 1936, and Japan's armies were preparing to march on China when Tokyo got the 1940 Games (later canceled by war).

If five often frustrating decades of dealing with an evolving China have taught us anything, it should be that the more it is made an example of, the more it pulls back and hardens its position.

Compare that with taking the Olympics to China and the seven years of heightened worldwide scrutiny that would accompany it. China engaged portends much more opportunity for positive change than the country having the door slamming on it again.

Even some of the Beijing leadership's most determined foes see the Olympics as a way to promote improvement. The Dalai Lama, Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, and those behind the "Tiananmen Papers" have all publicly supported bringing the Games to Beijing.

Having the Games in China, "will do nothing to damage human rights and will do something to improve them," wrote Zhang Liang, the pen name for the compiler of the "Tiananmen Papers," in a New York Times opinion piece.

Look at it that way and there are 1.26 billion reasons — one for each person in China — the Summer Games should go to the Middle Kingdom.