Archives for August 2008

It's over.

In a state which has no God, the Olympics has been a religion - together with its own cathedrals, rituals, and sacred flames. Everyone in China was meant to be a worshipper. If you didn't believe in the Games, you were dismissed as a heretic.

It all ended tonight with a suitably sacred ceremony in the Bird's Nest Stadium. Our camera position was a few metres away from the VIP section. China's leaders sat in the front row with the IOC President Jacques Rogge. On each of their desks was a pair of binoculars and also a pen and paper (just in case any of them suddenly felt moved to write a speech).

The King and Queen of Sweden sat a bit further back - democratically wearing their official Olympic accreditation round their necks.

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown was tucked back in the fifth row, next to China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (a man who's clearly been on put on foreign leader duty - Mr Jiechi sat next to President Bush during the basketball).

London's mayor, Boris Johnson, looked a little out of place amid the crisp, well-tailored Chinese officials around him. He walked onto the stage, semi-saluting as he went (correct protocol seemed to call for a more subdued royal wave instead).

He then took part in a rather solemn three-way Olympic flag waving contest. The mayor of Beijing went first and managed to get the flag slightly tangled up. He handed it to Jacques Rogge, who waved it and semi-untangled it. Boris Johnson tried not to get swallowed by the flag. He eventually got it right and waved away.

London then began its eight-minute show. The biggest cheer of the entire night came when David Beckham rose up from the 2012 bus (if ever China decides to hold elections, Beckham might have a reasonable chance of getting a seat on the Chinese Politburo).

Then came the final moment of a decade of work. The Olympic flame (always known here as the "sacred flame") was put out.

A billion people will now have to find something else to believe in.

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China's Olympic team has done so well that it's beginning to suffer from the Brazil football team syndrome. When you expect to win every time you turn up, it becomes a national tragedy when you happen to lose (parliamentary inquiries, coroners' inquests, calls for the immediate exile of the coach, etc).

The Chinese diver Zhou Luxin was expected to win a gold medal in the men's 10m diving on Saturday night. A victory for him would have given China all eight gold medals in the diving at the Beijing Games.

But Zhou came second. Not a good move.

An interviewer from Chinese state TV asked Zhou why he hadn't performed well enough. Commentators said his failure had cost China its chance at perfection.

I've just had a look at some comments on Chinese online chat rooms (we've translated them into English)...

"Very disappointed! Everyone expected Zhou to get the 50th gold. But he lost, he is the criminal of our country. We lost the most important gold medal in men's diving event. It is a huge shame, Zhou Jiehong, the team leader of China's diving team, should quit her post!"

"What Zhou lost is not a gold medal. He disappointed the hopes of the entire country. Hosting the Olympics is the dream of several generations."

Some are more sympathetic ...

"Every Chinese athlete knows how important the Beijing Olympics is, and they have much more pressure than the foreign athletes. Zhou is still young and has lots of chances. It is okay not to win a gold at this Olympics. He has done really well. The failure can get him to work harder in the future."

"Those people criticising our athletes are so bad in their attitude! Is it necessary for them to do that? Why should our athletes be regarded as medal machines? If they can't get gold medals, they will be criticised, if they get golds, everybody says loving words. These people are so nasty!"

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Have you ever invited people round and then worried beforehand that no one would show up, and that even if they did they would probably hate the food, criticise the carpets, break all your glasses, and possibly even throw up on your sofa?

That may be a little bit like what China felt before the Games began. Here's a guess at the country's worst fears as the Olympics approached.

* World leaders would boycott the opening ceremony. The VIP seats in the Olympic stadium would have to be filled with volunteers or with world-leader lookalikes to hide the embarrassment of so many no-shows.

* The city's pollution would be so bad that the marathon runners would have to carry head torches and maps to make their way along the route. In the unlikely event that anyone actually finished the race, no one would be able to tell who won, since the photo-finish equipment would be unable to see through the smog.

* Pro-Tibet/democracy/Falun Gong protesters would rush onto the track in the final steps of the 110m hurdles and trip up Liu Xiang just as he was about to cross the line to win a gold medal.

* Chinese athletes would be attacked by nerves and fall off the diving board/crash off the uneven bars/drop the weightlifting bar onto their feet, and fail to win any medals.

But those worst fears have not been realised. Plenty of world leaders came to the opening ceremony. Not a single country has boycotted the Games. Beijing's pollution hasn't forced any endurance events to be postponed (thanks, in part, to a lot of rain). Protesters haven't disrupted any Olympic events. Chinese athletes have won more gold medals than anyone else. Beijing has even hosted two of the most astonishing performers in Olympic history : Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

In other words, phew.

But, of course, there have been a few problems. Journalists arriving to cover the Games found that China was still blocking a number of news and human rights websites - breaking the Communist Party's promise that there would be complete freedom to report during the Olympics (after a bit of a row, many of the websites were unblocked a day or two later).

In many venues there have been large numbers of empty seats - a puzzling contrast to the scenes of desperation we saw in the days before the Games when local fans queued in the heat for two days to get tickets.

Then, there was the revelation that the pretty girl who sang at the opening ceremony was actually miming to the voice of a not-so-pretty girl (there's been a mini-campaign on the internet to persuade the Olympic organisers to allow the not-so-pretty girl to sing at the closing ceremony).

There's also the case of the two grandmothers who have been sentenced to a year's re-education through labour, after they applied to demonstrate in one of the parks set aside for protests during the Olympic Games. One of the grandmothers has no teeth and only one good eye - it's hard to imagine how she could get by in a labour camp.

And one problem still lies ahead. The International Olympic Committee is investigating whether or not some of the Chinese female gymnasts who did so well during these Games were under age. If the IOC finds that China faked the age of some of its gymnasts, this country could lose at least two of its gold medals.

Do these problems - blocked websites, empty seats, a miming little girl, grannies sentenced to a labour camp, an investigation into gymnasts - overshadow China's numerous triumphs at these Games?

It entirely depends on how confident China now feels. I've learned that this is a country which is acutely sensitive to any kind of criticism - however minor. But it also seems that China has gained a huge amount of confidence during these Games. Nobody has stopped this country from putting on its dazzling show. There's been no international conspiracy to do China down. Everyone has come - and most appear to have been hugely impressed by what they have seen - the city, the architecture, the performances.

Still, every event has its mistakes. How this country handles criticism of its Games will tell us a lot about the confidence of a post-Olympic China.

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Can two weeks and several bagfuls of gold medals change the way an entire country sees itself?

I've written here before that China often sees itself as a victim. Generations have grown up learning about this country's century of humiliation - how the West and Japan once bit chunks out of China, and how they still want to keep China down.

But does China now have to get a new national story?

The success of the Beijing Olympics may make China reassess its belief that it is a victim. It may also have to re-think its view that the West is determined to stop China from retaking its rightful place as a world power.

Here's why...

• Everyone has come to Beijing. 205 nations were invited to compete at these Games - and 204 showed up (Brunei managed to get its paperwork in a muddle and failed to register its athletes on time). So, there were no boycotts. The most important world leaders even came to the opening ceremony as well (one of the only ones who didn't, Gordon Brown, has now arrived in Beijing for the closing ceremony).

• China is winning more golds than anyone else. Before the Games, China played down its gold medal chances - saying that it was just a minor, second-rank, developing country which would probably be annihilated by the sporting powers of the world (and would be lucky to rub two bronzes together, that kind of thing). But, in the end, it's come out ahead. So, the next time that China plays down its chances, no-one will believe a word.

In the end, it's pretty hard to carry on feeling like a victim when every country on earth comes to your party and proceeds to watch you win.

"Now we can say goodbye to our image as the sick man of Asia," said Shen Ming, a Chinese fan watching the final of the women's beach volleyball told my colleague.

"Hosting the Olympics means that China's power has grown," said Hao Ning at the final of the men's springboard diving (which China won).

On to the next question then. What does China do when it no longer feels picked on by the rest of the world?

Here are the most outlandish fears of the lying-awake-at-night-worrying-about-China club (slightly exaggerated for effect): China will go ahead and conquer the world, raise the red flag over Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, and make the rest of the world come to Beijing every once in a while to prostrate themselves and generally grovel in a humiliating way.

China says that no-one has to worry about anything like that. People here tell me they just want to be respected and taken seriously as equals - nothing more.

What do a billion people do when their country finds its confidence?

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Highlights time. Which have been the most memorable of China's Olympic moments for you?

A handful to start things going...

Yao Ming scoring a three-point shot to open the scoring in the US-China basketball match (a great shot, but the US ended up winning easily).

Lin Dan winning the badminton singles (making up for crashing out in the first round in Athens 2004) and throwing his shoes into the crowd in celebration (one of the shoes has gone missing, several people claim they have the other one and are willing to sell it for thousands of dollars).

The shooter Du Li breaking down in tears after failing to get China a first gold medal on the opening day of competition, but recovering to win a gold several days later.

Lin Yue and Huo Yuang diving so perfectly that they seemed to become one person in the men's 10m synchronised diving final.

Yang Wei cupping his hands to his ears to hear the crowd's adulation after winning the men's all-round gymnastics gold medal.

Liu Xiang kicking a mattress in frustration in the corridor of the Olympic Stadium, after pulling out of the men's 110m heats (a hint of what it must feel like to disappoint more than a billion people).

Any more?

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There are 205 teams competing at the Olympic Games. But only 192 of these are from countries represented at the United Nations

Ten of these are Caribbean or Pacific islands (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, Cook Islands). None of these islands are independent, but they are allowed to compete in their own right in Beijing.

Palestine isn't independent, but it wants to be - and it gets to compete at the Olympics. Hong Kong competes on its own as well (it got to keep its own Olympic team even after the territory returned to China in 1997).

Then, there's Taiwan. The island rules itself - but China considers it to be an inseparable part of Chinese territory. Still, Taiwan is allowed to send its own team to the Olympics - under the politically neutral name Chinese Taipei. This politically neutral name comes with a special, suitably neutral flag - Olympic rings printed on a white backdrop.

This morning, in Beijing I got to watch Taiwan/Chinese Taipei's best gold medal hope - Chu Mu Yen (a taekwando fighter who has the fearsome nickname "The warlord of Taiwan").

The Beijing crowd cheered loudly for him as he walked in for his first fight (on the grounds that they feel that he is as Chinese as they are). A handful of fans even waved the Chinese Taipei flag.

But no-one raised the actual red and blue flag of Taiwan itself (that would have broken Chinese and Olympic rules - section D of the regulations posted outside Olympic venues says that spectators are not allowed to bring in "flags of non-Olympic and Paralympic participating countries/regions"). So, no Taiwan flags are allowed (for that matter no English, Scottish or Welsh flags are allowed either - since the UK competes as one nation under the flag of the Union Jack).

Chu Mu Yen clearly enjoyed the crowd's support - since he demolished his competitor from Kenya (and made me understand why he's known as the warlord of Taiwan).

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You might think there'd be a period of national sporting mourning here for Liu Xiang (China's most famous sportsman, who pulled out of the 110m hurdles on Monday) - black drapes placed across his many advertisement, vigils on the street, a ban on public displays of affection, that kind of thing.

But China's far too busy inhaling gold medals to get depressed by Liu Xiang's departure. This country has won more gold than it has ever won before at a single games.

Tonight, I watched He Chong win the men's 3m springboard diving (a terrifying event to watch - since you spend your time in the crowd worrying that the divers will smash their heads on the diving board when they come twisting down from the sky).

But He Chong made it look easy. He carried a series of perfect dives, he bowed politely, and won the gold. The crowd cheered loyally - and everyone sang the national anthem together when the Chinese flag was raised above the pool.

I've been studying the victory poses of Chinese athletes at these Games. From what I can tell, a winning Chinese gold medallist essentially has three choices...

1) Humble servant - winner hugs coach, cries, stands politely on the podium, wells up a bit more, insists modestly that everyone else is responsible for his/her victory. exemplified by most of China's first-time gold medal winners.

2) Rock star - winner yells with joy, punches the air, nearly demolishes coach with hugs, throws clothes and equipment into crowd. exemplified by men's badminton singles winner Lin Dan who saluted the audience (as if everyone in the stadium was about to go to war) and then ran around trying to collect Chinese flags on an extended lap of honour.

3) Rightful champion - winner expects the rest of us to bask in the privilege of his/her greatness. exemplified by the female diver Guo Jingjing, whose greatest celebration after her first gold at these Games was a slight smile. She'd already won two golds in Athens - so she simply came here to collect another batch of golds that were rightfully hers.

If you've missed any of these celebrations, you've got plenty of chances to catch up. The Games aren't yet over - and China still has many more gold medals to come.

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In case you hadn't heard, Liu Xiang is out. China's great Olympic hope - the country's most famous athlete - pulled out of the 110m hurdles because he was injured.

I was in the stadium when it all happened - peering through a set of hefty binoculars from my seat near the finishing line.

Shortly after 11:30 in the morning, everyone in the Olympic stadium started looking towards the tunnel near the starting line. The athletes taking part in the final heat of the opening round of the 110m hurdles were escorted into the stadium. They were led out by the man in a red China tracksuit drawn in lane two - Liu Xiang. At this point, we all thought he looked fine - if a little subdued. Then, during the warm-up it slowly became clear that something was wrong. Liu Xiang looked like he was limping a bit - but it was hard to tell for sure. A friend of mine, watching on TV, then texted me: "the TV pics show him in huge amounts of pain." But most of us in the crowd still had no idea how badly injured he was.

The runners settled into their blocks. The starter fired the gun - but it was a false start. Liu Xiang hobbled a few steps forward. Then he turned back and quietly took off the race stickers taped to his legs - this was the moment that he quit the Olympic Games.

He walked away from the track, and into the tunnel. Some people have since commented that there was a stunned silence in the stadium - perhaps in some seats there was. But where I was sitting there was just confusion. We looked around at each other - not sure of what we'd just seen. Had Liu Xiang just walked away from the Olympic Games? On the track, the runners took their marks again and they ran the race without him. At this point, it finally became clear to those of us sitting in the crowd - China's Olympics was going ahead without its star attraction.

It's hard to overstate how important Liu Xiang has been to this Olympic Games. In some ways, China has built its entire Olympics around Liu Xiang - and the hope that he would defend the Olympic title he won in Athens. You can barely go more than a few metres in Beijing without seeing a poster of Liu - advertising a selection of ice creams, soft drinks, credit cars, sports shoes, and fast cars. Those adverts may now have to be speedily re-done.

Why was Liu Xiang so important? He was the first Asian man ever to win a gold medal in an Olympic track event (in Athens 2004). "His achievement made us feel that we could achieve anything ourselves as well," said one woman. So, Liu Xiang's expected gold medal in Beijing was about Chinese national confidence - it was about China feeling that it could do anything that any other country could do.

Many people we've spoken to here in Beijing feel deeply sorry for him - and also slightly guilty that so much pressure was placed on one man.

"My heart aches," one small boy said to me. "I'm so sad."

Others are less sympathetic. This is what one person wrote on an internet chatroom: "As a Chinese athlete, if you know you're hurt, you shouldn't join the game, if you joined the game, you shouldn't give up so easily, Liu Xiang you failed us all."

What do you think?

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I'm off to watch China sweep up a few more golds, but before I go...

Somewhere in the Paraguayan capital, Asuncion, the newly inaugurated president Fernando Lugo is getting into his new job (probably learning how the phones work, trying to avoid getting lost in the corridors, wondering where the bathrooms are, etc.)

The fact that there's a new president in a small, land-locked, country in South America is of great - and almost entirely unnoticed - symbolic importance to the Communist Party in China.

Mr Lugo's inauguration ends 61 years of continuous rule by the Colorado Party of Paraguay. If I've got this straight, this means that the Chinese Communist Party has now become the world's longest serving government - right in the middle of the most important event the Party has ever staged.

The Communists declared the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. Every other political party in power at that time has either fallen, been kicked out, or overthrown. Some parties have since come back into power. But only the Communist Party of China has stayed exactly where it is.

The Party (as it's always known in China) spends huge amounts of time trying to figure out how to keep going. Here are a few of its political survival rules...

1) Be flexible
Communist systems which tried to stick to unbending rules have died away. China's Communist Party has survived partly because it's been willing to adapt and change its ideology. In its first few decades the Party preached against money and private property. But since Deng Xiaoping allowed economic reforms to begin in 1978, the Party has encouraged everyone to get as rich as they can.

2) Get an orderly leadership
In many Communist systems, power gets hogged by one man, who tends to hang on till he dies - creating political paralysis as he gets older and sicker, and then political chaos after he dies. So, the Party has learned lessons from this: avoid elderly leaders, personality cults, and damaging leadership battles. Pick a strong leader and make sure that he gives way at a fixed time to a clearly chosen successor from the next generation. This first happened successfully in 2002 when Jiang Zemin gave way to Hu Jintao. It's expected to happen again in 2012 when Hu Jintao gives way to the current vice president Xi Jinping. And so on.

3) Fracture the opposition
Can you name a Chinese opposition leader? There is no single, unifying opposition leader in China - that is one of the Communist Party's most notable achievements. There is no Chinese Aung San Suu Kyi, Sakharov, or Havel. Potential opposition leaders from traditional areas - dynastic families, insurgents, intellectuals, students, workers, farmers, religious leaders, disaffected regime members - have either been co-opted into the system or taken down before they've had the chance to get organised.

4) Get everyone in on it
Co-opt as many people into the system as possible. Allow the super-rich to keep their money. Make the middle class rich. Persuade the working class that they can move up and become middle class. Give as many people as possible a stake in keeping the Party in power.

5) Connect with the world
Don't cut yourself off behind an Iron Curtain like the Soviet Union - you'll survive if you do business with the rest of the world not if you cut yourself off from it.

Hosting the Olympic Games fits into all of this. It's the Communist Party's equivalent of a re-election campaign. It's a way to show its people that it can make their lives better - that their government can make them feel proud and confident about what their country can do. The better the Games, the better the Party's chances of staying in power.

Here's the Party's hope: why would anyone want to bring down a government that invites the entire world to gasp at what China can do?

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A group of pro-Tibet campaigners held a protest early on Friday morning outside the headquarters of Chinese state TV. I went along to have a look.

Interesting points to note. The police arrived very quickly but they took their time in getting rid of the protestors. Officers cordoned off the area below the protestors and waited for them to scale to the top of the wall. Once the protestors got to the top, they were detained and their Tibetan flags confiscated. From what I could tell from the street, there were no scuffles between the police and the demonstrators.

There were plenty of people filming what was going on - but the majority were police cameramen and photographers (it appears to be standard police practice in China for the police to get video evidence of both protestors and of the reporters who cover them.) So, as we pointed our camera towards the pro-Tibet demonstrators, a number of police officers stood next to us and pointed their cameras towards us.

At one point, one official-looking man tried to stop us from filming. But, after a few minutes, he gave up. No one else got in our way or stopped us from working. Passers-by heading off to work didn't appear to notice the protest at all. They certainly won't get to read about it in the Chinese state media.

The Sydney Morning Herald has published what it says is a list of 21 edicts from the Communist Party's propaganda unit to the media in China. The edicts tell Chinese reporters what they can and cannot cover during the Olympic Games. The rules, as described in the newspaper, are clear - no coverage of pro-Tibetan protests.

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China's won a foundry full of gold medals (so many that I won't bother to list how many, for fear of making this post immediately out of date.) So far, China's Olympic team has got the gold in most of the events it's expected to win.

But what happens on those occasions when its team doesn't win? And, in particular, when China comes excruciatingly close to gold?

I've just been to see the final of the women's sabre fencing - China v Ukraine - one of the most bone-crushingly tense sporting events I've ever seen.

There were thousands of us inside the stadium - most came to cheer loudly for China.

"Stab her!" a man (who was not a fencing expert) near me shouted out in encouragement.

This policy seemed to work. The Chinese team swished its way into the lead and it held onto it for most of the match.

"Zhong Guo, Jiayou," - Go China, the crowd chanted.

But Ukraine poked and hacked its way back into the match. After an hour, the score was tied 44-44 and tournament came down to a final, single point. The Chinese player Tan Xue and the player from the Ukraine Olga Kharlan attacked at the same time. They both screamed in victory (so did the crowd), but the referee couldn't work out which player won. So he ordered the point to be replayed. The crowd decided it would be easier to carry on screaming.

The players lunged, and Ukraine got the point and the gold. The crowd clapped and then went quiet. A few seconds later stadium, the lights went on. In one corner, a group of female fans was crying.

"I'm so disappointed," said one young man, "but they'll get the gold next time."

The Chinese players sat in a huddle on the ground. Later on, they picked themselves up for the medal ceremony. The four team members walked in, waved to the crowd, and slapped hands with the gold medal winners. When the Ukraine national anthem started playing, the Chinese players put down their bouquets of flowers and stood respectfully with their arms at their sides (a Chinese tradition.) The crowd clapped the winners politely.

The Chinese team had been millimetres away from gold in front of their home crowd - but they lost out. It's the kind of thing that might keep you awake at night in agony for years. But that's for the future. Tonight, the sabre team went out with grace.

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Okay, I've held off long enough.

What should we make of the two bits of the opening ceremony that weren't what we thought they were at the time? (The aerial shots of fireworks exploding across the city which turned out to be computer-generated, and then the revelation that the little girl singing a song was miming to another girl's voice).

Firstly, the aerial shots. I didn't actually see them till I left the stadium during the opening ceremony to go and edit a TV piece.

My colleagues and I sifted through the official footage of the event and were pretty staggered by the aerial shots. We decided to start our piece with them (old TV rule - you always start your piece with the best pictures).

I thought the pictures were astonishing but genuine - for the simple fact that I'd seen plenty of helicopters in the air during the ceremony and during previous dress rehearsals.

But, looking back, one thing did puzzle me - the aerial shot showed lots of traffic. I couldn't work out why people would choose to drive during the single most important moment in China's modern history. But, I quickly put this out of my mind, used the aerial shots, and moved onto the rest of the piece.

Then, there's the case of the two girls - the one that we all saw, Lin Miaoke, and then the real singer, Yang Peiyi (a kind of Chinese Milli Vanilli moment).

One Chinese official suggests that it was in the national interest to choose the prettier girl to perform during the opening ceremony (albeit with someone else's voice). Again, I assumed that what we saw at the time was real

It is a surprise to find that one girl was borrowing another's voice, but it's not a huge shock to find that the organisers chose the more photogenic girl to perform.

Earlier this year the city of Shanghai went about recruiting a number of Olympic hostesses. It had strict criteria...

"Candidates should be between 18 and 24 and 1.68 and 1.78 metres in height. They should have a "ruddy and shiny complexion", "elastic skin" and "a plump but not fat body".

According to Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News, applicants would be judged on the ratio between the "width of the nose and the length of the face" and also the "width of the mouth and width between the pupils".

Then, there was the clincher: the candidates who had the best chance of getting picked should have a face in which "eye length is three-tenths of the face". (I'm not sure how this was measured).

Anyway, what do you make of the not-quite-what-we-thought-they-were opening ceremony moments?

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There are some gold medals in these Olympics which are so easy to predict that it's surprising that the medal ceremony isn't held before the Games begin so as to get it all out of the way.

There are four medal events in the table tennis - and China expects to win every single one of them. Ping-pong is, of course, this country's national sport (I've spent many happy hours being routinely slaughtered at the table tennis table by Chinese players of all ages).

In some ways, the Olympic Games have come to Beijing because of ping pong. In 1971, an American table tennis team was invited to play a tournament in Beijing - they were the first Americans officially allowed to visit China's capital since the Communist Revolution of 1949. The visit was a success (helped, of course, by the fact that China won the tournament). This original bit of ping-pong diplomacy opened the way for President Nixon to visit Beijing a year later. After that, the path was set. A few years later China opened up to the world - and the Beijing Olympics are the end result.

So, for China, table tennis is at the heart of these Games. Its three male and three female players each happen to be ranked one, two and three in the world (which means that getting a place on the Chinese Olympic team is often much harder than competing at the actual Games themselves).

One Chinese player never had any problems qualifying, competing, or winning. Deng Yaping won four Olympic gold medals (women's singles and doubles at the '92 and '96 Games).

"What was your killer shot?" I asked her recently.

"Forehand," she laughed, swishing a bat semi-ferociously in the air, "Only three people could return it."

Deng Yaping is one of the most famous athletes in China. She retired more than a decade ago at the age of 24 and then went on to study in Britain - where she gained a doctorate at Cambridge Universtity (not that her CV needed any padding).

She's currently in charge of the Olympic village in Beijing (where she ensured that the 7ft tall basketball players were given extra-long beds). Deng Yaping will be in the crowd for the ping pong.

"There's great pressure on all the Chinese athletes," she said, "because they want to perform better. But at the same time they get more supporters from the audience and the Chinese people. I think great athletes don't mind who cheers - they concentrate on one thing - competition."

Just in case any of you need to know, how should an athlete go about winning an Olympic gold medal (or four)?

"Winning a gold is not simple," she said, "I think that self-improvement is important. You have to control yourself very well. Don't get too excited. Because some are young, they can't control themselves too well. They have to save their energy."

Let's see if China's current players follow her tips.

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First one Chinese player dunked the ball into the net. Then another. Then another.

The way the Chinese men's basketball team warmed up for their Olympic match against the USA tonight revealed a huge amount about how China has changed in recent years.

Chinese players never used to slam dunk (unlike their counterparts in the American NBA, who made the slam their jaw-dropping, signature move). The slam was once seen in China as selfish, individualistic, and possibly even morally corrupt - therefore, entirely unsuitable for a diligent, loyal Communist.

For years, Chinese players played an elegant, non-physical, even slightly clinical form of basketball. And they also did all their playing inside China - far from the reach of the decadent west.

But at the same time as Chinese players were gently throwing the ball into the net (in as socialist a fashion as they could possibly manage), the NBA was looking hungrily at China.

In 1990, the NBA Commissioner David Stern, began his attempt to break into the Chinese market. For him, success meant recruiting a few Chinese stars, and then taking them over to America to play in his league (thereby giving hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers a reason to watch NBA games - and adverts).

After years of negotiations (chronicled in the book 'Operation Yao Ming' by Brooke Larmer) China agreed to release two basketball players to the NBA. The first player - Wang Zhizhi - made little impact. The second - Yao Ming - did much better. He's now one of the biggest stars in the NBA - and also possibly the most famous Chinese person in the world.

When he went over to America, Yao Ming at first refused to slam dunk the ball. Eventually (as told by Larmer) his coach told him that if he didn't slam the ball into the net like a true NBA player, the rest of the team would be made to run laps of the court as punishment. So, Yao began to dunk (at 7 foot 6, dunking for Yao doesn't appear to be more taxing than dropping a letter into a postbox).

Gradually, Yao Ming and the rest of China began to adopt the NBA's style of play. Chinese players got more physical, they dunked, they fouled, they cheered when they scored. They also began to copy NBA players and wear baggy shorts (a change from the plain, much shorter gym shorts the Chinese used to wear).

So, tonight in Beijing, Chinese players in baggy shorts - led by their very first NBA exports Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi - queued up to dunk the ball into the net. There was little difference between them and the players warming up on the other side of the court - the American stars of the NBA (apart from a noticeable lack of tattoos on the Chinese players' arms).

Through basketball, China has learned not to be too afraid or sceptical of American influence. It's even learned to copy what the Americans do. The next step for China is to beat the Americans at their own game.

But that may have to wait for a bit. Tonight the Americans won the game pretty easily (101-70).

The US team may have been spurred by a couple of spectators with the same name. George Bush Senior (who was once the US envoy to China) and the current President Bush watched the game from some reasonably ordinary seats near the halfway line (we'd all been expecting them to pick the much more plush box seats higher up.) It was a little odd to look over at the stands and see the man who can start a nuclear war (and also his father, who could once do the same) blending into the rest of the crowd. Then again, President Bush once owned a major league baseball team and routinely sat in the stands near the dugout, allowing him to mix with the players and the fans - a nifty way of being seen as a man of the people as he began his political career.

So, next time I go to an Olympic event, I'll take along my binoculars and see if I can spot China's President Hu Jintao sitting in the bleachers.

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So, what did you think of it?

I was lucky enough to get into the Olympic Stadium to watch the opening ceremony (or more precisely - the first hour of it, before I had to go and put together a TV piece).

I won't go through the details - it's been pretty well covered everywhere else - but a few observations.

If China's leaders looked cool during the ceremony, it's because they were. I had a quick look at their seats before they came in - hidden under the long wooden table, there were personal air conditioners next to each seat.

I watched everything from high up opposite the home straight. A cameraman from another organisation seemed to be so enthralled that he left his camera position, found a spare seat in the stands, and sat back to enjoy the show.

Footage of the rehearsals of the opening ceremony leaked out a week ago - but China still managed to keep the torch lighting moment a secret right till the end. During the ceremony, we heard rumours that the torch was to be lit by a phoenix (to symbolise the rebirth of China). Then, we got fairly baffling word that the torch was to be lit by a giant panda which had apparently been specially trained for two months.

Finally, of course, the torch bearer turned out to be Li Ning (singled out on this blog a few months ago as one of the 10 Chinese people we should all know about).

Now, the Games are under way - and China has won its first gold medals.

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I write these words a few minutes after midnight in Beijing. It's now the 8th of the 8th, 2008 - the Olympics begin today. I've just been for a late night wander about Tiananmen Square. Late at night there were hundreds of people milling happily around the Olympic countdown clock - which now has just hours to go before it hits zero. When they saw our TV cameras, some shouted out "Go Olympics, Go China!"

I'm not sure if President Bush got to see any of this from his motorcade as he arrived in Beijing this evening. The most powerful man in the world has now arrived for the most important event ever held by the world's most populous country. George Bush is the first US president to attend an Olympics on foreign soil. He insists he's here to watch a bit of sport and cheer on the US team - not to talk about politics or to offend his hosts.

So, he got his offending - or plain speaking - out of the way just before he got to Beijing.

Earlier in the day, in Thailand, the US president spoke about China - he said he had deep concerns over religious freedom and human rights.

China won't like what he had to say. The government wants everyone to come and applaud - not criticise. Tonight Chinese officials say that they oppose any interference in this country's internal affairs. That's a message directed straight to its most important overnight house guest - the president of the United States.

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China once believed that you could see the Great Wall from space. But this morning the mist was so heavy that you could barely even see it from the ground.

Still, the latest leg of the Olympic torch relay at the Great Wall went ahead as planned. This morning (at 4am) we were driven to a portion of the wall at Badaling, just outside Beijing.

We were escorted to a stage set up by the wall. Several thousand cheerleaders all wearing yellow stood on the wall itself. A giant Olympic slogan ("One World One Dream") had been placed on the hillside - but the mist was so thick that you couldn't really see it properly.

Then, at 6.15am, before anything had even happened, we were handed a press release (distributed by the Propaganda Department of Badaling Special Zone Administrative Center.)

"At 6:30 on the morning of August 7th, the Olympic torch motorcade arrived at Badaling Great Wall scenic area. The Great Wall was covered in a holiday-like atmosphere with flags and sounds of gongs everywhere."

The press release went on...

"After the torch-bearer get to the top of the fourth watchtower in the north side and waved the torch at the crowd, 2008 pigeons flew up into the sky, and 2008 balloons were released [...] All the colour-bearers and volunteers were waving their flags and cheering for the completion of the torch relay."

It was slightly curious to read about all of this in the past tense when it hadn't even taken place.

But, of course, the events unfolded in the exact order foretold in the press release - no interruptions, no disruptions at all.

When you're entirely confident about your plans, you can write about the future as if it's already happened.

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The police in China's Xinjiang region can serve a very good cup of tea at two in the morning.

I know this because I spent a reasonably interesting (and involuntary) hour or so with them last night (my colleagues and I were on our way to the western city of Kashgar to cover the aftermath of the attack on Monday which killed 16 policemen.)

Police officers in Xinjiang'a capital Urumqi stopped us as we were filming a series of TV late lives on the street near our hotel. They drove us in a five-car convoy to a police station and escorted into the boardroom (where three men with dyed black hair were happily watching a Russian adventure film on TV.)

Four officers came into the room and sat down in a row on the opposite side of the boardroom table (it felt a bit like a job interview.)

"Have you applied for permission to report from Xinjiang?" one of them asked us.
"We don't need to" was our (polite) answer.

Temporary reporting guidelines introduced in January 2007 for the Olympic period give foreign correspondents in China the right to travel freely in China without having to ask for the government's permission (as happened in the past.)

But the police were keen to press on. "What is the nature of your mission to the Xinjiang region?" I replied 'journalism'. They then said "Have you filmed anyone since you got here?" I said "Just me." Next question was "Have you spoken to anyone?" I responded "Yes, many police officers".

The officers warned us very courteously that we were putting ourselves in great danger by being out in the street late at night. They suggested that the government could select a few interesting places for us to visit, and that they would be happy to come along as our security escort. We declined. The police offered us tea and we accepted.

At two thirty in the morning (after a few calls from both sides to higher-ups), they agreed to let us go and get on with our work. We shook hands and left the station. I've had many encounters with the police in China - this was one of the most polite by far.

We then headed onto Kashgar (after no sleep) to look for the site of Monday's attack near a border police barracks. By the time we arrived, almost everything had been swept away. The few people milling about the scene didn't want to spend too long answering questions from foreign reporters.

Luckily for us, one man was keen to talk (and talk and talk.) The Communist Party Secretary (ie boss) of Kashgar, Shi Dagang, held a press conference in the afternoon in order to give a few more details about Monday's attacks.

He said that the two men who carried out the attacks were local Muslims- one was a vegetable seller, the other a taxi driver."They tried to carry out jihad. It was a well plotted incident." Mr Shi said."The terrorists will never win local support," he went on, "Their activities are doomed to perish."

After an hour of almost non-stop exposition (the official sitting on the panel next to him didn't get a chance to say a single word) China's leader in Kashgar thanked us and left.

I never got the chance to ask him the one question I really wanted him to answer: could he guarantee that the Beijing Olympics would be safe from attack?

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How much freedom is there in China? There are two competing ways to see it.

International human rights groups say that China is a police state in which the government has the power to bully, detain, or even execute citizens who step out of line. In this state, ordinary people are denied their inherent rights. They have to rely instead on the mercy of a state which often shows no compassion towards its most vulnerable citizens.

But the Chinese government insists that this view is a distortion. The Communist Party says that China's citizens now enjoy far greater freedoms than they did before. Around 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty over the course of just one generation - that these people now have freedom from hunger and disease.

The argument between these two competing points of view batters about throughout the year (the most recent round took place a few days ago with the publication of a report by Amnesty International followed by a rebuttal by the Chinese government.)

But here's the problem with this continuing argument - both points of view are actually correct. China is an authoritarian state which punishes dissent. But, at the same time, it's also a state in which today's young people enjoy far more freedom than their parents ever did.

A generation ago, your life as a Chinese person was mostly decided for you by the state. Every citizen belonged to a work unit - the most basic structure of organisation in the Communist system. This unit was your careers advisor, social worker, matchmaker, and parole officer in one.

In return for your obedience, you were given free education, free housing, an assigned job, and free healthcare (this universal welfare and work system was known as the iron rice bowl.)

Sometimes, the unit would even pick you a husband or wife as well. In this system, Chinese people hardly had any space left for their own decisions (and even if they had any money to spend, there was very little to spend it on.)

But, in 1978 China's leader Deng Xiaoping began a series of economic reforms that opened up China to the rest of the world (effectively swapping pure communism for high-concentrate capitalism.) As a result, the old state-tells-you-what-colour-socks-to-wear system has changed. The Communist Party has now retreated from many parts of people's lives.

Today, people in China now have much greater freedom of choice than they did several decades ago...

What people in China can now do:

• move around the country more freely
• travel abroad
• buy their own house (a law protecting private property was passed in 2007)
• pick their own job
• decide who they want to marry (and decide if they want to get divorced)
• openly criticise government corruption & failure (but only at mid and low levels)

It's worth bearing this new set of freedoms in mind, because it's often the most immediate benchmark for younger people in China (mostly because it's a direct comparison with their own parents' lives - surely the most meaningful comparison in anyone's life.)

By contrast, to many of the older generation in China, this new freedom can sometimes feel a bit like abandonment. Among those who grew up under the certainties of old system there is regret over the loss of free education, housing and health care. Now, if you get sick, or lose your job - you're largely on your own. (The government has caught onto how angry people feel about this - and it recently promised to bring back parts of the old welfare system.)

For all the new freedoms and choices, there are still many restrictions and red lines in modern China...

What people in China are not allowed to do:

• choose their government in an open election
• criticise the Communist Party's top leaders (at least in public)
• have more than one child (rule applies to the ethnic Han majority living in urban areas)
• form an independent trade union.
• worship a religion which does not pledge loyalty to the Communist Party
• access all parts of the internet (although the smartest can find ways round the firewall)

Some of the political red lines were firmly drawn up in 1989 when the government sent in tanks to end student protests in Tiananmen Square. Since then, many believe that the government has worked out a tacit bargain with its citizens - the Communist Party makes the people rich, in exchange the people let the Party handle all the politics.

But if you don't buy into this agreement, or if you just happen to get into trouble, the system can be pretty unforgiving. The recent Amnesty report details the continuing use of detention without trial as a means of controlling petitioners trying to get their voices heard, and it also documents the continuing harassment of human rights defenders.

During my time in China I've reported on the stories of many ordinary people who've been defeated - or even crushed - by a system which has no room for their views or problems.

In the end, perhaps the way you see freedom in China depends on your starting point.

If you compare things to a generation ago, the average Chinese person now has much more choice - and freedom - in his/her life.

But if you compare things to the way they are in other countries - or even to the promises that China itself has made - then the average Chinese person has a tougher time.

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This evening I joined thousands of people outside the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. We all jammed together by the side of the road to watch another rehearsal of the fireworks for the opening ceremony.

Many in the crowd stood in a row with hugely expensive cameras and tripods - looking like they were about to photograph an eclipse or a passing film star (if there are any protests during the Olympics you can guarantee that they will be caught on camera by at least several hundred people.)

At eight in the evening the fireworks exploded over the stadium. Slightly terrifyingly, they exploded not far from two police helicopters circling overhead - no doubt giving the pilots the best view of the night.

The fireworks carried on in bursts for an hour or so. But the people in the crowd told us they wanted much, much more. When you've promised to put on the greatest show on earth, your people will expect to be dazzled - even during a rehearsal.

In the odd break between helicopters and fireworks we got to hear the sound of crickets chirping. It's a sound that always makes me think of the Olympics. In the heart-in-your-mouth moments just before the final of the men's 100m in the Athens 2004 Games, the tens of thousands of spectators in the stadium (including me) went so quiet that you could suddenly hear the crickets chirping from the trees outside - one of the most spine-tingling moments of that entire Games. I imagine we'll hear the same sound in Beijing if/when China's Liu Xiang settles into his blocks for the men's 110m hurdles final.

PS. thanks for your Olympic predictions. Once the Games are over, I'll have a look back and see who got it right.

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Exactly one week to go before the Games begin.

So, it's prediction time. I've come up with four questions which may define whether or not the Games are a triumph for China.

1) Will China win more gold medals than any other country?

One research team from Sheffield Hallam University predicts that it may happen. The team predicts that China will win 46 golds (more than the 32 it won in Athens - the USA came first with 35).

But China's not so sure. Over the last year or so, I've been to a number of press conferences in which Chinese sporting officials have played down their gold medal expectations - pointing out at tremendous length how weak the Chinese team is in certain sports, and how much better the Americans, the Australians, and the Russians are all round. (It reminds me a bit of the brainy kid at school who always goes around saying how badly he/she'll do at end-of-year exams and then goes on to get all the best marks.)

China's most recent prediction is that it hopes to do better than it did in Athens.

2) Will Liu Xiang win the 110m hurdles?

I wrote recently that if Liu Xiang won the hurdles in Beijing (as he did in Athens) he could probably get the country renamed after him. A gold for Liu in the 110mh matters more to China than a gold in any other event.

This is what Liu's coach recently told a newspaper: "Officials from the State General Administration of Sport once told us that if Liu cannot win another gold medal in Beijing, all of his previous achievements will become meaningless."

So, no pressure then.

The problem for Liu is that he's no longer the world's fastest hurdler. Earlier this season, the Cuban athlete Dayron Robles broke Liu's world record.

And, just to make it even more nerve-wracking for China, Liu's coach has just said that Liu has an ankle injury and that "his current condition isn't good."

3) Will air pollution force some events to be postponed?

The International Olympic Committee says that it'll monitor air quality every day during the Games - and if the air's bad, it'll postpone endurance events.

China says that it's confident that its emergency air quality measures will clear the air in time for the Games. We've been testing the air ourselves over the last few weeks. We've found that the levels of airborne particles (PM10) have often been well above the maximum targets set by the World Health Organisation. But, as I write this entry, the sky outside is blue, and the pollution readings are low (helped by rain on Thursday). If the weather stays like this, Olympic events will go ahead as scheduled.

4) Will there be any protests inside Olympic venues?

The Olympic Charter makes it clear that any kind of demonstration inside Olympic areas is banned. The Chinese government plans to enforce this rule to the letter.

But what if someone manages to smuggle a banner into a stadium? Or what if an athlete decides to make a protest?

For China, the Beijing Olympics will be a success - even a triumph - if the answers to these four questions are yes, yes, no, no.

I'm keen to get your predictions...

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