The decision of the International Olympic Committee to award the 2008 summer games to Beijing has been greeted with euphoric celebrations in the Chinese capital. On the official front, fireworks displays have heralded the announcement on the orders of the Communist Party and this has been matched with genuine enthusiasm on the part of ordinary citizens.
Elsewhere, reaction has been more circumspect but outright condemnation of the decision has been rare. Even Amnesty International, which has severely criticised China for its record on human rights, has been muted in its response. In a statement issued in London shortly after the announcement, Amnesty limited itself to exhorting China to improve its human-rights situation but did not attack the IOC's decision.
The Chinese government was called upon to prove it was worthy of staging the games by extending respect for universal, fundamental and ethical principles to the Chinese people
This approach is broadly the right one. To antagonise China as it celebrates a major international achievement, could be extremely counter-productive. To stress that the holding of the Olympic Games will focus the eyes of the entire world upon its people, their lifestyle, their rights and freedoms is an important and timely reminder to the Chinese authorities that they must keep their promises to improve their human rights record.
It should be remembered that, whether by design or not, the Olympics have helped change political and social conditions in the past. The 1980 games in Moscow were held at the height of the Brezhnev era when individual freedoms in the then Soviet Union were severely restricted and when the Gulag system of labour camps remained a
Those games, despite the US boycott, brought to Moscow an unprecedented atmosphere of freedom and goodwill as Russians and foreigners mixed freely in a relaxed atmosphere. To this day, the city's inhabitants look back fondly on those Olympic times. It was hardly surprising therefore that, after the games ended and the tens of thousands of foreign tourists had departed, the seeds of Glasnost began to sprout in what had previously been arid soil.
In South Korea too, the human-rights situation began to improve dramatically following the games in Seoul. Things may be more difficult in China. The country's record on human rights, and its often brutal suppression of dissent, have rightly raised protests on a worldwide basis. There is, however, some hope that the successes of Moscow and Seoul can be repeated.
In general, boycotts and sanctions have been less effective on the international sporting front than inclusion and persuasion. The historic exception was the exclusion of South Africa from the world's sporting community during the apartheid era. In that instance, the disenfranchised majority population supported the boycotts. In China, such a policy might have engendered a very different reaction, most likely one of hostility to the west and its democratic principles that could take decades to undo.