COUNTDOWN BEGINS: Revellers waving Olympic and Chinese flags at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Wednesday as the one-year countdown to the Olympic Games on Aug 8, 2008 began. On the wall is a portrait of late Chairman Mao Zedong. -- PHOTO: AFP

Underscoring their confidence, the organisers named a chirpy song specially written for the countdown simply as 'We Are Ready'.

With construction and preparation work going on round-the-clock since 2003, there is little doubt that the Chinese host city will get the hardware and logistics ready in time for the big show on Aug 8 next year.

Other areas like ticket sales, civic campaigns and the recruitment of volunteers were also making good progress, top officials involved in the Games' preparations said on Monday as they gave an upbeat assessment report.

'On the whole, preparations for the Beijing Olympics are smoothly progressing in accordance with plans,' Mr Wang Wei, an executive vice-president of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympics Games (Bocog), told reporters.

What are progressing less smoothly, however, are the intangible and trickier aspects like clean air, media management and world opinion. Beijing found out the hard way this week that small missteps were enough to trip up months of hard work in cultivating a media-friendly image.

In January this year, the Chinese government began loosening restrictions on mainland-based foreign reporters as part of its pledge to allow greater media freedom during the Games. Archaic restrictions, such as the one requiring journalists to get official approval before conducting certain interviews, were suspended.

The move won guarded praise from rights groups and journalists, though many remained sceptical. These sceptics now say they have been right to be suspicious of Beijing all along, pointing to the Chinese police's knee-jerk reaction to a small protest this week.

On Monday, media rights group Reporters Without Borders staged a protest outside the office of the Beijing Olympic organisers, demanding that some 100 journalists and activists being held in Chinese prisons be freed. Foreign journalists covering the event were reportedly hassled and later detained by police at the scene.

Beijing officials have not responded to this incident, though suffice it to say, the public relations damage has been done with foreign newspaper headlines around the world announcing: China 'breaks promises' on media.

Intentionally or otherwise, the Chinese government also showed on Monday that its promise of greater media access did not mean less censorship. Government censors monitoring a series of special reports by CNN promptly cut the television signals whenever segments critical of Beijing were aired.

Unsurprisingly, television screens in the Chinese capital went blank that morning when a CNN presenter described the Tiananmen Square as 'a symbol of brutal suppression', in reference to Beijing's crackdown on student protesters in 1989.

It's not hard to imagine the howls of protest such blatant censorship would create this time next year, especially when 30,000 journalists are expected to be in town to cover the Games. And at that time, it is only to be expected that the rights groups and activists would make even more radical moves to get their voices heard, further testing the tolerance of the Chinese authorities.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao has a good point when he said this week that he hoped the foreign media would pause to consider Beijing's position that 'China can be reported in a more balanced and objective way'. But when the police's first instinct at any sign of protest is to shut out or detain members of the media, then there is little chance of convincing foreign journalists that Beijing is sincere about its media promises.

Of course, no one expects the Olympics to be a miracle cure for China's entrenched political problems. Bocog officials like to remind foreign journalists that the Olympics is at heart a sporting event.

But funnily enough, you would not know this from listening to Beijing officials or reading Chinese state media reports.

They would regale you with statistic after statistic about the impressive stadiums or money spent on sprucing up the capital city. But few, if any of the officials, would be able to tell you about the new Chinese sporting stars to watch (aside from obvious names like hurdles king Liu Xiang) or how the athletes' preparations have been like. China's sports administration zealously restricts media access to top athletes, frustrating even the domestic press, not to mention foreign reporters.

'We have it as bad as you guys,' the senior editor of a Beijing-based newspaper said recently when I asked if he and his colleagues had better luck interviewing top Chinese athletes.

This is a pity because ordinary readers in China and elsewhere would probably be more interested in reading about the fascinating stories behind the rise of the mainland's new generation of sporting stars, rather than the government's protracted and predictable bickering with foreign rights groups.

The lack of access to Chinese athletes is compounded by the fact that a growing number of visiting foreign athletes and their coaches have declared their intention to delay their arrival in Beijing due to air pollution.

Beijing has been shrouded by a thick haze for much of the last two months despite the government's promise of a 'Green Olympics' for next year, due in large part to the construction boom in the city and the relentless growth in car ownership.

'You won't be seeing too many of our athletes until four or five days before their competition,' Australia's Olympic chief John Coates was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying on Tuesday.

'The head coaches have gathered enough information to certainly confirm that we would not be recommending a long period in China before the Games. That only is going to increase the possibility of respiratory or gastro illness.'

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge also conceded that some events next year might face postponement if the air is too dirty.

Hardly the kind of endorsement Beijing is hoping for. So, with just one more year to go before the 2008 Games, Beijing can take heart in the efficiency in which it has gone about getting the hardware ready. But officials clearly need to go back to the drawing board on the intangible aspects. Fast.

chinhon@sph.com.sg

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