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The year of the Beijing Olympics

The year that is the thirtieth anniversary of the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 will also see the country host the Olympic Games in August. The athletes and races will be one part of the story. The centre stage will be occupied by the tug of war between a China determined to use the Olympics to exhibit its achievements and newfound prosperity and a range of Beijing’s critics, for whom the Games will provide an opportunity to grind a few axes in the global spotlight.

In 2008, China is more confident, wealthy, and engaged with the world than it has been since the Tang dynasty, over 1,300 years ago. This will be the year the country sends out a clear signal that the long period of humiliation and playing second fiddle to foreign powers that began with the Opium Wars is at an end.

Following centuries of isolation and poverty, China enters 2008 after having lifted more people out of poverty in less time than ever achieved by a nation. It has emerged in a few short decades as one of the world’s mightiest trading powers, its share of global exports six times that of India’s. In 2007, China’s economy, already the fourth largest in the world, grew at over 10 per cent for the fifth consecutive year. The country is building infrastructure on a par with the world’s best; developing a space programme that will see astronauts walk in space in a few months time; and playing a more active part in international affairs, as evidenced by Beijing’s role in the North Korean nuclear disarmament talks.

The Olympics are the showcase for this “new” China, as well as a focus for the upsurge of nationalism that the successful bid to host the Games unleashed in its wake. The whole country, but most specially Beijing, is literally on Olympic time with dozens of gigantic clocks counting down the days to the Games adorning all major street corners. Large parts of the Chinese capital have been razed to the ground and recast in a new, flashy Olympic mould. Aside from a sea of cloud-piercing skyscrapers and expensive stadiums, kilometres of new subway lines, highways and bus routes are being rolled out. The world’s largest airport designed by architectural superstar Norman Foster has also been constructed in time to deal with the expected travel rush.

Public toilets have been getting a makeover while thousands of Beijingers have been given free English lessons, all in the Olympic cause. The total price tag for the Games is estimated at $40 billion — almost four times the cost of the last Olympics in Athens.

However, despite the no-expenses spared razzmatazz, the Games will coalesce protesters from abroad and at home desirous of pressuring Beijing to act on several issues of contention. China’s human rights record will be criticised. Anti-government groups such as separatists in Tibet or Xinjiang province could also use the event to promote their causes. How Beijing handles these protests will be a crucial test for it. Public protests against the government are usually banned in the country. While a more liberal attitude has been promised during the Olympics, the government faces a dilemma. Overt heavy handedness would mar the public relations coup that is hoped for, but at the same time Beijing is aware that there is no question of allowing the protests to assume a scale where they can spark wider social unrest.

Public protests aside, the main focus in the run-up to the Games has been on trying to fix Beijing’s notoriously polluted air and traffic-clogged streets. International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has gone as far as warning that if current levels of pollution remain unabated, certain athletic events might have to be rescheduled.

Thus municipal authorities have been experimenting with moves to keep up to a million cars off the road, in addition to relocating smoke-belching factories to the city’s outskirts.

While the long-term sustainability of these measures may be questionable, for the period of the actual Games it is unlikely that either pollution or traffic snarls will present serious obstacles. Factories will be closed down for several weeks leading up the Games and a large number of vehicles taken off the road. Even thunderclouds will not be allowed to rain on Beijing’s parade with the city’s “weather modification bureau” working overtime to ensure clear skies.

As a result of these painstaking preparations, the Olympic Games are likely, on balance, to be a big feather in Beijing’s cap. Nonetheless, China’s 2008 will not be only about celebration and self-congratulation. The country’s breakneck economic growth has entailed serious environmental and social costs, which Beijing can leave unaddressed only at its own peril. The extensive environmental degradation China has suffered as a result of the scale and pace of its industrialisation is becoming difficult to ignore. According to a World Bank report, 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China; another Bank report found the health costs related to outdoor air pollution in urban China in 2003 amounted to 3.8 per cent of the country’s GDP.

The situation regarding water was equally grim. The State Environment Protection Agency has admitted that 70 per cent of China’s rivers and lakes were polluted to some degree with 28 per cent too polluted even for irrigation or industrial use.

March 2008 will see a new set of leaders appointed to governmental positions. A combination of familiar and fresh faces, this group of men (there are few women in the top echelons of political power in China) will take on the challenge of drawing up a balance sheet of the benefits and legitimacy derived from delivering growth versus the environmental fallout. Other challenges will include narrowing the burgeoning rural-urban divide, reining in spiralling inflation, checking pervasive corruption, anxieties over Taiwanese political developments, and the particularly complex question of political reform.

It is the declared intention of the Communist Party of China to build “democracy with Chinese characteristics.” Exactly how the leadership goes about the attempted reconciliation of continued one party rule with greater democratic participation will be critical in determining the future course of the country.

There is perhaps no other country in the world for which 2008 is likely to prove more momentous than China.

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