So. One month to go to the big day. At eight minutes past eight on the eighth day of the eighth month of, yes, ’08, this Olympic Games will finally start. I for one will be hooting with joy. I am thoroughly sick of the build up. Can’t imagine what it’s like for the organizers, tho I suppose the fear of some looming cock up is bracing enough to keep their minds off other matters. There’s not too much to add about the physical preparations. Most things look to be on track. And as far as the air quality, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Barring some fairly cosmic bad luck (which China has already had a dose or two of this year, sad to say, as well as lesser but still hardly routine stuff: who would have thought of a green algae attack?), the measures that have been put in place such as banning odd-even license plates etc (details here) should do the trick. Today’s API by the way is hovering around 100, which would be unhealthy for most other cities but is the dividing line between acceptable and, er, not so acceptable in Beijing.
On other issues, I think it can be said categorically that the visa restrictions and other heavy strictures (details, story here) put in place have proved a far bigger problem than anybody even remotely anticipated. I have a friend who runs a business helping new investors into China. He says business has dropped sharply in the last few months and queries about India and Vietnam as possible alternatives to China have risen in proportion. Sure, some of it will come back after the Games, he says, but some people are just thoroughly fed up by the whole experience and packing up and going elsewhere. I guess it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise though. The order went out that ensuring a secure and peaceful Games was priority number one and everything else came a distant second. So bureaucrats –and security types are particularly prone to this as it only takes one slip up to bring on a major problem–went to maximum CYA (cover your er, donkey) lockdown. It will be interesting to see how things shake out after September. It’s often easier clamp down than get the system to loosen up again. Nature of the beast after all.
And what about the human rights and general openness that were supposed to have been enhanced by the awarding of the Games? It hardly needs to be said that the exact opposite happened and most dissenting voices have either been jailed or intimidated into silence. Same goes for the promised greater media freedom, as Human Right Watch have pointed out in their latest report. (Here with proxy or VPN if inside the Wall), China’s Forbidden Zones. Again, it will be instructive to see how things turn out later in the year. My feeling is that the conservative forces in the top leadership (or hardliners if you prefer) will be emboldened by the fact that despite a severe crackdown in the full glare of pre-Olympics publicity, there has been virtually no substantive international reaction. I’d wager that they’ll argue that there’s no reason not to keep those irritating dissidents in jail if there’s no downside. It could even encourage security forces to tighten further once the Games are over. 秋后算账 as one policeman told dissident Hu Jia last year: we’ll settle accounts after Autumn. In his case of course they didn’t wait, putting him away in Spring.