Let The Show Begin

Organizers point out that the arms-out design of the official logo invokes a Chinese saying: "Is it not a joy to welcome friends from afar?" The pathbreaking U.S. table tennis delegation, in its 1971 visit to the Great Hall of the People, heard those very words from Premier Zhou Enlai. Even as that diplomatic démarche began China's reengagement with the world, however, the nation's leaders saw sports mainly as a means of creating a more robust worker. As early as 1917, Mao Zedong had bemoaned the people's lack of physical fitness and China's reputation as "the sick man of Asia." With the Cultural Revolution the regime all but banned competitive sports, charging the country's few elite athletes with jinbiao zhuyi, or "trophy mania." Upon their return to the Olympics in 1984 the Chinese chose to focus on sports that highlighted technique and coordination. After so many years of isolation it was enough to pursue gymnastics and diving and keep whacking that little Ping-Pong ball, while leaving sports that required speed or strength to the Africans, Americans and Europeans.

Today any sporting inferiority complex is gone, replaced by a new trophy mania (page 67). China won 32 golds in Athens, second only to the U.S.'s 36, and is aiming higher this time. Expectations can usually be detected in an alibi, and China's Liu Xiang (page 64), the 2004 Olympic champion in the 110-meter hurdles, did not sound like a sick man of Asia after being disqualified at June's Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., for a false start. He didn't realize he had jumped the gun, he said afterward, because "my speed is so fast."

THERE'S A swagger too in China's response to criticism of its human rights record. The bid contract between the regime and the IOC has never been made public, so it's hard to tell if the Games were awarded on the condition of progress on that front. But a collision may be brewing. Arrests on the charge of "endangering state security" have risen steadily as the Games have approached, and still activists are lobbying Olympic athletes to flash the two-handed T for Tibet sign, in solidarity with the Tibetans killed during the government crackdown in the western province in March. Any athlete who does so will run afoul of IOC Rule 51.3, which bars any "demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda ... in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas." It remains unclear how Chinese authorities will respond to Olympians who express themselves—or indeed how the Chinese public will.

There is no doubt, however, about the effect on the domestic mood of any protests in-country during the Olympic fortnight. The regime uses every attack from outside China to strengthen nationalist cohesion. And as they get ready for their close-up, most Chinese are eager to cohere. The West may condemn as a human tragedy the millions displaced and exploited to stage these Games, and talk of boycotts and protests. But the average Chinese looks through a different lens: Yes, millions of us were forcibly relocated, or worked under slavish conditions—and after all that sacrifice, you're going to refuse our hospitality and take issue with our showpiece?

The lasting impact of the Beijing Games on the home country probably won't resemble either that of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which consolidated the Nazi regime, or the '88 Games in Seoul, which touched off a flowering of democracy. A better comparison might be to Mexico City in '68: a country nearing a crossroads, with retrograde rulers who vaguely knew they wanted to edge closer to the developed world but weren't quite sure how. With its free-market dynamism, China is repressive almost in spite of itself—as if the Party can find little purpose other than to squeeze ever more firmly to show its power. In but one example of the nation's sprawling influence and internal contradictions, several months ago it emerged that some of those FREE TIBET flags were actually ... made in China.

There is another detail worth noting, and it pertains to the north-south axis running up from Tiananmen Square. Once it hits the Olympic Green, the line traces a path neither through the Bird's Nest, which sits slightly to the east, nor through the Water Cube, just to the west. In a subtle touch by the Boston-based architectural firm that conceived the Olympic Green, the axis leads between the two into empty space. For 17 days and beyond, that greensward will be occupied not by buildings or monuments, but by people.

Hatched from that red egg in the Bird's Nest, people. Risen from the primordial fluid of the Water Cube, more people. People spilling into an agora, to be bathed in whatever sluices up from symbolically freighted Tiananmen Square, be it freedom or control. China is making its way toward the day when the Party that invokes the People does better by them. Until then, let her pause for a people's party.

Get a quick guide to what fans and athletes can expect in Beijing at SI.com/Olympics.

Look back at S.L. Price's 2007 story on Beijing at SI.com/Olympics.