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As the opening approaches, preparations reflect a disturbing side of the communist regime

Olympic Games show China through a glass, darkly



By, Jonathan Fenby Timesonline Print July 31, 2008 The opening of the Beijing Olympics in eight days' time will, as always planned, attest to China's spectacular material progress since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform exactly 30 years ago. The array of venues, the gleaming new buildings, the urban infrastructure installed for the Games, will also reflect the genuine pride of a nation that, while still far from rich by Western standards, has made more people better off in a shorter time than any country in human history.

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But, unwittingly, the Olympics also reflect the downside of China's hectic growth story and contain reminders of the nature of the regime that presides over the world's last big communist state. This combination of progress and faultlines makes the Games an intriguing mirror of the state of China today at a time when it is becoming an increasingly important player in global affairs. News yesterday that foreign journalists have found access blocked to websites with content that China dislikes is the latest in a series of restrictions that the Beijing authorities have introduced before the Olympics. A curfew has been slapped on bars; entertainers must submit scripts for advance approval; three rings of security checks have been thrown round the capital. Sites have been set aside for demonstrations, well away from sporting sites, and participants will have to get permission beforehand. After official reports of terrorist plans by Muslim autonomists in the Xinjiang region of western China - which at least some observers are taking with a pinch of salt - people from that area are being shipped out of Beijing. While desultory talks are being held with representatives of the Dalai Lama, Beijing has in no way modified its insistence that Tibet is an integral part of China, and the Communist Party secretary there continues to take a hard line. China's cyber-police have been combing websites for material that they consider subversive, and arresting dissidents and human rights activists. How wide the net extends was shown by the detention of a lawyer wanting to represent the parents of children buried alive in school buildings in the Sichuan earthquake.

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