July 4, 2001

On June 23, the Chinese authorities staged a showpiece event, a Three Tenors concert in the Forbidden City, to show the world they are ready to host the Olympic Games. It ended up having precisely the opposite effect, demonstrating why the games should not go to Beijing in 2008.

As the guests arrived at the imperial palace dressed in their formal evening clothes, Stephen Shaver of Agence France-Presse was outside taking photographs of them. Suddenly the police detained a man who may have been a protester, and Mr. Shaver took a photo of the incident. The police pounced on the American photographer, telling him he had broken the law, and six of them tried to put him in a van, punching and slapping him and ramming his head into the side of the car. A senior officer finally intervened, and Mr. Shaver was allowed to continue covering the concert.

But this was not the end of the matter. As Mr. Shaver left the area a few hours later, he ran into the same police who had earlier roughed him up. Apparently feeling they had lost face because they were overruled by a superior, they dragged him along the pavement. When a crowd of concert-goers gathered, the police told them that the foreigner had insulted China, which inspired them to yell anti-foreign slogans at the prostrate journalist. Only after he abjectly apologized to the Chinese people was Mr. Shaver allowed to go free.

So much for China's promises to the International Olympic Committee that it will allow journalists to cover events freely in 2008 if Beijing hosts the games. In nine days, the IOC members will make their decision on whether to believe that and many other promises. They should consider the risk that the Olympics will end up tarnished by similar incidents, exacerbating conflict between an often brutal government and the rest of the world, rather than giving the Chinese people a triumphant debut on the international stage.

Much ink has already been spilled on the question of China's human rights record and whether the country deserves to host the games. More pertinent to those IOC members who are on the fence about Beijing's candidacy is the question of whether the ingrained culture of arrogance and impunity among China's security forces will create serious problems for the games. China is undoubtedly capable of building massive stadiums, shutting down polluting factories and forcing taxi drivers to speak English before 2008 arrives. But the present government can't get the political software right to carry off a trouble-free Olympics.

Mr. Shaver's run-in was hardly an isolated incident -- foreign journalists who live in Beijing often get a first-hand glimpse of how the authorities control ordinary Chinese. In 1992, police beat ABC correspondent Todd Carrell so severely that he has permanent spinal injuries, and other reporters have been beaten with a rifle butt (Fumio Holley) and run off the road (Nicholas Driver). More commonly, the police follow, harass, manhandle and detain journalists. Almost any news-gathering activity can be construed as violating the law if the police need an excuse. The most revealing thing about these episodes is that there isn't any accountability. Mr. Shaver's case was unusual in that the Foreign Ministry eventually admitted that the police had been a little over-zealous, but there was still no mention of disciplinary action against the police.

Beijing doesn't like journalists exposing the darker side of life in China. It's even more afraid, though, of foreigners coming into the country to spread ideas about freedom. After failing to win the 2000 Olympics, Beijing agreed to host the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women as a way to show it could sponsor a world-class event. But when the government realized that activist nongovernmental organizations planned to attend, it shifted the NGO part of the program to a town 40 miles from Beijing. Many of the participants had to set up shop in a muddy field and live in primitive dormitories, where phone lines and toilets were in short supply. Most importantly, ordinary Chinese were not allowed to have contact with the delegates.

Because 2008 is still seven years off, it's hard to predict how China would handle large numbers of tourists, journalists and, inevitably, free Tibet protesters and Falun Gong practitioners. However, the regime's behavior toward dissenters hasn't changed much in the last seven years. If anything, the crackdown on the Falun Gong has made security officials more aggressive toward Chinese and foreigners alike.

Opponents of holding the Olympics in China cite the 1936 Berlin games as precedent, suggesting that the prestige of the event may feed Chinese nationalism and help create an aggressive totalitarian state like Nazi Germany. Supporters of Beijing's bid counter with the 1988 Seoul games, which aided South Korea's transition from a military dictatorship to democracy. Both arguments exaggerate the reality of China and so miss the point.

China is no longer totalitarian, and its citizens are gaining increasing freedom in their daily lives. There is reason to be concerned about the rise of nationalism, but the government still uses the improvement in living standards as its main claim to rule. It is true that if the economy were to suffer a major setback, the regime would likely start to incite nationalist feelings more aggressively to shore up its support. That's one reason why trading with China is in everybody's interest. The long-term hope must be that economic freedoms engender demands for more political freedoms and the Communist Party realizes that allowing pluralism is the only way to survive.

But we're a long, long way from that goal, which is why the Seoul games analogy doesn't work. China's government is still a Leninist-party dictatorship that doesn't hesitate to use violence to preserve its power. In recent days it has been closing domestic newspapers that pushed the ideological envelope and prosecuting citizens who posted heterodox opinions on the Internet. Three years ago, it gave long prison terms to a handful of intellectuals who tried to start an opposition party. China's Jiang Zemin is nothing like former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan, who stepped down rather than lose the Olympics. If any organized dissent or power struggle within the leadership arose before or during the games, the Communist Party would not hesitate to sacrifice them for the sake of its own power.

When the IOC considers whether to stage the Olympics in Beijing, it should consider China's poor human rights record as more than just an abstraction. It is a symptom of a regime which is stuck in the past and incapable of changing its ways. Depending on it to act in a civilized manner for even a few weeks is taking a tremendous risk with the Olympic movement.