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Will the 2008 Beijing Olympics go down in history as closer to the infamous 1936 Berlin competition or the triumphant 1988 Seoul Games? That's the question International Olympic Committee members wrestled with as they pondered the July 13 vote that awarded the Games to the Middle Kingdom. History never repeats itself, but my bet is that the IOC members will end up on the right side of history and that we'll look back on these Games as a turning point in modern China.
Perhaps I'm prejudiced. But I saw what could happen during my time in Seoul. I arrived as a foreign correspondent in the South Korean capital in the spring of 1987, shortly before sustained antigovernment protests broke out in June of that year. Like China, the authoritarian government of Chun Doo Hwan tried to use the Olympics to legitimize its rule -- and to tamp down dissent in the name of stability. Like China, South Korea had a miserable human-rights record at the time it was awarded the Olympics.
TURBULENT TIMES. Indeed, in many ways the situation was even worse -- Seoul got the nod just a short time after Chun had seized power. Government troops under his control had killed hundreds of protestors and innocent civilians in the May, 1980, uprising in the southwestern city of Kwangju, opposition leader Kim Dae Jung's power base. During the run-up to the Olympics, dissidents decried the Games for the succor they gave to Chun and his crowd.
Yet the Olympics proved to be more than Chun bargained for. He flirted with imposing martial law during the June, 1987, demonstrations as Korean office workers joined students on the streets. But Chun knew that to do so would risk the Olympics that he so desperately wanted. Finally, he agreed to a free and fair presidential election, which was held that December. Two opposition candidates, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung (both of whom later became President) split the vote, and ruling party candidate Roh Tae Woo took the spot.
But the important fact is that there was an election, and the results were accepted, despite some grumbling, by the opposition. Korea's long march toward democracy began in earnest. The Olympics bought Korea 16 months (from June, 1987, through the Games in September, 1988) of relative immunity from a political crackdown at a time when its embryonic democracy desperately needed some breathing room. An unprecedented wave of strikes and demonstrations broke out. Pent-up grievances spilled out. Yet, a brutal crackdown was out of the question.
THE PEOPLE'S PRIZE. Certainly, lots of other factors were at work. Probably most important, the U.S. could exercise much more pressure on South Korea, where it had more than 40,000 troops stationed in the late 1980s, than it can on China. And I think that people who question why the Games should be given to a country with as appalling a human-rights record as China raise important points. After all, there's no doubt that the Chinese government will use the Games to bolster its shaky legitimacy. But I think the doubters will end up wrong.
Look at the exuberance and excitement of so many workaday Chinese that their country will host the games. The Olympics were given to the people of Beijing and the people of China, not to the Chinese government. To deny China the Games would have been a slap in the face to people who are trying to end a pretty miserable two centuries. It's a time that has seen the country plummet from the world's dominant economy to ruin and revolution. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has come a long way. In sport, as in so much else, China is becoming an increasingly important power. Giving Beijing the Games simply recognizes that fact.
I'm willing to wager that the Olympics will buy reform-minded Chinese seven years of breathing space that they might not otherwise have. Every reformer I've spoken to in recent months in China supports the Olympics.
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. The country is in the early stages of a very rough economic and social transition. Entry into the World Trade Organization, probably early next year, will expose big swathes of the economy to tremendous disruptions. Tens of millions more workers in state-owned enterprises will be laid off as a result of withering competition. Many farmers will find their lot even tougher. The government will struggle to adjust to the law-based regime that the WTO requires. The gap between rich and poor, already getting dangerously wide, will almost certainly grow.
The reflexive reaction from Beijing is to crack down. The current Strike Hard anticrime campaign, which has seen more Chinese executed in the first half of this year than in the rest of the world combined during the past three years, is the typical reaction from Beijing when it fears that events are spinning out of its control. So, too, is a recent crackdown against freewheeling media and Internet outlets. Such heavy-handed responses will undoubtedly continue. But there will be fewer of them, and China will pay a higher price -- both domestically and internationally -- because the world will be watching it as never before.
Ultimately, change in China will come from the Chinese people themselves. The rest of the world can do little more than watch. But watching is something that we outsiders will be doing more of than ever before in the next seven years. In 2008, let the Games begin -- and let's hope China uses those years well.
Hong Kong-based Asia Regional Editor Clifford is the author of Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats, and Generals in South Korea (M.E. Sharpe) Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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