World sees good, bad aspects of China

BEIJING

The dragon in China reminds its people of another time, when emperors ruled with incomparable knowledge and strength. The panda is a more passive figure, universally adored as an image of innocence.

They are two faces of the world’s most populated nation, two contrasting signs of its measureless history.

How appropriate: Over the last 17 days, we saw two radically different sides of China.

The curtain drops on the Beijing Games tonight when the flame atop the Bird’s Nest is extinguished and the Olympic flag is handed to London officials, who then begin their four-year countdown to welcoming the world’s athletes in the spirit of competition and sportsmanship.

You can’t assign a specific grade to China for its staging of these Olympics, because it’s a deeper and more complex evaluation than normally would result in a standard pass/fail.

You can’t talk about many of the astonishing athletic achievements without also mentioning the rampant censorship of free expression. You can’t marvel at Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt without criticizing the fact that of nearly 80 applications to protest against various issues, none was approved.

You can’t praise what are the most striking and best sporting venues in Olympic history and not be discouraged over China’s unwillingness to also unveil the accepting and transparent nature it promised when receiving the 2008 bid.

This has been China of these Olympics: So confident and imposing on the field of play and yet still so paranoid and insecure off it.

“The Olympics bring people together and more than anything promote progress in countries,” U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth said. “Find me anything else that does it more. Tell me anything.

“We are going to remember these Games because China is opening up. It began slowly and is now opening up fast because of the Olympic Games and will continue fast in a way more towards solving the issues of this region of the world.”

This is part of the problem. Ueberroth and his USOC teammates shamelessly tripped over themselves these Games praising China for its athletics success and splendid presentation while avoiding any public stance on more sensitive and serious issues (human rights violations, Tibet, denied freedom of demonstration), declaring their responsibility solely to sport and those American athletes competing.

This is part of the problem: Many out there still stand by the ridiculous contention that the Olympics are exclusively about sport and not politics.

“When you accept an invitation to someone’s house,” Ueberroth said, “you don’t go and talk about how you don’t like the furniture or food. The politicians can make statements one way or the other.”

What a disappointing stance given the country Ueberroth represents, but no less disheartening than the more than 100 world leaders — President Bush included — who made their way to the opening ceremony and cheered as sports fans but failed to pressure China publicly about following through with its pre-Olympics pledge about tolerance.

Everyone of note sort of walked around nervously here the past few weeks, frightened of offering even a hint of displeasure.

China wanted so badly to be respected in the world’s eyes. It strove for perfection in every detail, and when it couldn’t reach such standards, it improvised with things such as computer-generated fireworks and a lip-synching 7-year-old girl who replaced one that officials didn’t think was pretty enough to highlight during the opening ceremony.

Did it want to win badly enough that it would doctor birth certificates of female gymnasts? Perhaps.

But so much of it was fantastic. China didn’t arrive on the world scene of Olympic sports success. It came crashing down in a siege of gold medals.

It’s just the beginning.

This nation, with its enormous pool of potential athletes and the incredible support of government-subsidized sports programs, could rule the top level of Olympic podiums for decades to come. The U.S. will depart here with more than 100 medals, but its place as a leader in gold might have been lost for good.

A security presence was at every corner, unable to stop a madman from murdering the father-in-law of a U.S. volleyball coach at a popular tourist spot, but daunting just the same. It’s impossible to calculate correctly the number of volunteers, and also true that pollution and traffic problems didn’t negatively influence the Games nearly as much as forecast.

The magical moments were numerous, from Phelps in the water to Bolt and his Jamaican teammates on the track. Sport was an enormous winner here.

Did we expect too much on the political side from a nation still firmly cemented in its Communist state?

Maybe. But it’s true an Olympics can create fundamental change. It happened for South Korea after the 1988 Games in Seoul. Ueberroth says the Moscow Games in 1980 played a hand in the former Soviet Union collapsing, but that was more of an economically than sport-driven moment in history.

What happens to China when the torch is snuffed out and the curtain drops tonight? It’s impossible to predict.

This we do know: For 17 days, China was the most accommodating host the world could have imagined.

And the most fearful.

“I think those outsiders who don’t know much about China have to go there for themselves,” Xiaowei Hunt, a Chinese professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at UNLV, said shortly before the Olympics. “You have to go see it. You have to breathe it.”

This is what the world saw:

Two faces.

Two sides to China.

Two lasting images of a historic Olympics.

As different as a dragon and a panda.

Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.