Disabled Athletes Find China Lacking | Newsweek Scope

OLYMPICS
The Road From Rome
David Maraniss 7/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
Avery Brundage, the Crusty Chicago businessman who ran the International Olympic Committee as his vast personal fiefdom during the middle decades of the 20th century, clung obsessively, if at times naively or hypocritically, to the notion that his movement could be free from professionalism, commercialism and politics. Any semblance of that idea is long gone now as the Beijing Olympics approach. While evocative sports stories will certainly emerge from the 2008 Summer Games, these Olympics seem destined to be remembered less for what happens in the competitions than for the surrounding atmospherics and, above all, for the simple fact that they are being staged in China. Whether Dara Torres can turn back the clock and win swimming gold at the age of 41 is a stirring question, but it's been overshadowed by political issues. How the Chinese handle their human-rights failings, the ghastly pollution in their capital city and the thousands of Western journalists clanging around looking for stories in a state known for rigid control will more likely define the Olympic days in Beijing.
OLYMPICS
A Viewer’s Guide to Beijing
Mark Starr 7/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
From its inception, Beijing 2008 was ballyhooed as a nation's coming-out party, one that would presage the Chinese Century. But you don't get your very own century without first establishing supremacy in international sports. Four years ago in Athens, China finished a surprising second in Olympic gold medals, ahead of Russia and just four behind the United States. If subsequent world titles are any indication, we might look back on Beijing 2008 as the moment when China surged past the United States in the gold-medal count for the first time—and never looked back.
CHINA
China and the Olympics
5/7/2008 12:00:00 AM
While China wanted to use the 2008 Beijing Olympics as its coming-out party, so far the event has been used by activists to protest China's poor record over issues ranging from human rights to the environment. Republican Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who also served as president and CEO of the organizing committee for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, says China should take some action that would "signal to the world that they, as a government, are willing to listen to the concerns of the world, and at the same time recognize the interests of their local population." Romney says companies sponsoring the Beijing Olympics are very concerned that what they hoped would be a positive experience for their brand could become a negative experience. But even as these corporations show their human rights concerns publicly, and privately encourage China to take correct action, "financially, they're locked in."
Locking Down Tibet
Melinda Liu 3/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
Once again riots have exploded, shots have rung out, and blood has flowed in the streets of Lhasa. And once again the Chinese authorities' habit of overreacting threatens to keep making things worse. As police battled against angry Tibetan protestors, shops were set on fire, vehicles (including at least one tourist bus) overturned, ethnic Chinese attacked and tear gas fired into crowds in the worst civil unrest in Tibet in nearly two decades. Although these reports are extremely difficult to confirm, death toll estimates cited by Western media ranged from two to as many as 20.
Spin the Games
Melinda Liu
It wasn't your normal Chinese press conference. Last month, dozens of foreign journalists were invited to a dusty military training ground in Henan province to see the People's Liberation Army in action—specifically, Chinese combat engineers soon headed on a peacekeeping mission to Darfur. Media access to China's military is rare, but the PLA put on a good show.
Restrain The Riffraff
Melinda Liu
Nobody can pinpoint just when conspicuous consumption took over Beijing; in the course of the past decade, high-end boutiques sprang up along the avenues, German sedans started prowling the streets, and billboards have appeared flaunting "ultra-exclusive" "luxury" goods fit for "tycoons." INDULGE IN A SMALL VILLA, read one; BECOME A FOREIGN DIPLOMAT'S LANDLORD, exclaimed another.