Eyes on the Prize

What's weird about the following scene: Beijing gangsters shove hostages into a car and flee. When the pursuing police fire at their gas tank, blowing it up, the hooligans hustle the captives from the smoldering wreck into a nearby building. A dozen cops in black ski masks race across open ground firing semi-automatic weapons at them, scale the building with ropes, then swing from the rooftop through the windows. After a second gun battle, they subdue the outlaws. It's unclear what has become of the hostages. Later, when asked if police normally open fire on cars and buildings with innocent civilians inside, police spokesman Li Wei responds grimly: "We decide according to the situation."

A take from the latest flip-kick flick? No, what's truly bizarre about this scene is that it was staged for foreign guests as part of a campaign to buttress Beijing's bid to host the summer Olympic Games in 2008. The effort reaches a crucial point this week when delegates from the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) visit the capital for four days to compare it against rival cities Paris, Toronto, Istanbul and Osaka. The violence and pyrotechnics might have sent a mixed message, but Beijing has clearly learned a lesson from a failed Olympic-hosting bid in 1993, when it made little effort to court international opinion and acted as if the Games were a gimme. This time around, city officials have downplayed the Communist Party's political agenda, emphasized an environmental-reform package and shown such flexibility with athletic federations that they've agreed to host beach volleyball on the hallowed political ground of Tiananmen Square. "They take every idea on board," says Irene Cheung of international sports-marketing firm Octagon, which Beijing has retained for advice.

All host countries want the Games' glitz to reflect on their national image, while carefully avoiding the Uber-patriotism of the disastrous Berlin Games in 1936, meant to showcase Adolph Hitler's Third Reich. Inter Asia, a foreign public-relations firm that briefly advised Beijing on its bid eight years ago, had urged officials to emphasize the city instead of the nation, history instead of politics, and generally to try to look nice. Officials ignored the suggestions. Factories forced workers to sign petitions supporting the Games. Police rounded up mentally handicapped citizens who might be glimpsed by Olympic officials from a passing motorcade (and in one case beat a retarded man to death in custody). The campaign's slogan, "A More Open China Awaits the 2000 Games," combined everything wrong with the bid—clumsy propaganda, nationalism and a hint of arrogance. "Our advice was unacceptable because the bid served a political purpose," says a former Inter Asia executive. Beijing lost to Sydney by two votes.

What a contrast with this year. The slogan, "New Beijing, Great Olympics," is upbeat and focuses on the city. The bid committee considered "New Beijing, New Olympics," but wisely chose not to be seen reinventing a competition that started in ancient Greece (and it rejected "Great Wall, Great Olympics" as plain dumb). The committee has also chartered a new bus—with a bar and computer outlets on board—for visiting I.O.C. delegates. Streets are lined with 100,000 bid posters and brightened up with huge urns of fake carnations, presently covered with plastic sheets to keep off the soot. The People's Armed Police, the paramilitary force that suppresses domestic unrest, has whitewashed median strips, and near Tiananmen Square, workers have painted the desiccated February grass green.

Opposition to Beijing's bid is already on the rise in the countdown to July, when the I.O.C. meets in Moscow to pick a host. Amnesty International recently released a report on deaths through torture in China, which raises questions of how the government will handle the Games' domestic opponents. In January, Chinese police detained five signatories of a letter to the I.O.C. that argued that human rights abuses should preclude a Beijing Games.

Beijing has tried to soften its image by inviting the few Chinese citizens' groups based in the capital to participate in Games planning, especially on environmental issues. Is it all for show? Li Hao, an environmental activist, urges the city not to pave the beds of urban waterways in the Olympic runup. "I'm glad for the chance to speak," she says, "but I haven't seen a single person take my advice seriously." The next few months may give some indication of whether the promise of a New Beijing is real or as fake as the carnations lining its streets.