100 days left: Can Games recover?

BEIJING — Shimmering stadiums and billions of dollars spent to remake Beijing into a modern city have been overshadowed by pro-Tibet protests, chaos on the Olympic torch relay, and an anti-Western backlash by angry Chinese who sense their coming-out party is being spoiled.

With 100 days to go, the battle has been lost to keep politics out of the Beijing Olympics.

A year ago, former International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch predicted Beijing would be the "best in Olympics history." A few weeks ago, his successor, Jacques Rogge, said the games were "in crisis."

The shine is off, and the question is this: Can China and the IOC restore some luster by returning sports and goodwill to the games?

The Olympics have been visited by politics before, but these have become the most contentious since the boycotts of the 1980s.

"The Chinese leadership has a major international public relations problem on its hands," said David L. Shambaugh, a political scientist and director of the China policy program at George Washington University.

"The Chinese government and citizenry are now involved in fighting a propaganda war with the West and the Western media in particular. ... This stance, taken together with hyper Chinese nationalism, has all the makings of a public relations disaster for the Olympic Games."

There's a rancorous atmosphere in Beijing these days.

Deadly riots last month in Tibet spurred anti-China protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and other cities of the torch relay. Last-minute rerouting of some legs created a farce. In Pakistan, India and elsewhere, organizers shortened routes, tightened security, and turned the relay into invitation-only events that kept out the general public.

The coverage of these protests has been met with a propaganda war by China, accusing the Western media of orchestrated bias — particularly CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp.

There have been nasty outbreaks of Chinese nationalism, fueled by the attack on a young Chinese athlete in a wheelchair who defended the Olympic torch at the relay in Paris. Claiming an insult to national pride, protesters have gathered outside the French retailer Carrefour in about a dozen Chinese cities, with small scuffles between Chinese and foreigners.