China kick-started its Olympic year with a New Year party on Monday with the country's biggest medal hope on hand to watch fireworks, singing and dancing at a countdown party.
The party, put on by the organizers of the Summer Olympics, saw Beijingers flock in the cold to the Millennium Monument, capping a year in which frenzied construction of ultramodern Olympic venues and other projects changed the face of Beijing.
A cheer went out from the crowd for Liu Xiang. As the Beijing Games get closer, public expectations have grown on Liu to repeat his gold-medal winning performance in the 110m hurdles at the 2004 Athens Olympics Games.
All but one Olympic project, the ambitious 91,000-seat National Stadium scheduled to be finished by March, has been completed, officials said recently.
Scores of laborers worked around the clock to ensure timely completion of the projects -- from archery ranges, to a swimming venue that is covered by a translucent, blue-toned skin, to gymnasium halls, dotted mostly around the north of the city.
Also at hand at the Millennium Monument, a circular raised stone edifice in west Beijing, was movie star Jackie Chan.
From today, there are 219 days left until the start of the Aug. 8 to Aug. 24 Olympics.
A source of immense national pride in China, Beijing is spending an estimated US$40 billion to modernize for the Olympics. Attended by US President George W. Bush and an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 foreign visitors, Beijing will be under the world's gaze as never before.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) said in a live television address broadcast on Monday that he hopes the Olympics will be a platform for "promoting understanding and friendly cooperation between the people of China and the world."
The Games have also provided an impetus to a full-scale redesign of Beijing, with ultramodern buildings changing its centuries-old look. American soprano Kathleen Battle and Chinese pianist Lang Lang played at the newly opened and futuristic egg-shaped National Center for the Performing Arts on Monday evening, right next to Tiananmen Square -- long symbolizing the center of power in the communist state.
In winning the Olympics in 2001 China promised it would allow greater media freedoms, improve human rights and clean up its environment.
But air pollution is still a worry for Beijing. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said it might reschedule events if smog levels are too high.
Jammed traffic and the possibility of protests by critics of the communist regime are also concerns.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International, as well as media advocacy groups and others, want the IOC to go further and promote human rights in China in line with what they believe is the spirit of the Olympic Charter.
Statements in the past few months have criticized the lack of human rights and press freedoms in Beijing, which is also under fire for a perceived lack of action on pushing the Sudan government to do more to end the crisis in Darfur.
A series of arrests of dissidents this year, continued clampdown on free speech, as well as forced evictions of residents living on Olympic sites, have increased accusations China is not doing enough to come through with its promises.
More than 7 million tickets will be sold for the Beijing Olympics.
A series of test events over the last four months in Beijing mostly went off without a hitch. Successful test events were also held at Olympic venues outside Beijing, with an equestrian competition in Hong Kong and sailing in Qingdao on China's eastern coast.
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