The ink had hardly dried on the gushing headlines celebrating this city's winning bid to stage the 2008 Summer Olympic Games before some Chinese started questioning the euphoria.
Some people quietly groused about spending so much money -- as much as US$12 billion -- to transform China's capital into an Olympiad-worthy city when so much of the country is struggling with underfunded elementary schools and inadequate health care. Others questioned whether hosting the Olympics will really move China toward the more open, less repressive society that supporters of the Olympics see ahead.
Bai Zeng, sitting shirtless outside his red brick apartment block in a pair of faded, flowered boxer shorts and rubber sandals, takes the view that preparations for the Games will probably lead to more corruption.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"It's not the central government, it's the lower-level officials," he said, pointing out where a light rail line will run past his home. That home will soon be demolished to make way for the Olympic village that will be the site of the Games in this northern district of Beijing.
Bai was relocated by the government once before, when he and his wife and daughter were moved into a six-story apartment block so that their previous home could be bulldozed as part of the city's urban development plan. He said he received only about a fifth of the compensation that he was promised because several corrupt local officials each took a cut.
"They're like mosquitoes," he complained with a cheerful grin, a cultural characteristic here that often belies the anger felt inside. "When you get rid of one, another arrives to bite you."
Such wary assessments are still rare in the afterglow of Beijing's victory over several other cities for the right to hold the 2008 Games. Most Chinese, including Bai, see playing host to the Games as an important step in recovering China's sense of greatness and restoring the confidence it lost long ago, in the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s and the collapse of the Qing Dynasty more than a half-century later.
The Games could prove to be an important validation for the Communist Party, not only in the international arena, but among its own people. While the Games will be used to highlight China's achievements internationally, they're likely to highlight the party's achievements domestically. They present the party with a rare opportunity to win over a younger generation estranged from the old revolutionary values of the party's past and cast the party leadership as modern and respected abroad.
After the International Olympic Committee's decision was announced Friday, President Jiang Zemin (
But local detractors of hosting the Olympics stand to become more common as the Beijing moves forward with its massive plan to reshape the city by 2008.
Beijing intends to build an Olympic village of about 1,200 hectares, holding 15 sports arenas, including an 80,000-seat main stadium and two huge gymnasiums. To ease congested traffic ahead of the Games, Beijing plans to complete two more "ring roads" circling the city and two light railway lines connecting the Olympic site with the rest of Beijing. The central government has promised to underwrite all costs.
"Sure the Olympics will help Beijing to build more roads and subways and buildings, but the country will have to sacrifice for it," said a Beijing-based magazine editor, who asked not to be named. He worried that the expense of mounting the Games elsewhere has often exceeded initial estimates, and the same is likely to be true of Beijing. "It's money that, if it wasn't spent here, could be spent where it's really needed," he said.
Cautious criticism of hosting the Games began appearing on Chinese Internet bulletin boards on Saturday. One of the country's most popular forums, operated by the People's Daily, carried an anonymous line that read: "Now that we've won the Olympics, can we squeeze out just a little bit more money for rural education?"
Some Chinese interviewed say that political freedoms may improve as the Olympics looms. People both inside and outside China cite the example of South Korea, which moved from a military leadership to a democratically elected government ahead of the the 1988 Seoul Olympiad, partly because of concerns about political stability during the Games. While no one expects China to suddenly shift to a multiparty system between now and 2008, some people say the pressure of international scrutiny ahead of the Games may force the government to soften its treatment of people with dissenting political ideas or unapproved religious beliefs.
"You can't just use money to measure the value of holding the Olympics," said Susan Zhang, a Beijing lawyer in her early 30s, who cited the Seoul example.
"If our government feels more secure and doesn't feel threatened, there can be more change and improvement" in other areas, such as human rights.
But a senior international affairs scholar at the Communist Party's Central Party School doubted the Games would have much influence on the government's human rights attitude.
"China isn't South Korea," he said. Korea is a smaller, less complex country, he said, and was already changing when Seoul won the bid to play host to the Olympics. "China is too big to be pushed around like South Korea, and the government certainly doesn't want to follow the South Korean example, no matter what America thinks."
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