China’s Games party set for ‘big bang’ start
CHINA: China celebrates its ancient past and modern power when the
Olympics scheduled to open yesterday looking to put criticism behind it
as world leaders arrived in Beijing.
The opening ceremony is the culmination of seven years of hard work
that reshaped the capital, and sets the seal on a sustained economic
boom that has seen China emerge as a new superpower.
“It’s a historic combination of a great country with a great sport
event,” the People’s Daily said.
Guests in the head-turning “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium will include
U.S. President George W. Bush, who flew in straight after making some of
his bluntest criticism on human rights.
Displaying its new economic clout, China has invested $43 billion on
the Games. Some $100 million, twice the 2004 Athens bill, has gone on
“big bang” opening and closing ceremonies.
The elements, though, have proved stubbornly hard to master.
Authorities have closed factories and pulled millions of cars off the
road, but smog and haze enveloped the capital on Friday morning —
obscuring views of the futuristic skyline.
It all kicks off at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month —
the number symbolises fortune here — before an estimated global audience
of one billion.
With 12 hours to go, foreign activists issued an on-air challenge to
the host city with a pirate broadcast, calling for freeing of political
prisoners and lifting of censorship.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said China’s attempts to
control the media “would never succeed”. Their words were often drowned
out by a local official broadcast.
Small groups of foreign protesters have also popped up in Beijing
this week, but have been whisked off quickly by police forming part of a
100,000-strong security force.
Suspected Islamist separatists killed 16 policemen in western China
on Monday, and on Thursday a little-known Islamist group issued an
Internet threat to the Games.
Beijing, Friday, Reuters |