Triumphant Closing

BEIJING -- The crowds came. The world watched. China delivered.

Despite worries that pollution, traffic congestion, human-rights issues and overbearing security would diminish the Olympics, China is basking in accolades after festive closing ceremonies Sunday that wrapped up the most expensive games in history.

"I think it is the best Olympics ever," said Juan Antonio Samaranch, former head of the International Olympic Committee. "China is No. 1."

That's music to the ears of the Communist Party, which, after initial calls for a boycott, persuaded more than 80 heads of state to attend the opening ceremony. The games exposed billions of global viewers to the Middle Kingdom and its culture, furthering its "soft power" ambitions. It displayed impressive preparation and management skills, and its athletes won 51 gold medals -- far more than the 36 won by U.S. athletes. Even the air turned out to be better than many people expected.

But as the architect of China's reforms, former leader Deng Xiaoping, once observed: When you open the windows, the flies might come in.

Inviting the world for a big party also shined an international spotlight on China's dark corners and its lingering worries about its fragile political structure. When the afterglow fades, China will be faced with a host of problems that it put off addressing.

"The Olympics have showed China's tremendous achievements and real openness compared to 10 years ago," said Cheng Li, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But it's also showed China's tremendous problems."

Among the lasting legacies will be the $41 billion rebuilding of Beijing. Venues such as the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium and Water Cube aquatics building have become fixtures on television screens.

The games figure to spur trends toward somewhat expanded personal freedoms, but the government balked at letting even a few people air their gripes at three designated protest areas set up under IOC pressure.

Chinese police said they received 77 applications to hold protests, none of which was approved, according to the official New China News Agency. Human-rights groups said a few applicants were detained by security officials. And two septuagenarians trying to protest their forced relocation last week were threatened with a year in a labor camp, the Associated Press reported.

Outside analysts suggested China's fears of unrest were overblown and were more likely a pretext for a security crackdown. But a pair of bus bombings and several violent attacks far from the Olympics in Xinjiang province, home of the restive Uighur minority in China's west, indicated there was something for authorities to worry about.

The subtext here, analysts said, is Beijing's fear of simultaneous pressure from within and outside. Even a few domestic protesters, emboldened by the global media spotlight, could encourage huge numbers of other Chinese embittered by corruption, the rich-poor gap, wholesale house demolition and China's other major social problems.

China has weathered criticism that its opening ceremony wasn't all it seemed. Producers acknowledged that the television footage of the fireworks display was fabricated in an animation studio, that a 9-year-old lip-synched a famous patriotic song because the 7-year-old singer was nixed for her crooked teeth. And that several dozen "minority children" featured in the show were Han Chinese youngsters dressed up in traditional costume.

"There's no need to cheat on the opening ceremony," said Kang Xiaoguang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science. "An open society rests on justice and transparency."

China also has grappled with 20,000 foreign journalists on its shores.

"Although Western reporters have encountered many problems, the Olympic openness is unprecedented," said Zhen Jiang, journalism professor with the China Youth University for Political Sciences. "I think the pressure to open will outweigh the pressure to tighten after the games."

The overall success and feel-good dividend from a slew of gold medals boost the regime's popularity and strengthen its argument that only an authoritarian government could accomplish so much so fast.

"The Communist Party has the power to mobilize society for the success of the Olympics," said Wang Zhengdong, 51, a gardener from Hebei province near Beijing. "England, the next Olympic host, can't improve on us, because they can't motivate people like our government can."

While China often says it has its own standards for human rights, media freedom, religious tolerance and free speech, it desperately wants global acceptance, some analysts said. The Olympics were a big part of that.

"They are obsessed with how the world sees them," said Li, of the Brookings Institution. "Right now many Chinese people think only a totalitarian state could pull these Olympics off. But democratic forces are powerful, and until they become a political democracy, they will always face domestic and international criticism."