Scratch Beijing From the Olympics Wish List : China: Its human-rights record should disqualify its host-city bid. The games’ ideals must be preserved.

In September, the International Olympic Committee will select the site for the Olympic Games in the year 2000. Many countries, including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Turkey and England, are vying for the honor of hosting these games.

One option, however, is an easy one to reject. China is absolutely the wrong place for the games. Beijing should not host the 2000 Olympics.

The Chinese have aggressively lobbied for the honor of hosting the games. Some would say their tactics have been unseemly and offensive. According to various newspaper accounts, the Chinese government spared no expense to impress an IOC delegation that visited Beijing recently. Authorities cut off heat to vast parts of the city so that coal smoke would not dull the sky. Street peddlers were “invited” to take a few days off, so that Olympic officials would not be offended by the smell or sight of fried dough sticks being sold on city streets.

But that was only the beginning--the Chinese presented the IOC committee with a pair of giant cloisonne vases worth $40,000 retail. Furthermore, in a particularly self-serving act of ingratiation, China decided to give the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, a great archeological treasure--one of the 2,200-year-old life-sized terra-cotta warriors found in the tomb of China’s first emperor. In the past, China reportedly rejected offers as high as $100 million to purchase one such figure.

Given the tremendous Chinese effort to curry favor with the IOC, no one can doubt that China’s government is engaged in a massive, politically motivated effort to burnish the besmirched image it earned in 1989 for the murderous attack on unarmed students and pro-democracy demonstrators in Tian An Men Square.

The grounds for rejecting China’s bid to host the Olympics are clear and persuasive.

The government of China has a dismal human-rights record. Other governments and private organizations have documented its suppression of the right of free expression of its own citizens, its imprisonment and persecution of students who are seeking to bring about democracy, its torture and incarceration of Catholic priests and Buddhist monks for practicing their religion and its brutal suppression of the culture and religion of the Tibetan people.

There is no question that the record of the Chinese government stands in absolute, stark contrast to the high ideals of the Olympic Games. It is a totalitarian government badly out of touch with its own people, as well as one that ignores the concerns of the international community.

Selecting Beijing as host city would undoubtedly draw the games into the mire of international politics and clearly overshadow the spirit and meaning of the Olympics. Much as the IOC deplores and decries politicization of the games, the committee would bear the bulk of the blame.

The Olympic Games should be above politics. The goal of the IOC should be to create an environment in which the ideals of the Olympics can be achieved, in which young men and women from around the world compete for the joy of competition. Unfortunately, far too often the games are used to make a political statement. The worst example clearly was the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, during which Adolf Hitler tried to illustrate the “superiority” of his vicious racist ideology and give legitimacy to his savage regime.

If Beijing is the venue for the year 2000, unfortunately, politics--not sport--will be the winner. The IOC’s consideration of Beijing has already provoked demonstrations by those who fear that the games will be used by the Chinese to enhance the image of what is in fact a repressive totalitarian regime. If China is selected, that controversy will only continue and intensify.

The IOC should exercise responsible judgment, stand on principle and say “no, thanks” to the Chinese bid. Accepting the Chinese invitation would wrongly award a political regime whose lawlessness has been condemned around the world, provoke considerable political controversy and ultimately overshadow and undermine the spirit and the meaning of the Olympic Games themselves.