Ahead of the Olympic Games, Excitement and Fear in Beijing

BEIJING -- In Athens, four years ago this week, Greek officials were still scurrying to put the final touches on sporting venues and other civil infrastructure that had been constructed for the games. China's Olympic infrastructure has been ready for much longer, yet Chinese officials are still in panic mode: With just hours to go before the opening ceremony, Beijing's notorious pollution clouds refuse to budge, and Chinese Communist Party officials remain on edge about displays of political dissent.

In Athens, where I covered the event for the BBC, at the conclusion of two stimulating weeks of competition, the after-hours bar-room consensus among British journalists was that the Greek games been a great success, but that covering Beijing in 2008 would be a completely different affair: due to Chinese authoritarianism as well as the yawning culture and language gap.

In a bid to pre-empt protests by dissident groups or Tibetan nationalists, Chinese officials have already banned all flags other than those of countries participating in the Olympics, and banners larger than two square meters. Chinese officials are said to be leaning on NBC, the American channel with exclusive broadcasting rights, to refrain from transmitting to the world images of any in-stadium protests that happen to be captured by the network's cameras.

Olympic visitors' first contact with China is Beijing's new airport, an undulating architectural tour de force designed by award-winning British architect Norman Foster and populated by thousands of industrious staff and a breathtaking concentration of surveillance cameras. Thickets of cameras erupt defiantly from kiosks, booths, the soaring ceilings and most vertical surfaces. Their presence continues in the streets of major cities like Beijing and Shanghai but also in smaller regional cities like Shenyang in the north (which is home to a mere 9 million people). Where in the West closed circuit television is often seen as a sinister augur of an Orwellian state, Chinese seem to regard them as a sign of progress and modernity.

Customs agents stand as silent sentinels and perform a brief saluting routine when it's time to change shifts. Though the airport must be the most international spot in China, few of its employees speak intelligible English. Upon leaving the airport, Beijing municipal authorities have addressed this problem by installing recorded English-language messages in taxis. The messages are activated when the meter goes on. Greek cabbies were memorably given politeness training in dealing with foreigners. Their Chinese counterparts are paragons of grace, yet they erupt out of the airport and onto the highway in a high-speed frenzy that will not impress Greek visitors but is sure to unsettle northern Europeans and Americans.

Tourist leaflets make for unintentionally delightful reading. One pamphlet provided at the airport rhapsodizes about Beijing as "an old Oriental garden, full of mystery, abundant tourism resource, and long historical culture." It goes on to say that "Islamism, Catholicism, Christ plays an active role in Beijing's historical and artistic development."

Order is obsessively implemented. At the baggage claim, trolleys are placed at two-meter intervals. Stewards greet tumbling bags at dispersal points and arrange them neatly on the carousel. Police with sniffer-dogs patrol the hall, smelling baggage and -- alarmingly -- travellers too. At the foreign currency exchange, attendants spread out large-denomination dollar and euro bills in perfect fans on the countertop before processing orders.

A pall of pollution hangs over Beijing. The Chinese had promised the International Olympic Committee that this would disappear in time for the games but -- at the time of this writing, a week before the opening ceremony -- the smog remains thick and adds to the heat and humidity. Emergency measures are being taken, the most dramatic of which is cloud-seeding, a process that is producing daily rainfall in Beijing.

"They're really starting to panic about the pollution. I wouldn't be surprised if they erected a huge fan at the last minute to blow away the smog," one Chinese architect joked.

Similarly, despite initial promises that Internet access would be free and open to all visitors checking into the capital's five-star hotels designated for foreigners, several international chains have notified U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback that Chinese authorities have installed equipment that will allow them to monitor guests' Internet usage in real time.

Ai Weiwei, one of China's most influential intellectuals and the designer of the futuristic Olympic Stadium, has distanced himself from the Olympics and said he will not be attending the opening ceremony. He has slammed the authorities' manipulation of the message of the games as "an exercise in state power. People's rights are heavily violated. Is this an Olympics or some kind of warfare?"

The Olympics will open Aug. 8 with a spectacular ceremony featuring a dramatic countdown, an illuminated globe, flying performers whizzing above the audience, and giant whales, according to dress-rehearsal footage leaked by a South Korean broadcaster. Eight is a lucky number in China and the opening date -- 8.8.08 -- was chosen for this reason. But the fact that the tragic May 12 earthquake in Sichuan -- the deadliest earthquake in a generation -- occurred precisely 88 days before the opening ceremony was taken by many as an ill omen. For the superstitious, there have been other ominous signs. Flash floods were particularly heavy this year, leaving thousands dead. In addition, a massive algae bloom at the Olympic sailing site and last week's total solar eclipse are making some Chinese nervous.

With so many potential problems, it is no wonder that the Chinese government's stress levels have peaked. Foreign residents in Shanghai and Beijing have reported being refused visas for the Olympic period, and the Chinese consulate in Hong Kong is no longer issuing visas to foreign passport holders. The emphasis on monitoring foreign troublemakers in their moment of glory furthers the impression that these Olympics will be more a showcase of China's newfound power and less a global celebration of sport.

"We don't want terrorists, that's the most important thing for us," one local artist explained. "If that means few tourists, that's okay, we don't care."

Iason Athanasiadis, a 2008 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, is an analyst, writer, photographer and filmmaker. For the past several years he has been based in Tehran, and is a native of Greece.

Image: A billboard on a Beijing street touting the Olympic Games.