China declared yesterday it was ready to stage one of the greatest Olympics ever, even as pollution concerns and human rights controversies hung over the final day of preparations for the opening ceremony.
As the world’s best athletes poured into Beijing and the Olympic flame passed over the Great Wall, Games organizers sought to shift global attention on to what they promise will be a spectacular celebration of sport.
“We have prepared for the Beijing Olympics for seven years and now we are ready ... we are very confident indeed that we will stage a successful Olympics,” organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide said. “Of course we hope that these will be a great Games, even the greatest.”
PHOTO: AFP
For China, the Games are an opportunity to show the world how far it has come since the communists came to power in 1949, and particularly the past three decades of phenomenal economic development.
The Olympics offer a promise of becoming an historic moment showing China’s social as well as economic transformation, similar to the 1964 Games for Japan and the 1988 event for South Korea.
“China is a nation in transition, with a great future, tremendous potential and some challenges,” International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said after arriving in Beijing.
“I believe history will view the 2008 Olympics as a significant milestone in China’s remarkable transformation.”
Nevertheless, the vast array of controversies that have swirled around the Olympics this year continued Thursday to bedevil the Chinese leadership, from the smog that has stubbornly hung over Beijing to human rights storms.
A mixture of pollution and fog again cut visibility across Beijing to a few hundred meters despite much publicized emergency measures to improve air quality.
The pollution issue has been particularly embarrassing for China because it has highlighted to the world one of the worst side-effects of its historic modernization drive — massive environmental degradation.
More than 100 heads of state and other senior national leaders are expected to attend the Games, ensuring a current of political tensions will flow through the event despite China’s leaders repeated efforts to dam the issue.
However, that is all expected to be at least briefly swept aside during the much anticipated opening ceremony that will kick off on today at 8pm.
The date and time of the ceremony is no coincidence as, for many Chinese, number eight is a particularly auspicious number because it represents prosperity.
The suffocating security precautions China has employed for the Olympics has dampened some of the excitement in the lead-up, with a few critics already dubbing the event the “No-Fun Games.”
More than 100,000 security personnel are patrolling Beijing, anti-missile barriers have been set up near the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, and the military and police are on guard around the country for any signs of trouble.
China has made no apologies for its crackdown, warning that terrorists from home and abroad are posing a massive threat to the Games.
But critics have accused Chinese authorities of exaggerating or fabricating threats so they have an excuse to silence their many critics.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed