The Beijing Olympics
Our revels now are ended
Aug 28th 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
rev・el
rev・el・(l)er ━━ n. rev・el・ry
━━ n. 酒宴.A substantial pageant, but its fading leaves not a wrack behind
IT ALL went much as China’s leaders had hoped. The ceremonies were spectacular, the stadiums as good as any in the world and China won far more gold medals than any other country. The world’s most important politicians showed up and no one, bar a handful of vexatious foreigners, staged protests. But after spending tens of billions of dollars and huge political energy, China’s leaders might be wondering whether it was all worth it.
The occasional glimpses on national television of their wooden expressions as they watched the closing spectacular of the Olympic games on August 24th revealed little of what they felt. This was a show they had helped to choreograph, sometimes in minute detail. But they have suppressed almost all public discussion about the choices they made and the expense involved.
Officially the games cost $2.2 billion, compared with an original estimate of $1.6 billion. Beijing also spent $40 billion on preparing its infrastructure and cleaning up the environment. But China’s secretive budgeting system makes it impossible to verify these figures. Chinese officials say the infrastructure had to be built anyway and that spending was in line with that of previous host cities. But the impression given was of little expense spared.
Vice-President Xi Jinping, at least, has reason to celebrate. The games were his first big political test since he emerged as China’s leader-in-waiting after a Communist Party congress in October last year. Mr Xi took charge of preparations for the games, a move apparently aimed at demonstrating the importance the party attached to them (officially a lower-ranking Politburo member, Beijing’s party chief, Liu Qi, remained the top organiser). Organisationally the games went well.
Less clear is whether the games will pay the kind of political dividends that China had hoped for domestically and abroad. The gold-medal haul (51 compared with America’s 36 and 23 for Russia) will boost national pride. But many complain about the impact that stringent security precautions and tightened visa restrictions for foreigners have had on business. Security has been particularly intense in Tibet and neighbouring Xinjiang. This may well worsen grievances among their inhabitants and strengthen pro-independence sentiment in both regions.
For all the good cheer generated by the gold medals, the party is clearly nervous of the slightest challenge to its authority. Having named three Beijing parks where protests would be allowed during the Olympics, the police turned down all of at least 77 applications for permission to hold demonstrations. Among those who applied were two women in their 70s who wanted to complain about inadequate compensation for being relocated from their homes. The authorities responded to their request by sentencing both to a year in labour camp, though the sentences are suspended as long as they behave well.
Officials made strenuous efforts to keep disaffected citizens from other provinces away from the capital during the games. But security is likely to be relaxed after the Paralympics, which will be held in Beijing between September 6th and 17th. The grievances, from land disputes to official corruption, that bring thousands of people to the capital every year in a usually futile search for redress will soon resurface. Even in the security-conscious build-up to the games large riots were reported in several Chinese towns over local abuses of power.
Abroad, China’s hospitality (towards those who managed to get visas, at least), lavish spectacles and magnificent new stadiums drew widespread praise. But there will be many doubts about whether all the Olympic bonhomie has transformed the way China sees the world. As China’s response to foreign reactions to the unrest in Tibet in March suggested, this can be worryingly xenophobic. The party still sees it as essential to its legitimacy to portray the country as a victim of Western efforts to contain and dismember it.
Tony Blair, a former British prime minister, argued in the Wall Street Journal this week that the games would mark a “new epoch”, involving an irreversible opening up of China and a steady decline of “ignorance and fear” of the country. But what many outside China saw during the Olympics was a clampdown on dissent and a disdain even for the spontaneous street-party exuberance of previous games. This will hardly dispel worries about the impact of China’s rise.
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