On August 8, Beijing will host the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympics. For two weeks, we will be treated to athletic performances that animate dreams and inspire the world, set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most ancient and celebrated civilizations. That, at least, is the way that Beijing would like to sell the Games.

For better or worse, they will mark a critical crossroads in China’s development as a responsible global player.

Just as the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 1964 closed the book on wartime Japan, the Beijing Games will end China’s past century as the “sick man” of Asia and open a new chapter as a modern, advanced nation. The newly built stadium known as the “Bird’s Nest” and the supermodern “water cube” aquatics center are iconic Olympic facilities offering the world a new image of China beyond the Great Wall.

The symbolism of China’s first astronaut in space carrying the Beijing Olympic banner could not have been a stronger statement of the nation’s aspirations.

The Olympics, however, also generate pressures on the regime to change its behavior, not just its image. Beijing is wrestling with the difficulties of conjoining its controlled and closed political system with the classical liberal ideals of individualism, open competition, and respect for human dignity embodied in the Olympics. ...

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By Victor D. Cha, 2008
The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Washington Quarterly • 31:3 pp. 105–123.

Victor D. Cha is director of Asian studies and the D.S. Song Chair at Georgetown University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Pacific Council for International Policy. He was director of Asian affairs on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007. He is author of Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia (Columbia University Press, 2008).

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