Beijing has successfully delivered an Olympic Games to the world. The 2008 summer Games were marked with distinct Chinese elements, while the rules specified in the Olympic Charter and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) written agreement with the host city were strictly followed.

Seven years ago, when granting the hosting rights of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad to Beijing, the IOC was confident in the city, and believed that holding the Games in China would facilitate the dissemination of the Olympic spirit among its 1.3 billion people, leaving an unrivalled legacy in Olympic history.

Data about the 2008 Games suggest that the IOC made the right decision in choosing Beijing as the host.

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, 38 world records and 85 Olympic records were broken in the 2008 Games. More world records and Olympic records were broken in the Beijing Games than in the Athens or Sydney.

Numerous Olympic miracles and glorious moments were born in the 12 new Olympic venues, including the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest. In addition, 11 renovated venues and eight temporary venues in Beijing, as well as six sports arenas in the co-hosting cities, were also used for the Games.

A total of 11,468 athletes from 204 countries and regions competed in the Beijing Games. Beijing saw the largest number of female athletes competing in the history of the Games, to the relief of the IOC, which is committed to popularizing Olympic ideals and gender equality.

About 100,000 Olympic volunteers, 400,000 city volunteers, and 1 million social volunteers formed the largest volunteer team in Olympic history. Their smiles and dedication made the Olympics more beautiful.

The Beijing Olympics were one of the most watched Games in the history. More than 220 television agencies and over 25,000 journalists covered the event. The IOC site logged 5 million clicks during the entire process of the Beijing Games, whereas it logged 2.8 million clicks during the Athens Olympics.

More than 80 heads of states and governments participated in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games. About 80 percent of the people in China and about half of the people in the United States and Europe watched the opening ceremony on television. This was a record number. Few other events have received so much attention.

Medals were awarded to 87 Olympic delegations, the largest number since the Olympics began. Afghanistan, Mauritius, Tajikistan and Togo won their first Olympic medals in history, and Bahrain, Mongolia and the Panama won their first Olympic gold, while India won its first gold in an individual event. Many delegations and athletes fulfilled their Olympic goals.

Team China had a remarkable performance. When the Games concluded on August 24, they had pocketed 51 golds, 21 silvers and 28 bronzes, making exactly 100 medals in total.

The Olympic Games have also popularized sports in China’s schools, and helped to promote friendship and understanding between nations.

A total of 556 model schools of Olympic education have been selected from schools across China. More than 200 middle or primary schools have established friendly ties with the Olympic committees of other countries or regions. The Olympic spirits of solidarity, friendship, peace, and fair competition have been spread to innumerous students. The scale of Olympic education is unprecedented.

More than 400 youths, including 10 disabled youngsters, from 204 Olympic committees gathered at the Beijing Olympic Youth Camp in Beijing in August. The young campers experienced Chinese culture and customs, and watched the torch relay and Olympic competitions, actively promoting friendship and peace.

Complete List

He looked a bit uncomfortable at times Wednesday. Perhaps because of the burden of Olympic history. Or, maybe his faulty goggles were to blame. But that was welcome, for he looked human, something the world needs to tell itself about a man who swims like a machine.

Michael Phelps is now the most decorated individual athlete (six golds in Athens five in Beijing) in the history of the Olympic Games.

Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina and her countryman Nikolai Andrianov still hold the record for the most medals of any color: 18 for women and 15 for men. Andrionov’s record could fall, if Phelps, who has two bronzes from Athens, wins three more golds, as is expected, in Beijing.

Phelps was in the exalted company of Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz, both of the US, Latynina and the legendary Finn distance runner Pavo Nurmi for just a day before rising higher in the medals’ tally.

The icing on his cake: all his five golds in Beijing have come in world record time.

But he was not the only athlete to shatter records at will Wednesday. The women’s 200m freestyle and the individual medley records were broken in the pool and the 63kg weightlifting saw China’s Liu Chunhong smash the snatch, clean and jerk, and total records.

A different sort of record was set in the gymnasium, where China upstaged the US to win its first team gold in women’s gymnastics. The gold tasted doubly sweet because China had wrested its men’s team title from Japan a day ago.

A dramatic fall by Cheng Fei from the balance beam did not stop the host from beating the world champion by 2.375 points. The US entered the final Wednesday with only four fit gymnasts and major errors on the balance beam and in floor exercises - both by Alicia Sacramone - ruined its chances of winning the top prize.

Back in the pool, Italy’s Federica Pellegrini broke the women’s 200m freestyle record to take the gold. And Australia’s Stephanie Rice won her second gold in record time in the 200m individual medley.

Woman weightlifter Liu Chunhong put the stamp of China’s supremacy on the event. She set a world record in the snatch with 125kg, then broke that record with her next lift, snatching 128kg. Her 158kg lift in the clean and jerk and her combined total of 286kg were world records too.

But Sa Jae-hyouk of the Republic of Korea stopped China’s gold rush in weightlifting by edging out favorite Li Hongli to win the men’s 77-kg division.

Sa and Li both lifted a total of 366 kg, but Sa got the gold medal because of her lower body weight.

Before this, China had won in all the six weight categories it took part in.

Chinese divers completed their golden sweep in synchronized diving, with Wang Feng and Qin Kai leading from start to finish in the men’s 3m springboard, the last of the synchronized events.

China’s Chen Ying came from behind with a dazzling performance to win the gold in women’s 25m pistol shooting.

And Chang Yongxiang won China’s first silver in men’s wrestling after losing to Manuchar Kvirkelia of Georgia in a well-contested 74-kg bout.

French wrestler Steeve Guenot won the first gold for France in Greco-Roman wrestling (66kg) since 1926.

In cycling, French veteran Jeannie Longo missed the women’s time trial podium by just 2 seconds in what could be her final Olympic race. American Kristin Armstrong won the 23.8-km race.

Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara won the men’s time trial, powering his way to his second Olympic medal in four days. The Swiss had surprised himself with the bronze in the men’s road race on Saturday.

Benjamin Kleibrink of Germany won the gold medal in men’s foil fencing with a convincing victory over Japan’s Yuki Ota.

Britta Heidemann, also of Germany, won the gold medal in women’s epee, giving Germany its second first-place fencing finish of the night.

Masae Ueno won Japan’s third gold medal in judo, defending her 70kg Athens title against Anaysi Hernandez of Cuba.

World champion Irakli Tsirekidze of Georgia won the men’s 90-kg judo gold, scoring an early penalty point and then holding off Algeria’s Amar Benikhlef.

From inside the 91,000-seat Bird’s Nest stadium, fireworks dazzled and the thunder of 2,008 performers drumming on traditional fou percussion instruments rolled throughout the stadium. High-tech special effects gave even the kitschiest subject matter a startling edge. An ode to China’s invention of movable type—ho hum, you might say— morphed into a vast sea of undulating cubic shapes, simulating a giant computer keyboard—and took my breath away.

When five-time Olympic medal winner Li Ning prepared to ignite the Olympic flame, invisible wires swooped him skyward for a gravity-defying space-walk around the stadium’s rooftop opening. When gymnast Li, who launched a successful sports clothing and accessories empire after snagging three gold medals in Los Angeles, finally lit a gigantic torch perched on the rim of the Bird’s Nest, the crowd went wild.

This was China’s soft-power version of “shock and .” Or at least, that metaphor ran through my mind as the pyrotechnics reminded me of watching the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad in 2003 from my Palestine Hotel room balcony. Just as Washington’s adventure in Iraq today symbolizes the beginning of the decline of U.S. influence around the world—despite its military might—so will China’s hosting of these Olympics be seen as a sign that it has arrived as a global power, despite its tarnished human rights record. Nowhere will this tilting balance of power be more pointedly symbolized than in the Olympic medal count, where China may have a
better than even chance of snagging the highest number of gold medals, displacing the U.S.

Flanked by leaders of the United States and Russia—among 80-some other foreign dignitaries—Chinese president Hu Jintao stiffly declared the 2008 Games had begun. Inside he had reason to feel triumphant: one theme hammered (or, more accurately, drummed) into the audience again and again was “harmony,” a codeword for Hu’s Confucius-influenced call for a “harmonious society.” Yet Hu could also be excused for feeling jittery and overwhelmed by today’s tsunami of national pride. China has always felt more comfortable in the role of an underdog, as a feisty champion of the developing world, than as abig world power.

That’s because global clout brings with it global responsibilities. As a rainbow coalition of anti-China activists has shown in a series of protests this year, Hu and his comrades have dwindling excuses for standing to one side when genocide is unfolding in Darfur (Khartoum looks to Beijing for aid and moral support) or the Burmese junta (ditto with Rangoon) ratchets up its repression or, indeed, the Chinese regime tightens the screws on its own population.

Shortly after tonight’s opening ceremonies began, Russian tanks were reported to be rolling into Georgia—a stark reminder to Hu (and Putin for that matter) that even a sacred event such as the Olympics cannot prevent harsh political realities from intruding. Most pundits analyzed tonight’s festivities as a celebration of Chinese might. I saw a somewhat more complex message. True, the sight of goose-stepping soldiers carrying the Olympic flag (shades of Berlin
1936) or the sheer precision of thousands of performers moving intricately as one (a la Pyongyang’s Mass Games) made it easy to focus on China’s autocratic demeanor.

But if you read the cultural icons carefully, they also weave a tapestry of loss and redemption. The unique thing about China’s current aspirations to greatness is that it’s been down that road before. While Beijing’s economic achievements over the past three decades have been mind-boggling, similar accomplishments took place at least twice before in its long history—a history that dominated tonight’s performance, starting with the arcane fou bronze drums dating back to the Xia Dynasty (ca 2070 BC).

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), China’s trading routes stretched along the Silk Road to Constantinople, and the Middle Kingdom was a famous source of silks, Buddhist teachings and innovations in printing and cartography. In the Ming Dynasty, China’s legendary eunuch admiral Zheng Ho (1371 -1433 AD) navigated his treasure fleets as far away as West Asia and Zanzibar, returning with tribute from vassal states and exotic finds such as giraffes. But those golden eras ended after economic setbacks and internal decline.

Tonight’s show strummed many of those themes. The wire-suspended dancers who flitted across the sky high above the audience, a la Peter Pan, were apsaras (like angels) whose likenesses are painted in many Tang-era Buddhist grottoes such as those at Dunhuang, along the ancient Silk Road. And Zheng Ho warranted a whole dance performance dedicated to his seven fleets, which carried 27,000 people in all to distant lands.

Yet many of the Chinese inventions extolled (however imaginatively) tonight—from gunpowder to paper to movable printing type—were innovations that ultimately stalled in China, only to be advanced in leaps and bounds by other nations. And while the entire evening was an homage to the 2500-year-old Analects of Confucius—an ancient Chinese thinker who “comes first among the top 10 historical celebrities in the world,” as the official Opening Ceremony Media Guide puts it—nothing was said of China’s Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

It was Mao who jettisoned Confucian ethics and unleashed the incredibly destructive 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution which gutted China’s educational system, lobotomized the intelligentsia, and rendered the economy a basket case.

So, yes, this was a celebration to China’s illustrious heritage—and of its promising future. But tonight’s razzle-dazzle painted the portrait of an idealized Chinese past, of a gauzily perfect
what-should-have-been instead of the rather more tawdry what-really-was. And it isn’t only the ancient, imperial past that has been treated to this collective amnesia. At the finale of the evening, as sports-and-business icon Li Ning trotted like an astronaut, parallel to the ground, around the rim of the Bird’s Nest, images of China’s Olympics torch relay were projected against the flat panels of the rim. Predictably enough, the stops in Paris and London showed nothing of the rambunctious anti-China protests that had erupted in those and other cities to underscore China’s poor human rights record, particularly in Tibet.

Not everyone believes Beijing deserves another chance to be a great power; China’s hosting of the Olympics has been hotly debated and fraught with controversy ever since Beijing won its bid seven years ago. When China’s critics launched protests against its policies in Tibet—after violent riots which erupted in Lhasa March 14—emotional Chinese both at home and abroad rallied to their government’s defense, calling for a boycott of French goods (because of the anti-China protests in Paris) and stridently criticizing Western media for allegedly biased reporting. Some Western journalists based in Beijing received death threats.

But in a year of many surprises, the story line shifted yet again after yet another unexpected development. The devastating May earthquake in Sichuan province grabbed domestic attention and triggered an unexpected outpouring of domestic philanthropy and volunteerism that took even the government by surprise. In a flash, it seemed, strident anti-Western voices quieted down, and so did much of the Western criticism of China, at least for a time, as the international community scrambled to send rescue personnel and relief supplies to the stricken area.

China’s post-Mao economic boom, which lifted hundreds of millions of residents out of poverty, has given the country another shot at the sort of international influence it had enjoyed in the Tang and Ming dynasties. And the international sympathy triggered by Sichuan’s quake, which killed 70,000 people, also paradoxically gave Beijing a second chance to get the Olympics right after the PR disasters of the European torch relay.

The quake’s significance was acknowledged by some Olympic pageantry. When the 183-person Chinese Olympics team entered the stadium to thunderous applause tonight, flag-bearer and basketball celebrity Yao Ming walked alongside a 9-year-old Sichuan quake survivor. President
of the Beijing Games Organizing Committee, Liu Qi, said that after the quake the international community’s “heart-warming support has heightened the morale of the Chinese nation in the reconstruction of quake-stricken areas and boosted our confidence and determination in staging successful Games.” For the next two weeks, China’s every move will be scrutinized as never before—will the crackdown on dissidents continue? Will the contest for gold get ugly? And Beijing will be bending over backwards not to flub this hard-fought chance to be great
once again.

While countries around the world focus on their sportsmen and sportswomen at the Beijing Olympics, an extensive collection of songs will act as the soundtrack to the greatest sporting event on Earth.

It seems music will play a fundamental role in the enjoyment of the 2008 Olympics, which starts on Friday, as more than 30 songs were recorded as a build-up to the Games. All of them were in the running to be the official song of the Olympics in a song-search competition held earlier this year.

Official song

The official Beijing Olympic song, Forever Friends, was created by Chinese artistes Kong Xiangdong and Sun Nan. The video for the song shows competitors embracing and laughing with each other, displaying the peace and unity associated with the games.

The words of the song, which is recorded in English, read, “Forever friends in harmony/As the whole world joins and sees days of unity and peace/Forever through the years we’ll hear the cheers/Joy and laughter everywhere/ We’re together here to share/ Forever friends.”

Of the other songs, I Am a Star was recorded for the Beijing Olympic volunteers; Light the Passion, Share the Dream was done for the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay, and Welcome to Beijing was recorded for the 100-day countdown to the Olympics.

No Jamaicans in competition

While no Jamaican artiste contributed to the song competition, at least two - Mavado and Wayne Marshall - have added their voices to the chorus of Jamaicans supporting our athletes at the Olympics.

Mavado’s contribution, On The Go (Faster Than Bullet), was produced by Shane Brown’s Juke Boxx Records. The fast-paced track was part of a larger campaign that included an original mix CD, iTunes and an Asafa Powell reggae mix, but Mavado’s track is the only original music produced for the project.

In the song, Mavado sings, “We moving like the light/Jamaica have the fastest man inna life/Faster than car and bike/A send bullet Jamaican faster than bullet/Bet dem neva know seh Jamaicans can do it/9.77 seconds, before you know it di man ova do it/Going, we going, we gone/ We moving out of sight.”

The lyrics were done in reference to former 100-metre record holder Asafa Powell’s record-breaking run. Asafa is scheduled to compete in the 100 metres against fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt, who lowered the record to 9.72 seconds.

Marshall’s song

Mavado’s song is being played on the radio and at different dancehall events, while Wayne Marshall’s The Moment, which was recorded as part of CVM-TV’s Olympic campaign, has been playing on the station for the past three weeks.

The Esco-produced track is patriotic and Wayne Marshall voices his support for the local athletes. The song lyrics read: “We have been waiting so long for this moment/Now it’s here for the world to see/All the power we have as a nation and the will that we have to achieve.”

“We have the best chances ever for the Olympics,” Marshall told The Gleaner yesterday. “We have great chances for the 4×100, both for women and men, once they keep the baton in hand. Two hundred metres - Usain (Bolt) gone wid it, 100 metres, wi can get gold and silver, Usain or Asafa, it nuh really matter.”

Marshall said the country would benefit economically as a result of any Olympic victories.

There’s more to the imminent Olympic Games in Beijing than meets the eye. So what’s hidden behind the slogan of One World, One Dream?

Two weeks ago, the Whitehall mandarins, ministerial aides and officials who will be in Beijing when the Olympic Games open on Friday were summoned for what they thought would be a series of pro-forma chats with MI5. What they heard was hair-raising.

“It was all very James Bond,” according to one of the 100 or more who were called in by the security service. “We were told to trust nobody. We were warned that there is going to be a huge spy presence in Beijing, and that we should expect to be followed wherever we go.”

The alert came after The Sunday Times reported that a top aide accompanying Gordon Brown to China early this year had been caught in a suspected “honeytrap” by a woman who vanished from his hotel room with his BlackBerry.

The aides and officials accompanying Brown and four ministers to the Olympics were told they must take no laptops and that all BlackBerries or mobile phones must be “clean” – containing no contact numbers or other information.

It is a reminder that, although China has transformed itself into a more self-confident, outgoing and even outspoken society than it was when awarded the games seven years ago, it is still ruled by authoritarians who are above the law.

The official slogan is One World, One Dream. But these are also the Spying Games.

China has justified heavy security measures, entailing the deployment of 110,000 security personnel in Beijing and restrictions on visas, by the need to protect the Olympics against unspecified threats of terrorism.

Surface to air missiles have been placed around the Olympic “bird’s nest” stadium, and from 2pm on Friday – six hours before the opening ceremony is due to start – airports around Beijing will be in lock-down. The army has been instructed to shoot down anything that moves in the five designated air zones above the city. There is much more than an antiterrorist exercise going on, however. A western intelligence official said the Chinese security services saw the Olympics as “a goldmine for intelligence gathering, blackmail and commercial secrets”.

The US state department issued an official warning this year to travellers attending the games that there was “no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations” in China.

It’s not just that the men on the streets in Good Luck Beijing T-shirts and lookalike baseball caps are likely to be vigilantes looking for troublemakers. The man coming into your hotel room to change your free slippers may also be on the security payroll.

“The [British] security services seem particularly worried about the Chinese hotel staff going into our bedrooms,” said a senior aide who will be accompanying ministers.

“We were told they will find an excuse to go into our room five or more times a day. They’ll say they’ve come to change the free slippers – but actually they’ll be on the lookout for any phones or documents we might have left lying around.” Last December Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, warned that China was carrying out state-sponsored espionage against vital parts of Britain’s economy, including the computer systems of big banks and financial services firms.

A main fear now is that business visitors to China will be permanently subject to “a cold war level” of industrial espionage from systems put in place for the games.

Two industry sources have confirmed that internet surveillance software to spy on guests at the games has been installed at some international hotel chains after heavy pressure from state security.

It means that business leaders, politicians and government officials using the internet in some of Beijing’s most prestigious hotels can expect the Chinese authorities to monitor e-mails, website visits and private passwords.

The sources confirmed allegations by an American senator, Sam Brownback, who has disclosed the existence of a threatening order from the Public Security Bureau (PSB) to hotel managers ordering them to comply with its operatives.

“Exactly right,” said one of the sources, who said he was familiar with the instructions due to his management position, “it is authentic”.

The PSB document said that “in order to ensure the smooth opening of the Olympics in Beijing . . . it is required that your company install and run the security management system”.

Curious onlookers surround the cyclist; not because he has ridden here, to the Great Wall at Badaling - although, given the surrounding hills, that’s a feat in itself - but because of his bike. He is literally riding the Olympic rings.

Using the bike’s existing wheels as a base, he has attached three extra rings and painted all five circles in the Olympic colours. He’s immensely proud of his novel invention but more proud of his Olympic spirit.

This is Beijing in the grip of Olympic fever.

As I stand on this section of the Great Wall, 70 kilometres north-west of Beijing, marvelling at the extent of this austere rampart - it snakes over the mountains and disappears into the mist - a giant Olympic sign dominates a nearby hill. It’s an incongruous juxtaposition of ancient and modern that is being repeated all over the city.

In Tiananmen Square an electronic board counting down to the Games glows in front of the National Museum. Such new, minimalist, monochromatic constructions as the “bird’s nest” Olympic Stadium, the bubbled Swimming Centre and the glass-domed Opera House make a striking contrast to ornately detailed, brightly coloured, Imperial Chinese architecture.

Some residents applaud these new facilities, which thrust Beijing into the 21st century; others see them as aesthetically discordant blights on their historic city.

It’s not just public buildings that are creating mixed feelings. High-rise office towers, hotels and apartment buildings now dominate the once low-level skyline. While some Beijingers are thrilled to move out of the cramped, rundown hutongs (traditional courtyard houses) to apartment blocks with modern facilities, others miss the sense of community and despair at their lost heritage.

China is not just gearing up for the Games, it is striding towards a future as a global superpower - and Beijing is bubbling with an energy and enthusiasm that is exciting and contagious. Many Europeans swept up in the momentum have relocated here; one young Frenchman tells me Beijing is far more exciting than “boring, stagnant” Paris.

Beijing’s makeover includes improved public transport, new hotels, restaurants and shopping precincts. It will benefit business and tourism for years to come and not just for international guests. Increased prosperity and freedom in China means more domestic tourists will also reap the rewards.

Everywhere I go in Beijing domestic tourists out-number foreign travellers. Locals, many on organised tours, queue patiently to file into Mao’s mausoleum in Tiananmen Square and not so patiently to glimpse into the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City.

Beijing is gaining from its new sophistication but it’s the city’s historical buildings that attract the most visitors. They, too, have benefited from an Olympic spruce-up.

At the Forbidden City, the imperial court of the Ming and Qing dynasties, artists have been repainting the buildings’ ornate detailing in a $13 million restoration. The fresh, gleaming paintwork is in stark contrast to the dull, unrestored sections, hinting at how regal the place once looked.

The Summer Palace, built by Emperor Qianlong in 1750, has also undergone a multimillion-dollar touch-up. I’m astounded by the detail of the 14,000 paintings on the ceiling of the Long Corridor, which skirts tranquil Kunming Lake. This was definitely an opulent summer residence for the privileged few.

Thankfully, the historical significance of the hutongs is being recognised and some are being preserved and restored, having been saved from demolition. They are vibrant, bustling places to visit, reflecting the traditional lifestyle of old Beijing. Bicycles still rule here despite 1000 new cars hitting the city’s roads each day and clogging the narrow hutong laneways.

With the influx of hotels are new sophisticated dining options such as Le Pre Lenotre in the five-star Sofitel Wanda Beijing, where I sip champagne while being waited on with impeccable silver service. At Quanjude Wangfujing, a traditional Peking-duck restaurant opened in 1864, I sip green tea while watching the waiter chop roast duck on a trolley beside me. The contrasts are striking and delicious.

This extends to shopping, too. At the new designer malls, which are often connected to five-star hotels, the service is discreet, quiet and respectful. But at the markets, which stock cheap knock-offs, it’s in-your-face, loud and brash. “Missy, missy, missy,” a shrill voice beckons as I walk through the Xiushui silk market. “Hey, preeeetty lady,” shouts another stallholder, grabbing my arm.

Back at Badaling, climbing an astonishingly steep section of the Great Wall, I’m accosted by a hawker flogging Games merchandise with persistence worthy of a medal. It appears everyone is embracing the Olympic theme.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/

A senior consultant with The Global Group which has investment in China said here on Wednesday that China, through the Beijing Olympics, will amaze the world.

Keith Bennett, who is also committee member of the “48 Group Club”, widely known for its icebreaking role in opening trading with China over 50 years ago, has been frequently visiting China for bilateral business engagement since 1981.

“We are just a few weeks away from August 8th, the opening of the Beijing Olympics. The games are going to amaze the world,” he said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua, citing facilities such as the Water Cube for the swimming and aquatic events, and the “Bird’s Nest” that China has built are “architectural icons of the 21st century”.

“On October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao said: ‘The Chinese people have stood up.’ And during the Beijing Games the whole world will see how the Chinese people are not only standing on their feet but have their heads held high. This is the first time that the Olympics will be held in a developing country,” said Bennett, who studied Chinese history and politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in late 1970s and have been observing closely on China since.

Recalling the history since New China was founded, he marveled that under the leadership of Mao and others in the first generation of the collective leadership of the People’s Republic of China, a quarter of humanity had banished famine, solved the basic problem of feeding, clothing, educating and housing the people on the basis of self-reliance. China had developed its own nuclear deterrent, launched space satellites, provided a framework of basic medical care to a peasantry that had never known it through the barefoot doctor system, in addition to offering massive support to people throughout the world in their struggles against imperialism.

Over the last 30 years, he added, the succeeding generations of Mao’s successors have built on those foundations. During those three decades, China has registered double digit economic growth almost every year. “No other economy in the world can compare with this. Four hundred million people have been lifted out of poverty. The effects of this are felt not only in China. Today, economies throughout Africa and Latin America are reversing a generation of decline and entering onto a path of growth largely because of their engagement with China’s booming economy.”

The Western media never tires of attacking China over its so-called “human rights violations”. But in the contemporary world, he said, “no greater contribution is being made to the enhancement of the real human rights of hundreds of millions of people than is being made by the Chinese government”.

Acknowledging that China is not a perfect society, just as the Chinese people often say themselves — China is still in the primary stage of socialism, Bennett noted, however, “What we see today is still only a beginning. The best days of China are still to come.”

In his views, more people across the world are starting to see that there is an alternative to the western development model. And the Chinese experiences can be valuable for people from other developing countries in resolving issues through their own different approaches.

There are concerns that the Beijing Olympics might be seen as a magnet for certain forces to voice their grievances on China, but Bennett added that “people are impressed with China’s preparations for the Olympics and have confidence in China’s ability to deliver.”

The Beijing National Aquatics Center, “Water Cube”, was built in accordance with a water-saving design concept to be a gigantic green architectural wonder. The venue’s membrane structure, covered by ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) air cushions, is not only the first of its kind in China and the world’s largest and most complex ETFE project, but it is also an economical and water-saving creation.