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  Waving the Red Flag: China's Countdown to Olympic Reality

Waving the Red Flag China's Countdown to Olympic Reality

By Lothar Gorris and Andreas Lorenz

Part 5: 'The Most Misunderstood Nation on Earth'

With seven months to go before the games begin, China is taking pains not to project the image of an invincible giant, of an incredible performance machine fueled by previously unknown super-athletes, possibly pumped full of unknown drugs. In fact, the Chinese anti-doping agency is considered one of the world's most effective. Nothing would be more embarrassing to Beijing than a doping case in Team China.

The games will be over in 216 days. Will Zhang Qiang, a meteorologist with the Weather Modification Office, have succeeded in her plan to induce rain several days before the games -- hoping that this will reduce the likelihood of rain during the events -- by seeding clouds outside the city with silver iodide? Will prohibitions on driving and factory closings have cleared up the skies over Beijing? And will dissidents have been released to experience the rest of the world descending upon China?

There are some optimists. One of them is Ren Hai, 57, a sociologist at the Beijing Sport University. He is anything but a dissident. He believes in his country and in the party, but he has also seen the world. He studied in Ontario in the 1980s. As the son of a family of academics he was sent at age 18 during the Cultural Revolution to Gansu Province, where he worked as a blacksmith for three years until he was allowed to return home. Like other Chinese, he had to survive on meager rations of food, including 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of meat a month. A professor since 1994, Ren frequently travels abroad and has close ties with Cologne's German Sport University. He says that he would never have believed how much his country has changed during the course of his life. He also says that China is the most misunderstood nation on earth.

Ren's English sounds Chinese and his tea tastes like warm water. A party member for the past 20 years, he says: "From the outside, the Communist Party may still look the way it used to, but on the inside it changed long ago."

The games will open up China, says Ren. In addition to the concrete, stadiums and skyscrapers, they will leave behind a softer legacy. "China will be forced to cooperate internationally," says Ren, "and it is in the process of learning how to deal with it."

What exactly is communism?

"For me," he says, "communism means that I am honest with my students. I don't like propaganda."

A Nest for Democracy?

The central government is losing control, while capitalism does as it pleases. The world is coming to China, and when it does, everyone with access to a television set will be able to observe what actually happens in this country. Every dictatorship is terrified of the moment when it finally loses control.

The white corridors of the institute are empty. It's dark outside, the city is blanketed in smog, and a small white statue of Mao glows softly at the end of the street. A female voice blares from loudspeakers suspended from the streetlights. The woman sounds as if she were rattling off the latest party slogans.

But it's only the campus radio station broadcasting its nightly program, and the voice is that of a female student reading an ad for a career consulting business. "Have you ever considered starting your own company?" she asks.

The road back to the center leads past the National Stadium, also known as the "Bird's Nest," designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. It's the most beautiful new sporting arena since the Colosseum was built in Rome. The Bird's Nest will become the symbol of these games, and as a symbol, one can interpret it in many ways. Some would call it a prison of steel, while others might see it as a breeding ground for democracy.

No one knows what will happen to the stadium after the games. There are no sporting events in China that could fill the arena on a regular basis. Someone has even proposed demolishing it after the games.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan