CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

BEIJING’S OLYMPIC GAMES: RISKS AND REWARDS

WELCOME AND MODERATOR:

DOUGLAS H. PAAL, VICE PRESIDENT FOR STUDIES,

CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

SPEAKERS: VICTOR D. CHA,

D.S. SONG CHAIR AND DIRECTOR OF ASIAN STUDIES, EDMUND A. WALSH SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE,

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

MINXIN PEI, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, CHINA PROGRAM,

CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2008

Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

DOUGLAS PAAL: Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to the Carnegie

Endowment for International Peace. My name is Doug Paal. I’m the vice president for studies here and pleased to welcome you to come out on a very warm, steamy Washington day to join us in talking about the countdown to Beijing and the Summer Olympics and what the implications of these Olympics will be for China and for the rest of the world.

You’ve already been asked to please turn off your cell phones and other devices.

And I’ll ask you again. It will interfere with the wireless communication in here. I’ve made myself inaudible by carrying my own cell phone in the past and learned the hard way. So please do turn off your devices.

We have this morning two presenters who are exceptionally well qualified to discuss

these games and games in principle as political metaphors and political tools in various societies in Asia. Our leadoff speaker this morning is Victor Cha. He’s not only a good and old friend, but he’s a very important professor of government at Georgetown University. He has a book coming out very shortly on games in Asia, not just the big Olympic Games but the use of sports in diplomacy and politics in the region. He will talk about the impact that has been quite visible.

I personally was in a similar position to his most recent government position in the

National Security Council in 1988 when the Seoul Olympics took place. And those Olympics became an important impetus to the democratization of South Korea after years of dictatorship. And Victor will speak to us about that.

And following Victor will be Minxin Pei who is senior associate in the China

program here at Carnegie. And if you have a chance to look at today’s Financial Times, you’ll see a column by him on non-governmental organizations in China and their stunted growth in that society. Minxin has written a lot about U.S.-China relations and Chinese societal development. And he can talk to us based on his just last week’s observations of the impressive physical preparations going on in China and the challenges China faces as it hosts the games starting next week.

I was in Beijing precisely a year ago this week. And the weather and the pollution

were so bad I just never left the hotel. It was just too offensive to go outside. I gather it’s doing a little better from the visuals we’re seeing as the number of journalists increase. But I think Minxin can talk about that and the other challenges that China faces as it hosts these Olympics.

Victor, can I ask you to take the lead? You’re welcome to take it from there or come

up to the podium.

VICTOR CHA: I think I’ll just sit here. Thank you, Doug. It’s a pleasure to be here this morning. And –

MR. PAAL: Do you have your mike on? MR. CHA: It’s a pleasure to be here this morning, Doug and Minxin, and to be part

of this very distinguished panel. Both of the speakers of whom – probably know much more about China than I do. And I’m very curious to hear about Minxin’s trip. So I won’t be very long in my presentation.

I just wanted to make a few points about sports in Asia, as well as the Beijing

Olympics that I found in writing this book about the politics of sports in Asia. And the first thing is the sort of question that everybody has sort of batted around in the run-up to the games is, you know, are these Olympics that we’re going to see starting Friday political? Should they be political? You know, there are many sports purists, including the scripters of the Olympic charter who believe that sport should not be political; that it should be only about sports and nothing else.

President Bush has sort of justified his reason for going saying he’s going there to

watch the athletes perform, to root for his nation’s athletes, and for no other reason. And Article 51 of the UN Charter argues that sports should not be political. But I think the Olympics are a political event, as I think most people would agree. And particularly when you’re the biggest country in the world hosting the Olympics and you happen to be an illiberal regime, that’s bound to make it political.

When it comes to the Olympics in Asia, I think there’s another reason why these

games, when they come to Asia, are so political. And that’s because they so rarely do come to Asia. In the modern Olympic era, since 1896, the Summer Olympic Games, which are the premier games, have only come to Asia three times. This is if you don’t count Australia – 1964 Tokyo, 1988 Seoul, and 2008 Beijing. By comparison, by 2012, the cities of London and Paris will have hosted the games between them – the Summer Games – five times. So when these games come to Asia, they are truly a big event. And that naturally will cause them to be political.

Another reason why I think the games are particularly political when they come to

Asia has to do with the pace of change and dynamism in the region, in this region of the world. As many of you know, things have happened – things that took the West half a century or a century to accomplish happen in Asia in decades or in even years. This pace of change in Asia, when it coincides with the hosting of games like the Olympics, creates this sense of nation-building and identity that gets inextricably intertwined with the games.

So for this reason, when in 1964 Tokyo hosted the Olympics, this sort of marked

Japan’s return to the international system after World War II, after military occupation. They had finally returned to the international system as a major power. In 1988, Seoul, as everybody knows, was South Korea’s big coming-out party, sort of showing off to the world the transformation from a post-war agrarian economy to one of the biggest economies in the world. And in China as well, the pace of change has been dramatic. And for this reason, the Olympics means a lot to the country to try to show the world China’s place as a global

player, the culmination of three decades of modernization going back to 1979, Deng Xiaoping, a big event. So I think for these two particular reasons, when sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup come to Asia, they become very political.

Now, to the question of will China stage a successful Olympics, I think basically the

Chinese need to hit four marks for the Olympic Games to be successful. The first is in terms of performance. Their athletes have to perform well. China’s history of participation in the Olympics is not very long, as many of you know. But they did rapidly achieve very good standings in the overall medal count, in the gold medal count, in the Summer Games. I think they were third or fourth in the last set of games. And I think the expectation is – or people are hopeful – that they will do very well in these games, perhaps even rival the United States or win the overall medal count. So their athletes have to perform well and they must sort of be very high in the standings, number one or number two, in terms of the overall medal count and the gold medal count.

Secondly, I think they need to have clean air. They’ve invested – and Minxin can talk

about this – they’ve invested some $17 billion in terms of trying to clean up the air and the environment in Beijing and, you know, it has been hit or miss. You know, the past few days have been good but yesterday apparently was bad and all of us who’ve traveled to Beijing and many of you in the audience know that some days – I remember when I went to Six-party Talks some days you’d wake up and you can see, you know, far out to the third-ring road. And other days you’d wake up and you couldn’t see down the block in front of you.

So this will be very important and it will be – and the Chinese have put a lot of

effort. They’ve taken a lot of draconian measures to try to clean the air up in advance of the games. And, you know, we’ll just have to see. I think – my own view is I think that they may end up coming out better on the environment than most people think. And the only reason I believe that is because the bar has been set so low. I mean the expectations in terms of the environment in China are so low right now that if they have anything resembling a semi-clear day for the opening ceremonies people will be very happy.

The third mark they need to hit is they need to host the games well. You know, a

very important component for host cities of having these games is you have to do a good job hosting them. As many of you know, this was China’s second bid for the Olympics – they bid unsuccessfully for the 2000 Olympics – and as a part of that bid process, they have to create models, they have to create models, business models, and infrastructure models of what they plan to do that the IOC board and selection committee rates – they grade these models, they score them on a point system. And so you need to do well in terms of hosting these games and I think for the Chinese the standard that they’re trying to aspire to is the standard that was set by Sydney in 2000 which was considered to be an extremely well-hosted games. And, unfortunately, not the standard that was set in 1996 by Atlanta, which many believe was not a very well-hosted Olympics.

And the fourth and, you know, obviously the most important metric for success will

be how – this is from Beijing’s perspective – how well they can handle and marginalize any signs of political protest during the games. They’ve certainly created, you know, they’ve created these demonstration zones. Whether people actually go to those areas to demonstrate or whether they will seek to demonstrate outside of that area is unclear. You

know, I think that the real metric that we’ll all be looking at will be once those demonstrations happen how will the Chinese respond to that? And I think Minxin can speak to that based on his own interviews and discussions out there.

So, you know, I think these are basically the four marks they have to hit. The medal

count: We don’t know yet. The environment: Again, the score doesn’t look very good right now, but I think there’s still – you know, this story on the environment will not be written until the games actually start. Logistics: We will see when they start the games, although some of the press have written early indications about how poorly the first days of ticket sales was handled. Some people see that as a harbinger of a poorly run Olympics. Again, it’s still way too early to tell; I think we have to wait to see with the games.

And in terms of the protests and political change – and this is sort of my last and

sort of major point – is, you now, there’s a lot of talk in the press now in the run-up to the games about how the Chinese are not living up to their promises in terms of political freedoms, they’re walking back some of the promises they made to the IOC with regard to press access, and, as I spoke with one other reporter the other day, many people believe that China will get the better end of this deal. You know, if the deal is they get the Olympics, but they have to liberalize that in the end they will walk back a lot of this and China will get – a lot of the freedoms – and China will get the better end of this deal.

And I can certainly understand why there is sensitivity at this point. I think both the

international press and the Chinese government are both hypersensitive now in the run-up to the games because they are trying out this system that they’ve just created for the Olympics. And, you know, the press is extremely sensitive to anything that doesn’t look like it’s happening as it might in a completely open society and the Chinese are hypersensitive to any actions that press might take that looks like they’re trying to take advantage of certain great liberties, but my own view is that, you know, when these Olympics are finished two and a half weeks from now China will be a different country and that if we take the example of press freedoms, yes, there’s a lot of concern now that they may be walking back some of these press freedoms, but the fact of the matter is after two and a half weeks, you know, some 20,000 journalists will have been in China and will have had unprecedented access and 10,000 more freelancers will be in there with unprecedented access.

If they’re correct – and historically these totals have always been wrong – half a

million tourists will come to China all carrying cell phone cameras. And that is the sort of scrutiny that the Chinese government and society had never faced and it’s not something that they can simply sort of mark off as one event and then everything goes back to the way it was prior to the Olympics. It’s very difficult to imagine that. The reason I think it’s difficult to imagine that is because, as I talk about in this book, I think China faces a fundamental dilemma when it comes to the Olympics and it’s what I refer to as a catch-22. You know, they want these Olympics because they want to demonstrate to the world what a great country China is.

It’s a pace of modernization. They’ve invested all of these, you know, millions,

hundreds of millions of dollars into these iconic Olympic facilities in order to impress upon the world the image of China is not that of a sick man of Asia or it’s not simply the Great Wall. It is this modern, industrial, advanced society at the cutting edge in terms of

technology. All of these things are things they want to impress to the world as well as to their own public and the continued strength and legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. The problem is when you invite that sort of limelight and when you put yourself in that sort of limelight you have to pay the price for the limelight, which is increased political pressures for political change. And the dilemma that the Chinese leadership faces is they cannot simply try to get the limelight and ignore the pressure because that defeats the whole purpose of being in the limelight – then the whole games will be a total failure for them.

So this is the catch-22 dilemma that they face. It’s very similar to the catch-22

dilemma that the South Koreans faced in 1988. Now, while I don’t expect the same sort of political change in China that you saw in Korea with the 1988 Olympics, I think we have seen some change, particularly in Chinese foreign policies, that would not have been the case without the Olympics. Particularly in terms of policies towards Sudan, Darfur, quietly in Burma, and a variety of other cases, I think there has been small, creeping change in China. Is it the sort of change that we would like to see ideally? Larger, more fundamental change? No, it’s not. And there still is a long way to go, but I think many people would argue that a lot of the changes that we have seen would not have been possible if not for the pressure that came with the Olympic limelight.

And with regard to domestic human rights, there I don’t think we’ve seen much

change at all and that there’s been, in fact, more of a crackdown on the domestic side while trying to show greater freedoms on the international side. And that’s the balance, I think, that the Chinese are trying to manage, but the answer on the domestic side is not to advocate boycott of the games because I think many on the domestic side, many of the domestic groups never wanted a boycott in the first place – they wanted everybody to come to Beijing so they had an opportunity to show the world the sort of hardships that they are and the lack of liberty that they have in the country. So with that, I think, as a sort of introduction, I will pass it back to Doug and I look forward to any questions of comments. Thanks.

MR. PAAL: Thank you, Victor, very much. One of the things I think we’re going to

often miss in the coverage of the next couple of weeks of Olympic events will be some context in which to place the events as they occur and a lot of reporters who are going to cover it are not people deep in the context, although I’m sure they’ll have specialists advising, but I think Victor you’ve gotten off to a good start in seeing the international and comparative context very well. China has over the last 15 years had the best 15 years in the last 250 years in Chinese history and there’s a lot of expectation on the part of ordinary Chinese that this will be reflected in their games.

On the other hand, in this year, starting in the winter, China has had a lot of

challenges: an extraordinary snowfall in the south that stretched the government’s capacity to respond, they’ve had energy problems that are chronic, and then the March uprising in Tibet and Tibetan areas of Sichuan and Gansu. This has been a very, very tough period for the Chinese leadership to meet the expectations of a population which has very rising expectations and meet the very specific challenges of – the Sichuan earthquake was the last of these massive event – economically costly, costly in human life, almost on the eve of the Olympics. So for a greater context on China specifically now, we turn to my colleague Minxin Pei.

MINXIN PEA: Thank you, Doug. Normally I don’t use PowerPoints, but since I was in Beijing about two weeks ago for a one-week trip, I took some photos. You have to forgive me for my very poor photographic skills; they, however, will give you some visual image of what Beijing looks like.

So the first set of pictures I want to show is really about the city, what the city is like.

How can I get the – okay, so, this is the city – this is the first day I was there. The sky was relatively blue, but it shows you the landscaping, the plants, the flowers – the government supposedly planted 40 million potted plants, flowers in the city. The city looks gorgeous. I’ve never seen Beijing so beautiful. This gives you another look and here the picture – I want you to just look at the building in the background. Over the last nine months or so the government literally repainted all the buildings in the city. Several months ago this would look very dingy, dirty, but now practically every building in the city is almost new.

And English signs – and this one I like it because in Beijing, public toilets are known

to be a problem – and here is that 235 meters away, down to the last digit, there is public toilets – in English! (Chuckles.) So it’s, again, very thoughtful and here, again, this is on the second or third ring road. You have very nicely hanged plants. Another building, apparently quite old but cleaned up. This is saying – (inaudible) – university, not the main thoroughfare. It’s just shows you the – (thoroughness ?). And then security – this is subway. You’re going to subway; you pass through metal detectors – like security check – and it tells you what kind of things you are not supposed to carry.

What’s interesting to me and I think something quite controversial – there was an

article in the New York Times about this – is the ads used by Western companies to promote the Olympics. And here the theme is to emphasis the Chineseness of the companies. The companies – this a Adidas ad. It’s rooting for Chinese athletes and here you see – this is in the Beijing – (inaudible) – subway. And Adidas says, this is another slogan.

This is probably the most controversial ad I’ve seen because the visual impact is

somehow disconcerting because people piling on top of people and this a UPS ad. And this one I took from a magazine; this is a Philips ad. Again, Chinese actually leading the charge – you can tell the ethnicity of the athletes behind. Another is in front of the People’s Bank of China – really beautiful landscaping. This is in a building next to the People’s Bank. This is absolutely gorgeous. So you just picture potted plants. This is near our – Operation Beijing – this is near our office. This is near the hotel visiting – (inaudible). And these are the signs in front of the subways – things you are not supposed to bring including hand grenades. (Laughter.) I don’t know how you – (chuckles.)

And again, this is very old building. They’ve cleaned it up – yeah, I think you can

help me with the next slide – and then I’ll show you what the pollution is like because every day I took a picture and then I matched the picture with that day’s pollution index. So I will show what it means when they say the population index is 50 or what it means when the pollution index is 113, for example.

First, some background about Beijing. Beijing’s problem has a lot to do with its

geography – it’s surrounded by three most polluting provinces: Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi.

They are the top three emitters of SO2. Shanxi is probably the most polluted province in China – it’s the top emitter of smog and dust because it’s a coal-producing, coal-firing province. And the Shandong is the top emitter of industrial particles.

And north of Beijing is a mountain range that traps all the pollutants blown from the

south. So if Beijing has south winds from the south, as is the case in the summer, pollutants gets trapped in Beijing. If the wind blows from the north, then pollutants gets dispersed. So the Olympics is really at mercy of wind directions, weather patterns.

This is the first day. This is Sunday the 20th and the pollution index is 55. So this is

55. You can – you know there’s some haze; but you can still see the clouds. This is also the same day, you can see quite far away. This is, again the same day.

Then I think this is the second day. This is – the pollution index is 65. You can see

more haze – 65 – in the afternoon, the sun is brighter so you’ll see better. And then this is – the third day this is about 67, so this is bad but not as bad as the last two days. This is the fourth day. Pollution index is 85. Anything below 100 is supposed to be okay, but – so this is 85. And now this is the last day, this is 113. You can barely see 500 meters. This is the Beijing airport, that’s before I left the city. That dome, which is the signature building of the new terminal three, you can really barely see it. So that’s the – okay.

So let me now talk briefly about – let me just go back to my seat, it’s easier to talk

that way. The sense I get from my interviews among Chinese colleagues in Beijing is that they believe the political stakes have been raised unnecessarily high by the government because the government could have managed much better in terms of expectations and now the government has walked itself into a corner. If you look at the numbers, indeed, the stakes are very high in this. If you look at the economic, financial figures, the total spending is $45 billion. About $41 billion is associated with infrastructure, security operations and if you look at Beijing’s municipal revenues for the past seven years the total amount of revenue collected by the city over the last seven years was about $80 billion U.S.

So if $40 billion, $41 billion goes into the game, you have to conclude that most of

the spending actually comes from the central government. So let’s just guess: If the city allocates 10 percent of it’s annual revenue to the games, that’s a big number for a city – 10 percent, that’s only about $80 billion. So roughly, in that case, we would say 80 to 85 percent of the spending came from the central government for this game. And for the Chinese government it has really down practically everything imaginable to insure the game receives top political priority at all levels of leadership.

June 27th, the Politburo convened a special meeting on the Olympics. And then the

next day, the Central Committee issued an order which mandated that all local party chiefs must meet with local petitioners. If there were citizens who are aggrieved, local party bosses had to go out and meet with them. That measure is intended to create a much more socially harmonious environment before the games. And July 27th the Standing Committee convened a meeting on the Olympics. Then a few days ago President Hu said for the Party, for the government, for the country, a successful Olympics is absolutely the top priority; it’s the most important task.

So these activities and statements we can see how important the games are for the Chinese government. Here let me – people are very concerned about the security for the games. And so open-source research we now know some of the measures the government has taken. Probably, this will be the most well-defended Olympics in history. It’s a very careful plan, it’s carried out in three stages: First of all, the manpower employed for security is several times that of the previous games. I’ll give you some background: For Atlanta, 30,000 security personnel was employed; Sydney – 18,000; Athens – 41,000. For Beijing Olympics there was three different groups. The first group is PLA, People’s Armed Police, and policemen, and special security forces. And they number around 110,000. So that alone is, in terms of professional security, that’s about four times, almost four times the Athens game.

In addition, the government mobilized about 150,000 private security guards –

they’ve got buildings, subway entrances. And then 290,000 volunteers have joined this effort. So more than half a million, in other words, with 110,00 being elite professionals. Spending is about 6.5 billion, as I read in yesterday’s New York Times. Three hundred thousand closed-circuit TV cameras have been installed – state of the art security equipment. So in other words, the government has invested a great deal of resources in this.

And the plan follows – the security plan, as dispelled by the government, follows a

three-step process: First one, they took the page out of the so-called broken window theory. The first stage involved a crackdown on small crimes, begging, floating population, illegal residence of city that which we do not know how long it went on but it went on for some time.

Then it was followed by a second stage, which apparently began in July, which is so-

called consolidation stage. They reviewed the progress of the first stage – and that stage, by the way, has a code name called Operation Moat because it’s defending the city of – (inaudible). And then the third stage probably has just gone into effect right – and it’s called real show time – (in Chinese). And it has three level command centers: The National Center, the Regional Center, and Venue-based Centers.

And the kind of security measures I’ve seen and I heard in Beijing are truly

unprecedented. Three road blocks preventing trucks not registered in Beijing from coming to Beijing, checking all vehicles coming to Beijing, and only trucks carrying food can be allowed into Beijing. These are not Beijing registered. And if you want to buy a ticket – a train ticket, a bus ticket – in Beijing, from outside Beijing, you have to show your ID and you have to use your real name. And airport security is very tight. Everybody who goes to the airport or have to goes through an explosives test.

So all these are very, sort of, carefully planned measures. The biggest problem, I

think, is although the government thinks its security, I think it’s really image management because this where the government, A, does not have control over foreign media; B is the foreign media tends to be more skeptical about China and tends to focus on the negative aspects; and C the government officials do not have good skills in dealing with the media. So when you look at the media snafus over the past few weeks, you can basically identify these three causes as being the source of China’s problem with the media.

However, the government is trying very hard – Hu Jintao’s unprecedented press conference with a small group of foreign reporters I think shows that the government is very serious about trying to manage the media. And, also, the sort of protest zone is another positive development. But when you look at how the Hong Kong journalists were treated by the police in front of – (inaudible) – office, you have to be worried about the sensitivity among the security personnel. So my amateur conclusions based on my visit is that the poorly trained security personnel might cause more problem than the government has expected, especially in terms of how they handle visitors – not just protestors but visitors.

And second, the security measures have created enormous nuisances. People

attending the Opening Ceremony are asked to be there and hour and a half before the Opening Ceremony starts. And Beijing is very hot. So you think of the high security measures in front of these venues and people are standing in the sun and I think that can create huge inconvenience factors. So let me conclude with my own scores of how do we measure the success of the Olympic Games. So four measurements, slightly different.

A is organizational effectiveness, just in terms of putting the venues into operation,

organizing various aspects of it. I think China, Beijing will get probably an A, an A minus for this because this is – (inaudible) – China’s specialty is organizing such a big effort. On the environment, I would think it’s between a D and F. If you want to be charitable, it would be D; if you want to be really tough, it would be an F. Security, I would say, it will probably be an A, A minus because this is, I think, those stand – (inaudible) – large event security. Of course it comes at a huge cost in terms of convenience or inconvenience and in terms of game attendance because hotels are very empty. Four-star hotels: Room occupancy rate or reservation for the game period is about 50 percent; five-star hotels about 80 percent. So a lot of people who otherwise would have come to Beijing are staying home.

Image management, I think China is trying very hard, but given the problems we

know about how poorly the whole system is set up to manage its imagine, probably I would give it B minus, C plus.

MR. PAAL: Well, thank you, Minxin. This is a daunting challenge that China has

set for itself in this Olympics and you’ve made it clear on those four scores how daunting that challenge is. I’d like to ask you, as a student of elite politics, the initial question before I open it to the floor, and that is Xi Jinping, the heir apparent in China, has been put in charge of the Olympics. He’s not been that visible to the international media. Hu Jintao has stepped in. But what can you tell us are your observations about the implications of the before and the likelihood of the implications of the afterward of this Olympics for China’s elite politics?

MR. PEI: Well, it’s a very tricky question and I think it’s a very difficult task for Mr.

Xi because, if you look at China’s successor-in-waiting and what kind of jobs they’ve been given in the past, in the ’90s, when Hu Jintao himself was successor-in-waiting, he was really put in a spot, given a task that requires him to be on the so-called frontline, because the frontline position carries a lot of risks. Things can go wrong and you can get blamed. But for unknown reasons, Mr. Xi is now put in this spot. So there’s a lot riding here for him.

And then, so, for him, the risks are high if things go wrong. But then what if things go right? Then protocol, political protocol, requires that he cede the limelight to Mr. Hu. (Chuckles.) So he will not take the credit for things if – for the success if the Olympics turns out to be a spectacular event because then – so I think I’ll leave you to decide whether you want to be Mr. Xi, I think – (chuckles) – in this spot.

MR. PAAL: Victor, what’s your thought on that? MR. CHA: I think it’s a very good question to start with. And I would say, you

know, a leader-in-waiting who is put in charge of the Olympics that faced all of the pressure to ensure that the games would be a success for the country, the nation, for the whole purpose of putting on this grand show for the world, Xi Jinping is in that position. But there was another Asian leader who was in a similar position and that was Roe Tae Woo, who was the leader-in-waiting in South Korea prior to the 1988 Olympics.

He was instrumental in bringing the – getting the South Koreans to win the Olympic

bid for 1988. And then he played a very important role in terms of getting the Eastern Bloc countries in the Soviet Union to agree to participate in the 1988 Olympics after the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles games, and in the summer of 1987, the spring of 1987, faced tremendous pressure because, again, this was Seoul’s big coming-out party, yet there were demonstrations in the street calling for a democracy. NBC refused to set up their offices to cover the games. You know, Time and Newsweek were writing about, you know, “Barbed-Wire Olympics,” this sort of thing, so faced all sorts of pressures, the catch-22 that I talked about, the pressure of the Olympic limelight.

Xi Jinping, you know, clearly, you’re not going to get the same sort of transformation

in China. My only point is that this leader-in-waiting in China faces the same and must internalize the same sort of dilemmas that the Korean leadership internalized. And that, in the end, had a very important impact on Korea’s political path after the Olympics. Now, we can’t drop the same propositions about the Chinese leadership, but they are very similarly situated leadership right now in terms of that dilemma.

MR. PAAL: Thank you, Victor. You picked up on exactly what I wanted you to

pick up on. I was struck in Minxin’s photography and my own recent visits at how green and lush Beijing has become. When I lived in Beijing in the 1980s and on many visits since, I thought maybe the Chinese had lost the touch for landscaping – (laughter) – because they would throw water at a dying plant once in a while and grass had been uprooted in an earlier period to get rid of pests.

And now Beijing is covered with beautiful grasses and squads of people go out every

morning to water the flowers and the plants and to make it look as beautiful as Minxin just showed. One little anecdote – in, I think it was late 2000 or early 2001, I was in Beijing in the winter and it was snowing. And it was the eve of the arrival of the last of the International Olympic Committee’s organizing groups’ judgment about whether Beijing or some other city would host the Olympics. And people were laying turf in the snow on Chang’An Ji (ph), in the middle of the city, on the eve of their arrival. So this is a dedicated process of some years standing.

With that, I’d like to throw the floor open to people who have questions or comments. I ask you to introduce yourself and state your affiliation when you want to speak, please.

Q: Hi. My name is Chris Stone (sp). I work for Senator Bingaman. The question I had is, why are we all looking to Seoul as a sort of indicator of how these Olympics are going to go? It seemed to me, I was reading a couple of months ago a book about the history of the Olympics and it seemed to me that the more eerie parallels were with Mexico City in 1968. And apparently there was a – I don’t claim to be an expert on it – but there was a massacre of some sort about two weeks before those Olympics and then there were the protests during the medal ceremony. And it seems to me – and, yet, Mexico has developed into a democracy today. So what kind of – do you think that the Mexico City games hold any lessons for Beijing?

MR. CHA: Thanks. Well, I mean, it’s a fair question. I only drew the parallel to

Seoul because it was the most recent games in Asia in which you had what was basically an illiberal regime, up until 1987, you know, basically, in the seven-year run-up to the games, you had an illiberal regime that was hosting the Olympics, which is basically a liberal event: open competitions, sports, fair play, all of that.

And so it was facing the same sorts of pressures. You can draw parallels with other

games, clearly. Mexico City and the gunning down of the demonstrators prior to the Olympics was a huge failure, obviously. And, you know, I think, in many ways, that would be Beijing’s worst nightmare. Of the four things that I ticked off – marginalizing the political protests – this would be their worst nightmare.

Air quality in Mexico City was also an issue as it was in Los Angeles and in Seoul.

So, yeah, you could draw parallels with that. The question of political protest by athletes is an interesting one because, you know, there was that famous image that we know of – John Carlos – I think it was John Carlos: two American Olympic athletes with the Black Power symbol.

And the question of whether athletes at these upcoming games will make similar

statements of protest, there were certainly concerns about that and some of the national Olympic committees actually tried to make their athletes sign a contract saying that they would adhere to Article 51 of the Olympic Charter and not engage in any sort of political protest during the games. That led to a great deal of counter-protest. So the American Olympic committee, as well as some of the others, simply had seminar sessions in which they sort of explained what Article 51 was.

You know, whether there will be signs of protest by athletes, it’s hard to say. You

know, many of the athletes are certainly acutely aware now of the political significance and importance and sensitivities of these particular games. They’ve been made aware by other athletes like Joey Cheek and Team Darfur and others. So it’ll be interesting to see what sorts of protests, if any, athletes will raise, whether there are silent forms of protest.

There was some talk, for example, about athletes all shaving their heads in a sign of silent allegiance with the monks in Myanmar and in Tibet, but we’ll see. But your point is well taken that you can draw comparisons with many other different games.

MR. PAAL: I would just add to that that in China right now, there seems to be a

tremendous popular investment in the success of the games by – this is the nationalistic or patriotic movement that’s now seized people on campuses and youth circles broadly in China, which is a very different picture from what happened in 1968 in Mexico. But that doesn’t mean they’re without challenges. Just in the last two weeks, we’ve had an unexplained pair of explosions in Hunan and now we’ve had an incident in far Western China, which China has labeled terrorism. And so far the facts seem to suggest that’s accurate, but we don’t know all of the facts.

I think China does face a more severe threat from these kinds of terrorist acts than is

likely to get from popular disaffection with the regime among the youth. Beijing – as has been described – has really made it very difficult to carry out terrorist acts in the immediate Beijing area. And so I think that’s why you see that when they squeeze the balloon, the pressure goes farther out from Beijing. And you’ll see it in the south, the deep south and the far west of China right now.

Did you want to say something? MR. PEI: Yeah, well, in terms of threats, the government has identified five types.

One is international terrorism, al Qaeda; second is domestic terrorism, principally from Xingjian and Tibet; third is organized political protest by dissidents, Falun Gong; fourth is social protest, different from political protest. These are disgruntled citizens; and fifth is ordinary crime and accidents.

MR. PAAL: Doug Spelman? Q: Yes, Doug Spelman, formerly with the State Department. For all of the

panelists, this question of popular reaction is interesting. We’ve seen, for instance, a nationalistic streak when Chinese, apparently, fairly ordinary Chinese, were upset at the treatment of the Olympic torch as it went internationally.

And this brings to mind, what would your view be of possible Chinese reactions, sort

of general Chinese reaction, to, A, China doing very well in the Olympics, that is a kind of overbearing reaction, or doing very poorly, a kind of negative reaction? I’m not quite sure how this might manifest itself and, of course, all of the security measures – things will be well controlled. But what will the sort of popular Chinese reaction to either of these circumstances be, in your opinion?

MR. PEI: First of all, I think China is more likely to do well. Based on past

experience, the host nation typically gains 10 to 20 percent in extra medal counts. So that would put China in – at least, last time, China was number three in overall medal counts, number two in terms of gold medal counts. And this time China can easily be number two in overall medal counts. So I think that – as long as they do better than Athens, people will be fine.

I think what worries some observers is, what about some star athletes like Liu Xiang,

who lost? What would that do? And what will happen if the audience starts reacting spontaneously and in a very negative way to foreign teams who are beating the Chinese athletes. I mean, so that’s, I think, the real worry.

MR. CHA: The interesting thing, when you looked at the international legs of the

torch relay in London, Paris, San Francisco, and the way that kept getting interrupted by all of these protests, you know, the image that we all had of that was, you know, this torch procession being disrupted by Tibet, pro-Tibet protesters and others. The image in China was this very famous image, I think it was in Paris, of this Olympic – this para-Olympic athlete, Chinese athlete, woman, in a wheelchair, carrying the torch, being knocked over by protesters. So the image that was seared in the minds of China was very different from the image that the international community had of these protests.

And that, I think, leads to your question of nationalism because I think if things go

poorly, you will get a reactive nationalism in China. And, again, I say this deferring to their opinions. If they say differently, they’re right because they know more about China than I do. (Chuckles.) But I think if things go poorly, you will get a reactive nationalism in which there will be a lot of blaming that goes.

And a lot of that blame, I think, will be directed against the West. NBC will be

blamed for critical coverage of the games. This will be seen as the West, again, trying to keep China down and ruin China’s moment in the sun when they’re finally the center of the universe. I think you could get that sort of reaction if things don’t go well.

If things go well, I think you will see a great deal of positive and almost arrogant

nationalism on the part of the Chinese. But I think, regardless of which path things go on, in the end, you get this groundswell of Chinese nationalism. And this is where I think China, two-and-a-half weeks from now, will be a different country because that nationalism, whether it’s a positive nationalism or a negative nationalism, I don’t think is going to go away with the end of the games.

And, again, I defer to these experts, but that will be a new variable that the Chinese

political leadership have to deal with in a way that they’ve had to deal – that they haven’t had to deal with before because, as we all know, that nationalism in an illiberal regime today could be directed against the West, but tomorrow it could be directed against the government for their poor handling of the earthquake or their poor handling of the next SARS crisis or something else.

So I think you get this new variable. I mean, there’s always been nationalism, but I

think you get a greatly exaggerated and more powerful new variable in China that the leadership will have to deal with. And that could be a variable for political change.

MR. PEI: A few things I think – how nationalism plays out following the games or

during the games really depends on how the government’s propaganda machine handles the coverage because, within China, the government has total control, almost total control about

how the game is viewed by the Chinese audience. So I think if they want to play up, then we will see that kind of a reaction.

As for what happens two-and-a-half weeks from now – (chuckles) – I guess there are

different kinds of reactions. For the government, they will say, oh, thank God it’s over; nothing happened. (Laughter.) They can take a vacation because the government has practically been paralyzed by the games, by the preparation for the games. So people have been working overtime; they’re just – they’ll celebrate a little bit.

For the ordinary people, again, depending on how well China does, they’ll say, we’ve

done it; move on. Whether there will mark a turning point in domestic Chinese political history or evolution, I’m more sort of agnostic if not skeptical – (chuckles) – than Victor.

MR. PAAL: Scott? Q: Yes, Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation. Thank you both for very interesting

presentations. My question is, I’d like for the panelists to assess and grade the IOC in its handling of its relationship with China, because it seems to me that the IOC also faces a catch-22 that was implicit in Victor’s presentation. You know, everything’s on time and so the attraction of a strong state that has public financing has a potential counterpart and host for the games is very attractive as opposed to Athens or Atlanta, where we were always wondering, are they going to finish the structures and be in a position to host? And, yet, you also have the downside of strong state control. And so I’d just be interested in hearing some comments on that.

MR. CHA: Well, I think – well, first, there’s always been a great deal of interest both

on the Chinese side and in the IOC for the games to come to Beijing. The Chinese, I think, have long planned for it and their first real dress rehearsal for this was when they hosted the 1990 Asian Games, you know, where they built a lot of the infrastructure to make the initial proposal. The IOC – and I don’t know if this is a function of strong state, as you said, more efficient preparation and handling of the games or it’s a function of the fact that it was China – but the IOC, from early on in – from I would say 1993, was very interested in seeing the games come to China.

Now, they would not say that, but when the Chinese bid for the 2000 Olympics, the

chair, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was very much in favor of awarding the games to Beijing at the time. I don’t know if that is so much a function, again, of strong state and the ability to arrange things more quickly or it’s simply because it’s the biggest country in the world and this is a big sporting event that needs to come to China.

With regard to the just-in-time nature of Olympic preparation, I don’t know if I

would say the Chinese were that much more well prepared in advance of the games than other countries. I think they went through their panic phase about six weeks before the games, or two months before the games, as every city has gone through. And there were articles that you could clip from preparations for the 1964 Tokyo games and the 2008 Beijing games and you could interchange them, about concerns about athletes playing under wet paint signs and scaffolding.

So I don’t know how much the strong state allows for preparations to go that much more quickly. I think, particularly when the games come to Asia, it is truly a national effort, as both Doug and Minxin described, regardless of whether you’re talking about an open society that’s holding it or a closed one. And I think more and more in the future, we will see more and more of these summer games hosted in Asian cities, again, in part because they haven’t come very often and there’s a great deal of interest among Asian cities in hosting these games.

All of the finalists for the 2008 games were all Asian cities and I think that that will

continue into the future. And when they do come to Asia, it will again become a national effort, whether it’s in Indonesia, Singapore, wherever it might be, to concentrate the nation’s efforts on preparing for these games.

MR. PEI: I think the first thing IOC should have done is to hire Carnegie as its

advisor – (laughter) – for managing sensitive political issues. I think on the merits of the Olympics, I think IOC should have awarded Beijing the games because China is the world’s top three, one of the sports powers: population, commercial potential. But what IOC did not do right was to be honest about the problems. I think they tried to be fuzzy over the issue of Internet access, media freedom, did not release commitments made by Beijing.

All of it compounded the problems – (inaudible) – faced. So I think, looking back, I

think IOC needs, really needs a lesson in managing difficult political issues because there are some things you can simply not be – you cannot fudge over.

Q: Etienne de Gonneville from the French Embassy. I’m not going to comment on

the torch in Paris, but I – (chuckles) – want you to continue the discussion on nationalism that you started earlier. To a lot of observers, it seems that after being so much criticized over the past year, the Chinese government has decided that the success of its games will be measured domestically, not on the international scene. I would like to have your assessment on the real enthusiasm of the Chinese population for the games. Is that so popular? Is that really a national effort?

We were reminded yesterday by a small demonstration in Tiananmen that, after all,

some Chinese people in Beijing are not very happy about the new urbanism policy of the capital. So despite all of the propaganda, is there – is the Chinese population really enthusiastic about all of this?

MR. PEI: I have not seen good polls carried out nationwide about the popular

perception the games. So we really do not know how enthusiastic ordinary Chinese people are about the games. I think in Beijing the games are very popular because it really elevates the city and the city has benefited directly from being a host. If you go out to the countryside, who knows? I think a lot of people might even not know – (chuckles) – that Beijing is hosting the games. It’s possible.

And then, if you go to Nanhung (ph), go to places where the games do not have –

they do not provide venues for the games, then maybe they feel much less enthusiastic. I think the bottom line is that we really do not know absent that kind of a reliable poll.

MR. CHA: The only thing I – I mean, I agree with everything Minxin said. You know, are there disaffected groups in host cities in preparation for the Olympics? Sure. I think there are always disaffected groups and average citizens who say, why does my life have to be disrupted because of this? But, again, as Minxin said, one has to appreciate the scale of the preparations that go into this. I mean, it’s basically – it’s a seven-year period where they do basically a massive infrastructural and telecommunications facelift of the city. And particularly in Asia, all of the cities as we know them today – Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing – are in great part a function of that seven-year preparation for the games in terms of new airports, new subway lines, new public transportation systems, new telecommunication systems, new foreign press buildings. All of this is a function of the preparation for the games. So it really is, in many ways, a citywide effort.

MR. PAAL: Just further to your question, we had a presentation here last week by

the Pew Global Survey people. And they were able to sample a representative sample of the population in China of about 42 percent of – mostly in big urban areas. And this is between the Tibetan uprising of March and the Szechuan earthquake, which stirred up a lot of national feeling. And in that period, 82 percent of Chinese said they were happy with the direction their country was in, which is an extraordinarily high percentage. So that’s sort of one thing we can sort of point to as a snapshot in time of the public’s views of their regime.

At the same time, there’s a growing incidence of online humor and online griping

about the inconvenience of the Olympic Games, things being closed for long periods of time and people are getting tired of that. And that’s to be expected. Now, that’s anecdotal; we can’t quantify that kind of thing. Having myself about a month ago driven from north of Beijing through this spot in the ancient wall around China, where this chokepoint from north traffic down toward Beijing, it was the first day of the license inspection to make sure you have a Beijing license before you go near Beijing. And I’m sure those people in that line – I mean, it was an incredibly long, maybe – I couldn’t see it from one end to the other, but if it were 15 miles long, I would not be surprised, of traffic backed up and inconvenienced.

And so I’m sure there’s disgruntlement about that. So they probably have two levels.

One is the sort of national pride and the other is the inconvenience. And, on balance, the Chinese are able to hold both things in their minds at the same time.

Q: Thank you. This is Xiaoxiao from the U.S.-China Business Council and I’d like

to thank you for your wonderful presentation. And, as you know, China has been a developing country and is always like being under the pressure of catching up the backwards. So it always has this pressure or mentality, you know, developing-world mentality. So I was wondering, do you think China spent so much on this event and that still be regarded as like a reflection of this really – mentality, like they are so eager to be recognized by the world? I mean, it’s like too big a deal, but, at the same time, that they spent too much on this, invest, the political stake is high.

But the whole thing at stake is China’s image and it can easily go well or can also go

wrong, like you said, the key point is the security handling. So I was wondering also how does that – no matter what happens, you know, because so far we still don’t know how the whole thing is going to handle, but no matter what, like you said, there is nationalism at

stake. So it’s going to be for sure a part of it. So I was wondering how that speaks to the image Chinese government and Chinese people want to build.

And also, if there is some suggestion you want to give to Chinese government or

Chinese people and also international community, what that will be to build up a better dynamic for communication and understanding? So thank you.

MR. PEI: I think the question really boils down to, what kind of image does the

Chinese government want to convey to the rest of the world through a successful hosting of the Olympics? I think, without rank order these criteria – the content, I say, first of all, the government wants to show that it is a very capable, effective government. It can put on one of the biggest, most difficult, most costly shows in the world.

I think this is – and, second, it wants to show that it has legitimacy; it has

international legitimacy. That’s why the government has invited more than 80 heads of state, the largest gathering of the heads of state at any – (chuckles) – in a single sporting event in history. It wants to show to the outside world that its people support the government. So – legitimacy.

Other than that, it really – I really do not know what else. And if it’s successful, then

I think the government’s image will be greatly improved. MR. PAAL: Just another anecdote – the – recently, some South Koreans apparently

got in with a video camera to watch the rehearsals for the opening night events, the spectacular program directed by the brilliant Chinese film director, Zhang Yimou. And this looks like it’s really going to be a good show and it’s going to be one of the best if not the best ever. And I think a lot of people will take a lot of pride from that event.

Q: Al Milligan (ph), American Independent Writers. Does anyone have enough

historical perspective to make comparisons to what they have seen thus far with the 1936 Berlin Olympics or the 1980 Moscow Olympics? Is there anything you see taking place or you expect to take place that might be consistent with past hosts that were power-abusing, glory-seeking, and oppressive? Of course, the way the muscular Jimmy Carter refused to give U.S. legitimacy to the Soviet Union attempts to be in the spotlight is quite a contrast to what George W. Bush is being seen – seems to be as a willing, weak accomplice.

MR. CHA: Well, just to sort of supplement the earlier discussion that we had on

sort of these Olympics compared to past ones, you know, I think – you bring up the comparisons with 1936, Nazi Germany; 1980, Moscow. You know, it’s tough. I think the one thing that you can say that is consistent is that when you have illiberal regimes hosting the Olympics, it becomes as important not only to portray to the world, you know, as both Hitler and the Soviet Union wanted to do, the power of the country, but also to portray as much to your domestic audience the strength of the state and the competency of the state to host the world and put on an event of this nature.

But, you know, the comparisons to these other games, I guess, I mean, particularly,

I’ve seen writers try to compare this to the Nazi 1936 games. And it’s like comparing apples and oranges because the big difference, I think, in particular, is certainly Nazi Germany

wanted to portray a particular image of Aryan superiority and created all of these structures to try to propagate that myth. But the access and level of communication is so profoundly different than what Beijing will face in – well, they’re facing already.

As we said, you know, 20,000 journalists, half a million tourists, you know, 10,000

freelancers – NBC apparently is going to have more hours of coverage of these Olympics than all of their coverages of the previous Olympics combined. And that level of access will make it – it will provide an opportunity for the Chinese to portray their image and project their image. But it also, you know, as we all know, you put something into the press, you never know how it’s going to come out on the other end. And they face that dynamic as well, which, arguably, you didn’t see as much in some of these other previous Olympics hosted by illiberal regimes.

MR. PEI: I think there are two crucial differences between the Beijing Olympics and

the ’36 and 1980. One is the foreign policy of the current China government is very status-quo based, not aggressive, not based on expansionist, not like the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and Nazi Germany was about to launch World War II. So that’s a crucial difference. Otherwise, I think the world would not have bothered with the games in China.

Second is that even the domestic policy is very different because the Soviet Union

was really in its dying days. Nazi Germany was about to start the Final Solution. But in China today, despite I think the slow pace of political reform, I think, overall, society itself is opening up. So that is very, very different.

Q: My name is Kazuyo. I’m from Armitage International. I wanted to ask you, if

the Olympics is out to play out China’s nationalism, then – whether that implies Beijing’s bigger emphasis on how they compete well with the other Asian countries. And I also wanted to ask you if you observe any particularly different reactions of other countries in Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea.

MR. CHA: With regard to the – I took the first part of your question to be, you

know, if they do well in this, will they see this level of competition with other Asian countries as something that they will continue to want to do or see themselves as superior to other countries if they host these games well?

Q: How will they react to the West? MR. CHA: How they react to the West. And how do the other countries in Asia

feel? I mean, I think that the other countries, I mean, the other countries in Asia have generally been very supportive, I think, of Beijing hosting these games. A number of them are sending their heads of state, including the Japanese prime minister will attend the opening ceremony. So I think, you know, there is sort of an Asian sense of empathy, I think, among the countries that have hosted the games, that Beijing is hosting it, and a sense of aspiration among some of the other countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, that want to host the Olympics in the future.

How this will affect relations within the region? It’s difficult to say. Sport has clearly been one of the prisms for political conflict and historical antagonisms in Asia. You know, we’re all reminded of the – these different soccer qualifying tournaments in which China plays against Japan or Japan plays against Korea, where these games are not simply just about winning; they’re often about historical redemption. And I think that that will continue in Asia regardless of how well or poorly China does in these games.

But I think, overall, the region seems very supportive of China hosting the games, in

part because they’ve either experienced it or they want to experience the same thing. MR. PAAL: That’s really an excellent answer, Victor. Thank you. More questions? Q: Hi, Kevin Slaten, Carnegie Endowment. I’m curious, what would be the Chinese

– with the talk of nationalism, what would be the Chinese national’s reaction, in your opinion, to these large demonstrations that might occur in the case of democratic protests? And I don’t know if environmental protests are even a salient thing there, but in both of those cases, what do you think the nationalists – or the nationals’ reaction would be?

MR. PEI: I think, given the tight security measures, I doubt any protest – (chuckles)

– of any significant size will take place because they’ve really done a first-rate job in preventing such disturbances. I think you will see individual acts of protest or defiance, but that’s it. My worry now is that maybe the security personnel are not well trained enough to handle these individuals. But another worry is that maybe ordinary Chinese will be so mad – (chuckles) – at somebody who is disrupting the games and take it upon themselves to manhandle that person roughly. I mean, that will all be captured on camera.

That worries me because these people are not part of the government effort, but

they will be viewed as part of China. (Chuckles.) So that’s a potential public-image management nightmare.

Q: Chao (sp) from Chinese Embassy. I fully agree with Pei and Victor in many of

your analyses and especially, for instance, on the Internet because I myself was on the Chinese bidding team for the Olympic Games in 1993 in Monte Carlo. At that time, nobody ever heard much about Internet and nobody thinks about how to deal with Internet. But now China becomes the largest number of net users in the world overpassing the United States.

So these are challenges for us and these also – as Pei pointed out in your article

today, that nobody talks about NGOs maybe in 1993, but now it has become a big issue. So my question is that, from your – Victor – studies about the Asia Games or the Olympic Games by South Korea and other countries and also in Atlanta, what’s your – how do they handle the relations with the NGOs? Or in terms of the public image, do you have any suggestions or lessons we should learn from?

MR. CHA: It’s a good question. It’s a tough one to answer. I mean, in terms of –

the context was very different. In Tokyo, there really wasn’t that much of an issue with regard to protests or NGO activity that was disruptive to the games. It was much more basic challenges like getting rid of the open-air sewage system in Tokyo – (chuckles) – and

creating the elevated highway system to run over the canal system and getting rid of the zoning codes that would allow for buildings higher than 10 stories tall.

And in the case of Seoul, you know, what you had was a democratization, a

grassroots democratization movement that was happening parallel to preparations for the games that reached, you know, basically a crisis point in the spring the year before the Olympics. And, undeniably, I think both people who were involved in the government at the time and people who have written about it, Seoul’s concerns about hosting a good Olympics was a very important factor in how they dealt with those protests.

So, you know, in Beijing’s case, how the government interacts with the NGOs I

think is a very different animal from what we saw in either Seoul or Tokyo. And I will be very interested to watch how the government interacts with these groups. You know, clearly, there’s been some disruptive things that have happened in the run up to the games, but we will have to see how the government and the public deal with individual signs of protest or just plain old foreigners coming to another country and not understanding the system and doing things that don’t make a whole lot of sense and how the people respond to that, because I think that will also be – that will also be a part of the Olympics.

MR. PAAL: We have time for one or two more questions. If you’ve been holding

back, now is the time. In the back, please. Q: I’m Ong from the Singapore Embassy. The Olympics is going to end just before

the start of the party conventions for the presidential campaign in the United States. I just want to have your comment or assessment on how, well, if things go wrong, either very, very wrong or just a few minor disturbances in Beijing, how this will play into domestic politics in the U.S. President Bush has staked a large part of his foreign policy legacy on very successful, very smooth handling of the Sino-U.S. relationship. Will this be put under stress if things go wrong in Beijing?

MR. PEI: Let’s just go down the list of what kind of things can go wrong and assess

that probability. I think security, terrorist attack – things can go very wrong, but then, because of security measures, the probability is probably very low in the center of Beijing. Social protests that can be politically most damaging, but, again, because of security measures, you can expect a few hiccups but no real major disturbance. The environment – we’ve been inoculated against – (chuckles) – our expectations are so low that I think that’s not going to be an issue. And that leaves athlete performance. It’s not going to be politicized. So I think Olympics will not be a huge issue, the outcome of the Olympics in U.S. domestic politics.

I think the more interesting question is, what does the party want to do after the

Olympics is over? There is a party plenary session scheduled for October and the top priority is the economy because the Chinese economy is not performing as well as the government wants it to be. And in the run up to the Olympics, the government has postponed many key decisions. Now the party has to face these decisions.

MR. CHA: Thanks. I thought we were going to finally get through a session in

Washington, D.C., without having to talk about the presidential campaign. (Laughter.) And

so, like Minxin, I’m going to dodge the question. (Laughter.) In terms of the CCP agenda after the Olympics, Minxin’s point is a very interesting one because that also coincides with another dynamic we’ve seen in Olympics after – I mean, in sort of post-Olympic economies, which is, you often see a dip in the economy because of all of this public spending. You often see a dip and how the Chinese Communist Party deals with this will be interesting to watch.

Let me just answer the U.S. domestic-politics question simply with my view on

President Bush’s going to China. My personal view is I think it was the right decision. He wanted to go, he wants to go and root for American athletes and, to me, that’s fine if that’s what he wants to do. Certainly, there are critics who would say he should have leveraged that more to try to get political change from China or even to boycott the games as a sign of protest.

But, as Doug and others who have served in government know, I mean, you can

easily sort of check the box and say, what have you done to protest the Olympics? I’m not going, check that box, and hope that that creates or shapes change and behavior in China, or you can actually try to go because you want to go and then have sort of quiet conversations on the side in meetings, if there are particular issues that you want to raise that you want to try and change behavior on. And I think the latter is a much more effective way of trying to address deficiencies in China’s foreign policy or domestic behavior than simply folding your arms and saying, I’m not going. Thanks.

MR. PAAL: Mr. Ong, let me make two observations then we’ll be closing our

session. The first observation is on the – whether or not the president should have gone, and that is that by going he has actually palpably made the China people feel better about the United States. I think this is unmistakable. It shows up in every conversation with officials and with ordinary people, that there’s an appreciation that he was willing to come and not put a price tag on his attendance.

And that’s worth something because, increasingly in China, public opinion does

count. The regime is structured the way it is, but it does sample opinion on a regular basis so that it doesn’t get too out of line with its own folks. And that’s important.

The second part of the – the second observation is on American domestic politics.

We’ve got two very different candidates from two mainstream parties competing. Their positions in the polls are tight and so that tends to be a time when they seek advantage. Anything that comes up, you try to grab because you want to move yourself a decimal point one way or the other. But the way the two campaign teams have structured their policies, I think – and their personnel, as we know it – I think it reduces the likelihood of political exploitation of an event such as the – you know, if a Chinese diver – they lead the world in diving. I love this sport so I follow it. If a diver is wrongly pointed on a particularly good dive by an international judge, I can see a lot of anger about that and that would reflect itself maybe even in the streets for a little bit of time. But I don’t think that’s going to turn into a campaign issue. I think that’s just remote.

So I want to thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for some good questions

and I look forward to your views next time.

(Applause.) (END)