The Olympic Games begin Friday. No one doubts that the opening ceremony will be perfectly organized, that the fireworks will be the most beautiful in the world since the French Revolution's bicentenary on July 14, 1989, that Beijing will display absolute technical mastery in the implementation of a world-famous event.

    But we knew all that in advance. When the IOC entrusted China with the organization of the 2008 Games, that country had already emerged from its two centuries' hibernation to enter into the cycle of the most mind-boggling economic and technological catch-up in the history of capitalism. Consequently, any risk that China would not be up to hosting the Olympic event was approximately zero.

    On the other hand, the Chinese regime had much to show in other domains. Well, now we've seen quite a bit. First of all, the television viewer has been able to observe himself what all visitors to the region have experienced: the very high pollution level of the Chinese capital - one indicator of the low priority the Chinese regime assigns ecological aspects of development. Aware of the bad image a thick haze floating over Beijing on the world's television screens could give, the authorities made the astounding decision to stop all factories' operation during the Olympic period. The result for air quality is mediocre; on the other hand, the regime has demonstrated urbi et orbi that a dictatorship may subject all economic actors to its most capricious ukases.

    Then, given the commitments made to the IOC, we could have hoped that China would manage the human rights question during this period with a little bit of subtlety. Instead, we've been treated to a festival of repression, from massive removal to the shadows of Tibetan - or just plain democratic - dissidents, to rejection of certain journalists' visas, by way of the variable geometry employed to block Internet sites and the transformation of Beijing into a city under a state of siege with tanks and missile batteries as though the Uighur militants had become an imminent danger within the last month ... up to and including the Monday attack attributed to those militants.

    Finally, "last but not least," China's ambassador to Paris took the liberty of adding arrogance to impropriety by threatening France with celestial thunderbolts should the president of the Republic dare to receive the Dalai Lama.

    Before this Olympic episode, China's image in the whole world was almost entirely colored by its exceptional economic success. In a few weeks, the country has committed all the mistakes on the political field that lead it to appear as a dictatorship first of all and as an economic giant only secondarily. The Games will surely be a magnificent spectacle; but for China, they are already lost.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.