China: A Dangerous Decision.(2008 Olympics in China, compared with the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany)(Brief Article)

The awarding of the Olympic Games to Beijing is no light thing. People could die from it-or be tortured or banished to a dungeon or camp. Although it is is difficult to say with certainty how an event seven years from now will affect the development of China, dissidents fear that the Communist government now has a freer hand to persecute its people: The Olympics are coming, and therefore no dissent-no disturbance-can be tolerated. Beijing must show the world a unified, happy country; and nothing can be allowed to blot that image.

Visitors to the Olympic City, of course, will not likely see any "cleaning up," any cracking of heads; this will be done out of view. The regime will have sanitized, Potemkinized, the capital, just as it has done for previous international events. This dictatorship, like others in history, is expert at putting on a show, at giving the wrong impression.

Much has been made of the 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, and much should. Wei Jingsheng, for one, is convinced that the parallels between 1936 and 2008 are clear. Americans in general have long had a distorted view of the Hitler Games: They (we) are steeped in the myth of Jesse Owens, which goes that the great trackster embarrassed Hitler, disproving the theory of the master race, causing the Games to backfire on their hosts. This is very far from the truth. All students of the period say that having the Olympics helped Hitler enormously.

In 1935, the American consul in Berlin wrote to the secretary of state back in Washington, "To the Party and to the youth of Germany, the holding of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 ...