China trampling rights as 2008 Games near

IRVINE, Calif. — Wednesday marked the start of the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympics. To prepare for these Games, Beijing has lavished billions on the more than 30 Olympic venues and almost 60 Olympic training sites needed. Beijing is also pouring billions more into the construction of a new Olympic Village, a shiny new convention center, a significant expansion of Beijing's subway and airport systems and other public-works projects.

Here in the United States, Beijing's construction boom has helped to significantly drive up new housing costs by inflating the cost of everything from cement and steel to timber and copper. But that is small potatoes compared to what's happening to the Chinese themselves. By some estimates, a staggering number of Chinese — over 1 million — will be displaced by the construction process and the Games themselves. While protests against such evictions have been ruthlessly suppressed by the government, outside of China there are other storm clouds gathering.

To mark the one-year countdown to the Olympics, protesters around the world are raising their banners. These highly diverse groups include pro-Tibetan organizations, Christian groups protesting China's religious persecution, journalists decrying the lack of free speech, environmentalists raising awareness about China's role in global warming and, with some high-profile Hollywood support, human-rights groups protesting China's role in genocide in Darfur.

Symptomatic of the country's totalitarian mind-set, various Chinese intelligence agencies have been aggressively monitoring the activities of many of these groups; and the odds of any of the protesters getting a visa to attend the Games are worse than buying a winning lottery ticket. Against this backdrop of protest and espionage, China also faces at least two other headaches as it prepares for what many see as China's coming-out party to the world.

One purely logistical issue is air pollution, which in Beijing is two to three times higher than levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. In fact, Beijing's air can be quite damaging to high-performance athletes. It includes both ozone, which inhibits the ability of the lungs to absorb air, and fine particulate matter, which causes coughing and wheezing and longer-term damage.

To ensure a blue-sky Olympics, China is removing more than 50,000 taxis and buses and relocating several hundred local factories. This approach, however, is only a half measure because at least half of the pollution in Beijing comes from hundreds of miles away in China's industrial heartland.