Posted on: Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Editorial
Olympics: Now China must prove worthiness

The International Olympic Committee has placed a very high-stakes bet on Beijing to host the 2008 Summer Games. While the debate has raged over whether giving it the Olympics will make China a better or worse place, the IOC's first concern no doubt has been whether its bet will pay off.

Right now, it is most worried about its wager for 2004 in Greece, which is said to be disorganized and behind schedule in its preparations. Lack of effort isn't likely to be a problem in Beijing, which began its preparations a decade ago in its unsuccessful bid for last year's Games hosted by Sydney, Australia.

The chicken-or-egg question that had worried a lot of people around the world was whether giving Beijing the Games would reward its atrocious human rights record, as the 1936 Games in Berlin seemed to legitimize Hitler — or, by exposing it to the intense light of world attention, hasten democratization, as in Mexico City in 1968 and Seoul, South Korea, in 1988.

It will of course be vital to keep that light sharply focused in the seven years leading up to the Beijing Games.

But for the IOC members, who after all are responsible for the performance of a megabillion-dollar global enterprise, the worst-case scenario is not so much the '36 Berlin Games as the 1980 Moscow Games (boycotted by the United States after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan) or even worse, the 1940 Tokyo Games (cancelled because of World War II).

No one should overestimate the power of the Olympics to shape a nation that comprises one-fifth of the world's population. That is particularly true in this age of global communication and saturation coverage of not just the Games but the host country itself.

Just as Chinese leaders hope some day to receive credit for reunification with Taiwan, so they cringe at the thought of being blamed for somehow embarrassing the nation by botching the 2008 Games.