07/14/2001

Eight years ago, I woke up in a Beijing hotel room, pulled open the heavy curtains, and met a glorious sight: The sky was completely and gorgeously blue. There wasn't a whiff of the thick pollution that had coated the city, and me, since my arrival.

What accounted for such a splendid alteration in the environment? Why, it was the Olympic Movement: Beijing was pitching for the 2000 Summer Games, and with an International Olympic Committee delegation due in town, the city authorities had decreed that all smoke-belching factories would cease production. Street vendors and housewives were also under orders strictly to limit their use of particulate-producing charcoal braziers.

In short, millions of Chinese ate a week of cold suppers to help deceive an influential foreign delegation into thinking that Beijing didn't have an athlete-choking pollution problem. Of course, IOC bureaucrats are too canny to be fooled by such legerdemain; no doubt they took away the real lesson of the exercise: [party name omitted] China would do what it took to deliver a great show. Come 2008, it surely will -- whatever it may cost a few insignificant civilians.

Such is the way with tyrannies. Back in 1936, when it was Berlin's turn to hold the Games, a correspondent for the Spectator magazine observed that Germans "have been preparing flags and decorations, going without eggs so that there should be enough for the Olympic visitors, and learning by constant instruction from above that Germany's conduct of the Games will demonstrate the excellence of Nazism to the world."

And so it did. Gushing accounts from foreign reporters highlighted the friendly enthusiasm of the German people, their unanimous devotion to their Fuhrer, and the splendour of their athletes. The Reich flag and the Olympic banner flew in hearty fellowship on every street; railway engines were painted with both the swastika and the five interlocking Olympic rings. SS men wearing Olympic armbands helped direct confused visitors around the city.

In an updated version of this, China's stylish take on the Olympic flag appears on the state news service Web site right above the proud boast that 2001 marks the "50th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" and an exhortation to "Condemn Falun Gong [Jiang Zemin's slanderous word omitted]." On the news of Beijing's propaganda coup yesterday, state-organized crowds leapt about, waving identical red flags as a People's Liberation Army band played patriotic songs. No doubt, smiling PLA members will be on hand to guide visitors at the Beijing Games seven years from now.

It is true that Germany had won the right to host the games before Hitler took power. Yet this, if nothing else, ought to remind those exulting in Beijing's victory that the prospect of welcoming the world's sports champions (and media) is no guarantee that a host country will behave itself. Nazi Germany was rapidly rearming and Hitler had invaded the Rhineland by the time the athletes flooded in to Berlin. Between Moscow getting the 1980 games and actually holding them, the Soviet Union began pouring troops into Afghanistan.

Let's not forget that in the past few months -- bang smack in the middle of China's Olympic-wooing charm offensive -- the Chinese security apparatus has rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of peaceful Falun Gong practitioners, jailed American citizens without charge and without access to lawyers, and slaughtered great numbers of petty criminals at sports stadium rallies. That's how the regime behaved before getting the Games yesterday. How on Earth can anyone think it will show restraint now?

In a sinister aside, one IOC member suggested to Agence France-Presse yesterday that human rights campaigners may have only themselves to blame for Beijing's win: "The IOC does not like being told what to do either by politicians or by political groups. The more such groups tell us what to do, the more likely we will go the other way."

Yet IOC executives insist that the Olympic movement "cannot take positions on political matters." Nonsense. The Olympic Charter is suffused with political ideas. It talks of "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles," and the importance to Olympians of "actions to promote peace." The Charter even makes this mirth-producing claim: "The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport in accordance with his or her needs." That language, echoing the Marxist slogan, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need," will be grimly familiar to labour camp inmates as they practise the Chinese prison sport of involuntarily donating kidneys and corneas to wealthy foreigners.

Some years after the 1936 Games, The Daily Telegraph's former Berlin correspondent wrote, "I do not believe for a moment that a boycott of the Olympic Games would have changed the course of history in the slightest. But one would have been spared the disgusting and humiliating spectacle of Hitler basking in the admiration of his foreign visitors, a sight which deeply depressed the opposition to Hitler inside Germany and encouraged him in his increasing megalomania."

The IOC has made a shameful decision. It has signalled that none of the Chinese regime's most despicable traits matter -- not its contempt for human rights and basic freedoms, its absence of fair trials or an independent judiciary, not its hatred of democracy. These wither in significance when compared to Beijing's ability to put on an impressive show, starting with state-ordered clear skies and ending with a spectacular fireworks display.

Winning the privilege of holding the Olympic Games does not have a civilizing effect on brutish tyrannies. It didn't civilize Nazi Germany, it didn't civilize Soviet Russia and it won't turn [party name omitted] China into a kinder, gentler autocracy.

Would granting the 2008 Games to Toronto or Paris have prodded China into recognizing the basic rights of its people? Probably not. But at least, to paraphrase, we would have been spared the disgusting and humiliating spectacle of the [party name omitted] autarchy basking in the admiration of its foreign visitors. The IOC claims to be above politics, but in fact it's very nearly -- but not quite -- beneath contempt.