THE BEIJING OLYMPIC SECURITY GAMES

July 28, 2008 

On August 8, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics will take place in Beijing followed by fifteen days of intense competition among the world’s finest athletes. Like every Olympics since Palestinian terrorists massacred Israelis at the 1972 Munich games, the athletes and everyone else in attendance will be prime targets for terrorists. To protect them from terrorists and from political dissidents, China has put in place the most stringent security regime ever at an Olympics. While Chinese leaders express confidence that the games will go on without incident, their unprecedented security measures are bound to cause problems of their own.

There is no shortage of terrorist organizations, outside and inside China, that are eager to use the Beijing Olympics to focus world attention on their cause. The Turkestan Islamic Party, which seeks independence for the Muslim Uighur people of China’s Xinjiang Province, has openly threatened the games.

Because of such threats, the United States and other countries have cooperated with China’s security organizations to make the Beijing Olympics a secure and safe place for the athletes to compete. With President George Bush and other heads of state attending the opening ceremony along with their athletes, everyone wants security to be air tight.

China’s 700,000-strong People’s Armed Police, reinforced by the People’s Liberation Army and tens of thousands of volunteers in Beijing and around the country, will do their utmost to ensure that nothing mars this once-in-a-generation opportunity for China to showcase itself to the world.

Indeed, China has much to showcase. China’s 5,000-year-old culture with its familiar symbols from the Great Wall of China to the Qin Emperor’s Terracotta army stand in poignant contrast with contemporary China. A global audience will watch extensive TV coverage of one of the world’s oldest and most alluring cultures as well as one of its fastest growing economies.

At the same time, the athletes and spectators who visit China and the reporters and television crews that accompany them will shine a giant spotlight on it and present a particularly difficult challenge to China’s security forces. Unless the Chinese are uncharacteristically restrained, that spotlight will reveal aspects of China it would prefer the world not see.

The People’s Republic of China remains a single-party Communist government with oppressed minorities and severely constrained political freedom despite its increasingly free-market economy. These dichotomous realities make for strange bedfellows and create an underlying tension that only further complicates China’s security challenges.

While China has become an economic powerhouse, its intolerance of political dissent has left it with a human rights record that has been the subject of much international attention. In 1989 it was the Tiananmen Massacre. China remains under US sanctions for that today. In 1999 it was suppression of Falun Gong practitioners. In 2008 it was China’s crackdown on Tibetan protests in Lhasa and other cities with Tibetan populations. In between these events it has been the routine arrest and imprisonment of dissidents.

It’s not only terrorists that Chinese security forces are looking for. They are just as much on the watch for pro-Tibet sympathizers, democracy dissidents, and human rights activists who would disrupt the games. To them a “Free Tibet” banner unfurled in front of a television camera that transmits the image around the world is as potent a weapon as a bombHerein lies the problem. Everyone, the athletes and spectators, the television crews, and the Chinese citizen on the street is a potential threat and must be closely watched.

To accomplish this, China’s security forces have installed thousands of security cameras throughout Beijing and other venuesUninhibited by legal restrictions, they will conduct widespread electronic eavesdropping on both Chinese and foreigners. They will enforce a system of rigorous identity checks. Non-Beijing residents must apply for temporary residence permitsThose who do not have them will be detained. And they've instructed hotel, restaurant, and store owners to watch people closely and search their bags. The police are offering rewards of up to US$70,000 to people who report “deviant” activities.

Given these extraordinary security measures, the chances that terrorists, foreign or domestic, will stage a successful attack at one of the Olympic venues are greatly reduced. China already claims to have broken up a terrorist plot to attack an Olympic soccer venue in Shanghai.  And, according to the Associated Press, in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province, “Chinese police shot dead five members of a radical Islamic separatist group intent on waging ‘holy war.’”

Foreign visitors to China, however, are quite another matter. Despite numerous warnings, young athletes and spectators from free countries, many traveling abroad for the first time, tend to believe they are entitled to the same freedoms and privacy they enjoy at home.  Many, wittingly and unwittingly, will test the strict limits the Chinese have established and will not appreciate the often heavy-handed tactics Chinese security officials employ. If nothing else, the stifling security measures will kill the fun and party atmosphere associated with most Olympic Games.

Beyond that, however, there is the likelihood that Chinese security police will overreact in front of the TV cameras. Roughing up Chinese dissidents or foreign guests won’t go over well with international TV audiences. No doubt Chinese leaders have considered this. They’ve grown a lot more sophisticated since I was a military attaché in Beijing. Nevertheless, all you have to do is watch YouTube videos of Chinese security police clubbing Tibetan protesters last March to see what I mean.

China’s goals for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing are simple. It wants the games to be incident free. It wants its athletes to win more gold medals than any other country, especially the United States, and it wants the world to come away with a new respect and awe for what China has become. Whether they achieve any or all of these goals and how they achieve them largely is up to them. The ball is in their court.