China feels the heat of its Olympic ambitions
Spielberg withdraws as artistic advisor over Darfur. The move, and other expected demonstrations, is not how Beijing has scripted the Games.
BEIJING — In the shadow of the $440-million "bird's nest" Olympic stadium, migrant workers toil for a few dollars a day. A few miles away, bulldozers destroy a neighborhood where petitioners gather to seek justice from the government. Farther afield, foreign journalists endure sporadic harassment despite promised press freedoms, with Chinese reporters, bloggers and activists facing far greater restrictions.
As Beijing prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics in August, planners hope the outside world sees the glam architecture and ignores the poverty and social tension in the shadows.
"The Chinese way to say it is, we're looking for 'big face' from the Games," said Liu Junning, an analyst with the Chinese Cultural Studies Institute in Beijing.
New concerns emerged Tuesday when film director Steven Spielberg announced his withdrawal as artistic advisor for the Games over China's support for the Sudanese government despite ongoing violence in the Darfur region.
The public relations blow came as eight Nobel Prize winners, 119 U.S. lawmakers and several entertainers signed a letter urging Chinese leaders to use their "significant influence" with the African nation to halt the genocide.
China doesn't have a monopoly on attracting the anger of activists or on attempting to put its best foot forward. But the enormous gap in this restless country between wealthy 21st century cities and benighted 19th century rural areas, between egalitarian rhetoric and the reality of today's cutthroat capitalism, raises the stakes.
Beijing is working much harder to airbrush out the negatives than previous Olympic hosts, reflecting in part a regime accustomed to controlling its media and critics.
"It's a legitimate question whether China should spend these huge sums on the Olympics when 900 million farmers are still very poor," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at People's University in Beijing. "But after emerging from a century of revolutions, wars and political movements, the government sees this as a landmark opportunity to gain recognition from the outside world."
Although China often touts its 5,000-year history, the Games are in many ways a celebration of rebirth. All the rushed building projects and rapid-fire politeness campaigns are pixels in an image Beijing is keen to project: that a newly confident and prosperous China, increasingly engaged on the world stage, has shed centuries of isolation and internal turmoil to assume its rightful place at the big table.
