Olympic Image Is Everything : Officials in Beijing Emphasize the Positive in Their Bid for Games of 2000

When Los Angeles was bidding for the 1984 Olympic Games, there was scarcely a sign or poster in the city mentioning that fact. It might have been because L.A. was the only candidate, the only time in the history of the modern Olympics when that was the case.

Such lack of fervor isn’t the case in Beijing, one of six candidates for the Games in 2000. Everywhere one turns in the Chinese capital, there are huge signs, in both Chinese and English, extolling the city’s bid.

“An epoch-making Games in a Legendary City,” is one favorite slogan. “A more open China awaits the 2000 Olympics,” is another.

At the airport, travelers pass through halls decorated with nothing but Olympic pictures. Frequently included are photos of Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, taken when he visited Beijing.

When a delegation from the IOC visited Beijing in March, the city’s government cut off heat to many neighborhoods so as to diminish smoke from burning coal that normally pollutes the winter air.

Sydney, Istanbul, Brasilia, Berlin and Manchester, England, are the other cities competing for the Games of 2000. They will be awarded by the IOC at its Monte Carlo meeting in September.

Those in authority in Beijing express tremendous optimism about China’s chances, although Sydney is generally perceived as the front-runner. Only as an afterthought do the Chinese indicate that if Beijing does not win this time, it will be back with a bid for the Games of 2004.

During a recent interview, Wu Zhongyuan, vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee and chief spokesman for the bid committee, discussed such obstacles as the 1989 crackdown on student protesters at Tien An Men Square and doubts in the IOC that China, an Olympic participant only since 1980, has the resources and experience to put on the Games as early as 2000.

On Tien An Men Square, Wu said: “Had there been no crackdown, China would have gone the way of the Soviet Union,” facing political chaos and economic collapse.

The bid committee emphasizes “a more open China,” the recent release of some dissidents and the free talk one encounters in Beijing, quite critical of government policy in some areas.

As for Chinese resources, Wu points to the spectacular buildings constructed for the 1990 Asian Games, and the success of those Games, as signs of Chinese capacity to put on a successful Olympics. The Chinese go out of the way to route all visitors past the Asian Games sites.

Beijing appears to be an economically dynamic city. Buildings are going up, a superhighway to the airport is under construction and newspaper accounts in recent weeks have told of a 12% Chinese economic growth rate in the last year and speculated that early in the next century, China might become the world’s largest economy, replacing the that of the United States.

The IOC has, on frequent occasions, adhered to the early urgings of its founder, the French baron Pierre de Coubertin, that it take the Games to new places. Its recent selections of Sarajevo, Calgary, Albertville and Lillehammer for the Winter Games and Seoul and Atlanta for the summer testify to its desire to follow that tradition.

Then, too, the totalitarian character of certain countries, Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union in particular, has not dissuaded the IOC from taking its Games there. Such sites have, in the minds of some IOC members, demonstrated the Games’ universality.

Still, with today’s emphasis on human rights, such decisions might not be accepted so easily.

An IOC source recently predicted that Beijing would score only second or third in the Monte Carlo balloting, and Human Rights Watch, a major lobbying group, has been sharply questioning the suitability of Beijing for the Games. That group has also questioned Brasilia and Istanbul.

“As the largest U.S.-based international human-rights organization, Human Rights Watch is appalled to see that countries with egregious human rights records are on the short list (for the 2000 Games),” Kenneth Roth, the organization’s deputy director, said recently.

“As we have seen in the past, the site selection for the Olympic Games carries high political and financial stakes. Awarding a country the Olympiad yields a bonanza of favorable publicity and cash.”

Roth called the Chinese government “an unrepentant offender of human rights standards.”

Still, as part of their campaign for the Games, the Chinese have been trying to strike a new tone on human rights as on other issues. And they posed the question: “Of all the exotic sites for an Olympic Games, is there any one more exotic in our time than Beijing?”