Beijing's Olympic bid rests on unknown future

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BEIJING - From the roof of a hotel on the outskirts of Beijing, Li Bin points north to a set of rice paddies and sees a world-class swimming center. She motions toward wheat fields and describes a colossal Olympic stadium.

And pointing off into the polluted haze, she explains how the government intends to plant tens of thousands of trees to create an 1,800-acre Olympic forest that will stretch beyond the horizon.

"When I picture Beijing seven years from now, I see it with all these stadiums, and lots of green space, and people from around the world strolling along, enjoying themselves, smiling and laughing," says Li, a tour guide for the city's Olympic bid committee.

Li's hopes are high because, with little more than a week before the International Olympic Committee is scheduled to decide where the 2008 Summer Games will be held, Beijing is the front-runner.

But as is evident from her future-gazing, its bid is still largely an exercise in imagination. Unlike rivals Paris and Toronto, Beijing does not have most of the stadiums, roads and other infrastructure needed to host the Olympics.

More profoundly, the China of 2008 - democratic or authoritarian, peaceful or hostile, strong or weak - is still under construction as well.

This is the dual challenge posed by Beijing's bid to host the Olympics: to visualize a building blitz to rival the construction of the Great Wall, and to envision how economic reforms and social pressures will change this country over the next seven years.

Looking into the future

Beijing's Olympic bid is controversial because people disagree as strongly about what kind of place China is becoming as they do about what the Beijing Games would look like.

Critics of the government's human-rights record see a repeat of the 1936 Berlin Games, which Adolf Hitler used as a propaganda bonanza. They say the prestige of hosting the Olympics would give a boost of legitimacy to a Communist government that continues to repress its people.

While some Chinese say they believe the Olympics will help bring political change, many say they want Beijing to host the Games as a matter of national pride.

This is a nation with a deep-rooted insecurity about its place in the world, nourished by the memory of its humiliation by Japan and Western powers in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"China is a strong country now, and it has the ability to host the Games well," Qian Yuping, 50, said as she tended a row of young trees planted on the parched land that Beijing hopes will become the Olympic forest.

If Beijing wins the Games, thousands of migrant workers and shopkeepers will be evicted from neighborhoods on the Olympic site with little or no compensation. But for the most part, even they seem to support the bid.

"Yes, we'd lose our shop, but I'd be happy to give it up," said Guo Xiuru, 67, who has run a convenience store for more than 15 years where the gymnastics venue would be built.

"You can't judge a thing by how it affects just you. If Beijing gets the Olympics, the whole country will be proud."

Making up for a near miss

The city's case for the Games is simple: China is home to a fifth of the world's population but never has hosted the Olympics. It's also an international sports power, placing third in medals at 2000's Sydney Games.

Eight years ago, Beijing was nearly chosen to host the 2000 Olympics, losing to Sydney by only two votes after an international debate about human rights and the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

If Beijing wins, the government promises the biggest burst of construction in the city's 3,000-year history.

China says it will spend $2 billion to construct an Olympic village and 22 sports venues and to renovate 13 other facilities. There are plans for a new exhibition center with twin skyscrapers that could be taller than any in the world.

About $3.7 billion will go to ease traffic, tripling the length of the city's highways and quadrupling the capacity of its subway system.

"Think of all the jobs that it will create. If the whole world is coming here, the government is going to spend a lot of money making the city better," said Cheng Jianmin, a cabdriver and one of tens of thousands of Beijing residents who have begun studying English to prepare for the influx of foreigners the Games would bring.

Apart from human-rights concerns, the biggest problem with Beijing's bid is air quality. Declared the world's most polluted city in the mid-1990s, Beijing remains choked by such heavy smog and dust that the sun, and sometimes buildings a few blocks away, are often hidden from sight.

Beijing promises air as clean as its rivals' by 2008 with a crash program that involves closing factories, reducing vehicle emissions and switching to buses and cabs that burn cleaner fuel.

But Beijing's Olympic officials are focused on defusing political criticism from abroad. They argue that the Games would help open China to the world and improve the country's human-rights situation.

"Our Olympic bid represents society, not the party," said Deputy Mayor Liu Jingmin, a key Olympic official. "The business of the party is one thing. Sports is another. It's just not the same."

Mixed messages

But the news in recent months seems to undermine the message that China is changing for the better. Police launched a crackdown, arresting dissidents and detaining several U.S. scholars of Chinese origin. A U.S. surveillance plane crash-landed and its crew was detained for 11 days.

And then there was the Three Tenors concert inside the Forbidden City, a gala event intended to publicize the Olympic bid.

The concert went smoothly, but outside, police beat a man they said was trying to scalp tickets and, when an accredited American news photographer tried to take pictures, officers allegedly grabbed him, slapped him, punched him in the ribs and smashed his head on the side of a police van.

As the photographer was leaving, police allegedly jumped him again and people started shouting abuse and anti-American slogans, and the photographer had to apologize in front of the crowd before he was released.

China denied the journalist was beaten but said the officers involved "were not as calm as they should have been" because he had insulted them and was taking pictures illegally.