Remember way back when people were asking whether we should "politicize" the Olympics? Isn't it just supposed to be about sports and itty bitty gymnasts doing their best? I have to say, in China, that question is bizarre. The Olympics is politics: that is the point.

Take the case of Owen, a torch-bearer living in the youth camp of the Olympic village. He is not a star athlete, but he's certainly well-spoken and smart as a whip. When you ask him what it was like to run those 30 meters he ran with the torch, he begins his story this way:

There is a garden next to the youth camp. In 1860, warriors broke into it and killed everybody. And that was the start of a terrible part of Chinese history, but now, within 140 years, I, as a representative of the youth, stand on the same ground and hold the torch showing that China is ready to be one of the strongest countries in the world. It's completely new and it's completely meaningful. And all of this is seen by the grass and by the land, by the earth, so I kissed it."

After telling us more about the Olympic compound, which is a heavily fortified, expansive prep school surrounded by green walls with the slogan "the youth are the future" scribbled across them, Owen went on. (By the way, at the Olympic youth camp, the youth are provided with soccer fields, basketball courts, swimming pools, a variety of stores and post offices. It is not dissimilar to Oberlin, Ohio, where I went to college, except you can't get in and out of the Village without a pass or the Olympic torch.)

We have dreamed about having the Olympic games for about 100 years. And we've tried so many times, but we failed so many times. If you give the holding rights to a city, it means you have to say that the city is good. We want to hear that you are respecting our behavior, our hard work. Whenever you hold the Olympic games it is a chance for a country or for a city to improve. And that will eventually benefit each and every Chinese.

Years later, when you look at history, you will see, we have made great progress. After we've had so hard time, we've survived. All of the Chinese are strong. We can never be defeated! You can kill us with your gun. But we will never be defeated. We survive. That's what the Olympics can tell the world."

Olympics 2008: It's not just sports; it's not just politics. What it's about is China.

Editor's note: Zoe Chace is an independent public radio producer who is in China for the Olympics. She'll be filing periodic dispatches for Passport about what it's like to be in the middle of the world's biggest spectacle, the 2008 Olympic Games. Got any questions or thoughts on what she should report on? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

Previous posts:

• Olympic Diary, Day 5: Hating the Olympics
• Olympic Diary, Day 2: China's lonely chairman
• Olympic Diary, Day 1: Where is everyone?

Passport reader Eric Jon Magnuson sends along the following gem:

Readers of the newest website of Vietnam's government-controlled press can't complain of any hidden bias in reporting. Propaganda magazine, the official organ of Vietnam's Committee for Propaganda and Training, launched its website (www.tuyengiao.vn) Monday, featuring articles about Ho Chi Minh Thought and a visit by representatives of the Russian Communist Party. [...]

[I]n Vietnam, public-service campaigns on everything from HIV prevention to wearing motorbike helmets are termed "propaganda." The division between politics and other kinds of social activism is less clear than in multiparty democracies.

Picking up on Katie's post: What happens when you give in to a massive lobbying effort, somehow believe bogus promises of improvement, wallow in corruption, and ultimately give the Olympics to a country that never deserved them? Just ask the International Olympic Committee:

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said journalists should not be prevented from doing their jobs, a day after John Ray of London-based ITV News said he was wrestled to the ground and briefly held by police who apparently mistook him for a protester.

Asked repeatedly if IOC officials are embarrassed that China was not living up to its promises, Davies would only say they are happy with the way China is running the sporting events."

And, of course, the opening ceremony was lovely.

FILE; Feng Li/Getty Images

Protesters just can't win in China these days. Now, even those who have requested official permission to protest in Beijing are being arrested, including a handful of citizens upset about having their homes destroyed in preparation for the big games. One would-be demonstrator, Zhang Wei, was even given a sentence of 30 days after repeatedly applying to protest about her forced home eviction.

Given the nature of the protest application process, it's not surprising that the three city parks "designated" as protest zones (and patrolled daily by police) have remained pretty quiet. Two, in fact -- Shije "World" Park (shown above in June) and Ritan Park -- have reportedly remained 100 percent protest-free since the opening ceremonies.

It all makes the words of Wang Wei, the Beijing Olympic Committee's executive vice president, sound pretty empty. Here are his comments from today's press conference in Beijing on press freedom:

[T]he Olympic Games coming to China will help China to open up further and to reform."

Tell it to Zhang Wei.

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

Although relations have warmed somewhat between the two Koreas in recent years, that trend appears to be retreating -- rapidly.

Last month, a North Korean soldier shot an unarmed South Korean tourist while she was visiting Mt. Kumgang, a tourist area in the North operated by a South Korean company (shown at right). In response, South Korea suspended future tours to Mt. Kumgang and ordered all South Korean residents to leave the resort.

Now, the North Koreans have returned the favor, changing the wording on their official invitation to South Korean tourists. Chosun Ilbo's editorial board has more:

The words 'We invite' and 'guarantee the safety' of the visitor has been changed to 'agree' (to the visit) and 'offer accommodation.'... Without a formal safety guarantee, whether it is for Mt. Kumgang or Pyongyang, it has become dangerous for South Koreans to set foot on North Korean soil simply hoping that nothing will go wrong."

I guess it is now, if not impossible to travel to Mt. Kumgang, at least highly inadvisable.

Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Top Story

Beijing's opening ceremonies lifted off without a hitch Friday, bringing awe to spectators in China and around the world -- or so it seemed. The squeaky-clean ceremonies, however, were too good to be true in some respects, as reports emerged of lip-syncing and computer-generated fake fireworks.

Violence, too, interrupted the first few days of competition. Attacks continued in the western region of Xinjiang, while a Chinese man attacked an American couple with a knife at a popular tourist destination on Saturday, killing the man and wounding his wife before killing himself. The couple was related to an American Olympic volleyball coach.

More Olympics

China’s strategy for focusing on events that award more medals appears to paying off. As of 3:30 pm Wednesday afternoon, China led the gold medal count with 17, while the United States had the most medals overall at 29. Check out Google's nifty map for updates.

Seats at the Olympics are surprisingly empty.

Less surprisingly, so are the "protest pens."

A British journalist was detained Wednesday, covering a protest led by eight U.S. pro-Tibet activists.

The first U.S. president to attend an Olympics on foreign soil, President Bush used his presidential-record fourth visit to prod China on religious freedom, inaugurate a new U.S. embassy in Beijing, and cheer on America's athletes.

Politics

Religous leaders describe a government crackdown. One religious dissident, detained on his way to visit a service with President Bush, has escaped, however.

The Dalai Lama is in France, but will not meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Economy

Thanks to a rapidly weakening U.S. economy, China is set to become the world's largest manufacturer, four years earlier than predicted.

China's trade surplus grew in July to $25.3 billion, its highest level in eight months and a 4 percent increase from July 2007.

Wholesale prices, however, rose even more, up 10 percent from July 2007.

Overall, inflation is down and growth is "set to stabilize."

Environment

Is China's Olympic cleanup actually bad for global warming?

Taiwan

Taiwan plans to seek "participation," but not a "return" or membership, in the United Nations this fall.

Taiwan's coast guard is holding a former Chinese soldier who swam eight hours across the Taiwan Strait to defect.

NOGI KAZUHIRO/AFP/Getty Images

Bela Karolyi, the NBC sports analyst who was coach of some of the world's greatest gymnasts, including Mary Lou Retton and Nadia Comaneci, is incensed. He is convinced that China has included underage girls -- the age requirement is 16 -- on its women's gymnastics team by forging the girls' birth dates on official documents.

Yesterday, in reference to the Chinese gymnasts' childish body sizes (the team average is 4 feet, 9 inches, and 77 pounds), he unleased some verbal venom to the Associated Press:

They are using half-people. One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid.

Gymnastics is famous for its small women -- or rather, girls -- but the Chinese gymnasts look awfully tiny and juvenile. In comparison, Japan's team average is 4 feet, 10 inches, and 83 pounds, while the Americans are an average of 5 feet and 107 pounds. Granted, size isn't always an indicator of age, but the New York Times recently pointed to other evidence of age falsification -- inconsistent reporting of some gymnasts' ages in official documents, media reports, and government Web sites.

The Chinese gymnasts certainly aren't half-people, but it sounds like the Chinese government might be telling some half-truths.

Here's one of the delicacies on offer this week in Beijing. Yum:

OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

China Vitae

Many of us in the media have spilled a lot of ink about the Beijing Olympics, and a great deal of it has been critical. But what is the Chinese view?

I spoke Thursday morning with Amb. Wu Jianmin, a longtime Chinese diplomat who served as China's ambassador to the United Nations until 1998. Since 2003, he has been president of China Foreign Affairs University, where his mission is training the next generation of Chinese diplomats. Check it out.

Just a brief note this morning. I'm watching Morning Joe on MSNBC right now, and they've been periodically showing shots of China's famous "Bird's Nest" stadium, trying to build excitement for tonight's broadcast of the opening ceremonies.

They're probably not allowed to say it, so I will: Beijing's skies look horrible right now. There was even a moment when host Joe Scarborough said, speaking over top of an image of gray mush, that the city was "showing its Olympic colors." Awkward.

As James Fallows put it earlier, "This is a disaster." It looks like Beijing must have fallen afoul of the weather gods.

Tim Johnson has more.

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

In a pointed gesture, the U.S. Olympic team has voted Lopez Lomong, a member of the track team who gained American citizenship in 2007 after fleeing Sudan and spending a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp, as its flag bearer for the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Lomong was abducted at age six by militiamen looking to recruit child soliders. He managed to escape with two other boys and was grabbed by Kenyan authorities after he unknowingly crossed the border. Lomong was one of the 4,000 "lost boys" of Sudan who were resettled in foster homes throughout the United States in 2001. Lomong is also currently a member of the Team Darfur activist group whose cofounder -- American speedskater and Turin gold medalist Joey Cheek -- had his visa revoked by Chinese authorities two days ago.

Lomong's selection is certainly a touching gesture from his fellow athletes, and the Sudanese-American runner is ecstatic, saying that Friday will be "the happiest day" of his life. What effect it will have on U.S.-China relations is uncertain, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that China will not be able to hide from its Darfur policy simply by putting on the world's biggest fireworks show and wowing foreign dignitaries.

I would be absolutely shocked if the Olympics pass without some sort of dramatic protest or political statement from an athlete or group of athletes, on a podium or elsewhere. One English basketball player, formerly with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic, has said that Olympians have an obligation to speak out against China.

It may not be 1968, but that doesn't mean the gloves won't come off.

This week's Tuesday Map comes via the New York Times.

The Times provides a cool interactive graphic that shows overall medal counts for each participating country at every summer Olympiad stretching back to 1896. Below, the 2004 Athens Games:

As you'll see as you click around the graphic, the United States' greatest athletic adversary was always the Soviet Union. Yet China has been hot on America's heels at recent summer games, and has vigorously prepared its athletes to beat the United States in Beijing. China has been emphasizing sports that award more medals, such as rowing, in a savvy effort to garner as many medals as possible. Can the Chinese do it? And if they do, how will the world react?

As FP contributor Jacob Leibenluft wrote last year, beating the United States could have political ramifications:

[E]ven if organizers can somehow pull off an Olympics free of both pollution and protestors, they can't control what happens on the field. And ironically, just as China’s leaders emphasize its "peaceful rise," the athletic juggernaut in which they have invested so much may inadvertently send the opposite message.

Watch this space. 

A few U.S. cyclists made a fashion statement this morning in China, rolling into the Beijing airport wearing black respiratory masks. The athletes ostensibly donned them as a precaution against the city's notorious air pollution, but they look, well, a bit excessive.

The International Olympic Committee's medical commission chief expressed serious doubts about the "efficiency" of the masks, but the U.S. Olympic Committee's chief communications officer was less diplomatic, calling them downright "unnecessary."

The move does seem a little dramatic. After all, couldn't the cyclists have at least waited until they got outside the airport to put them on? And how long can you actually wear those things around all day?

Japan's heaviest sumo wrestler has pledged to his fans that he will gain even more weight. Yamamotoyama currently weighs in at 511 pounds, but the 24-year-old's goal is to tip the scales at 531, surpassing the previous Japanese record holder, retired wrestler Susanoumi, who reached 529 pounds.

Yamamotoyama is reported to have once devoured 146 pieces of sushi in a single sitting, so packing on another 20 pounds seems doable. But he might be setting himself up for a difficult situation 16 years from now. This year, Japan enacted a policy that requires citizens ages 40 to 74 to undergo mandatory "fat checks." Those with waists more than 34 inches will be put on special exercise programs. It's part of an effort to keep citizens' bulging bottoms from breaking the government's budget, as reported in the FP article, "Bulging Bottom Lines."

Surely, though, there must be a special sumo exemption?

Feng Li/Getty Images

If you want to protest in favor of freedom and democracy during next month's Olympics, you have an ironically appropriate place to go: the Beijing World Park. The park -- which has replicas of the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the White House, along with other world monuments such as the Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel Tower -- is one of three official protest zones that China has set up for protesters.

Some have speculated that the logic of designating the World Park as a protest zone is to make it look like protesters are elsewhere when images appear on television and the Internet.

And what's up with the Twin Towers still standing in the replica of the New York City skyline?

Maybe mighty China doesn't have as much control over the Internet as it would like to believe. A South Korean TV station aired video of the top-secret rehearsals for the opening ceremonies, which aren't scheduled until later this week. Apparently someone snuck a video camera into the "Bird's Nest" stadium during the event. Don't miss the comments on the video's YouTube page from angry Olympics fans.

<<<<<<<WARNING>>>>>>>>>
If you'd like your Olympics experience to be spoiler-free, don't watch this video. <<<<<<<WARNING>>>>>>>>>

This video has been yanked. More here.

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Andrew Wong/Getty Images

With just over a week left to go before the Olympics, strong wind and rain have helped improve air quality in Beijing. But the Chinese government isn't taking any chances, eyeing "emergency measures" that still may not be enough to clear the skies. On the ground, officials are hiding buildings and areas considered to be Olympic eyesores behind newly erected walls.

Despite increased security measures, violence broke out among some 50,000 people waiting in line when the final batch of Olympic tickets went on sale Friday. Olympic organizers apologized for a scuffle between police and reporters in Hong Kong.

For more on China's run-up to the Olympics, check out FP's photo essay and list of five ways the Beijing Olympics will be the "biggest, baddest ever."

More Olympics

China's anti-doping officials are planning the toughest drug-testing program in Olympic history.

What's more, a new sex determination lab will test female Olympians suspected to be males.

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback suspects the Chinese government is planning to spy on hotel guests during the games.

Politics

Authorities detained a teacher who had posted images of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake on the Internet.

Vice President Xi Jinping expressed concern over the ICC's case against Sudanese president Hassan al-Bashir, as Sudan's finance minister visited Beijing Tuesday.

The Dalai Lama met with John McCain in Colorado Friday. China's Foreign Ministry was not pleased.

Economy

An unlikely alliance between China and India helped spur this week's breakdown in the Doha trade talks.

An anticipated coal shortage may spark an electricity crisis.

China is spending an estimated $40 billion on fuel subsidies this year, while also accounting for 40 percent of the world's recent increase in demand for oil.

With 253 million users, China is now the world's biggest Internet market.

Hong Kong and the mainland agreed to further enhance economic ties. Hong Kong Disneyland is expected to benefit.

China moment

Aerobic pole dancing is a hit in fitness clubs.

Feng Li/Getty Images

With the 2008 Olympic Games just 10 days away, Beijing officials are scrambling to improve the city's awful air quality. One drastic measure that city officials are considering would essentially ban 90 percent of private-owned automobiles from the roads. This comes after an initial ban has already forced residents to drive every other day.

Meanwhile, the International Olympic Commmittee has been setting a "gold standard" for unfounded praise of the Chinese capital. Just look at this press release from early July:

The city feels ready; it looks ready, with the stunning venues all completed. The quality of preparation, the readiness of the venues and the attention to operational detail for these Games have set a gold standard for the future.

Uh huh. That's why many athletes are staying in South Korea and Japan for as long as possible to avoid Beijing's smog. The U.S. Olympic Committee is even providing protective masks for American athletes. And where does the IOC stand on ozone and particulate levels that might interfere with some of the outdoor events? Here's Gunilla Lindberg, an IOC vice president:

No, it doesn't really look so good, but as I said, yesterday was better. We try to be hopeful. Hopefully we are lucky during the games as we were with Atlanta, Athens and Barcelona."

Right. Barcelona and Athens were pure luck. That's why, according to the World Bank, Beijing boasted twice the particulate matter of either of those two former Olympic cities. Twice last week, the air-quality readings in the Chinese capital were nearly double the targeted levels for developing countries set by the World Health Organization.

Maybe the resourceful Chinese can turn things around by August 8, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

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TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

Bombs exploded in two public buses Monday in the southwestern city of Kunming, killing at least two passingers and injuring 14. Officials refuted reports that bizarre text messages had preceded the bombings, and said Tuesday that no evidence had been found linking the bombings to the Beijing Olympics.

On Wednesday, officals tripled the reward for information related to the bombings to 300,000 yuan (around $43,500). Meanwhile, the city of Beijing said it would step up bus-security measures, and Shanghai, which is hosting Olympic soccer matches, announced it will install security cameras on 1,600 buses.

Olympics

Western TV networks are pushing back agianst constraints on Olympic coverage.

Hotels in Beijing are slashing prices as the anticipated tourist onslaught fails to materialize.

Some U.S. Olympians may wear masks in Beijing to protect their lungs from pollution, much to the chagrin of their hosts.

The opening ceremonies will employ "green fireworks" designed to limit pollution.

Guess who's not invited?

Politics

Officials will allow approved protests in designated city parks during the Olympics; the crackdown on Internet dissent, however, continues. Entertainers deemed a threat to China's sovereignty are no longer welcome, either.

China and Russia ended a decades-long border dispute.

Although 86 percent of Chinese are happy with their country's overall direction, more than a third see Japan and the United States as enemies.

A Tibetan living in Beijing is suing the Chinese government after being denied a passport for three years.

Economy

One new report says China's economy has averted the threat of overheating, while another argues the government needs to temper "hot money" inflows to stave off inflation and stabilize markets.

U.S. companies are keeping a wary eye on a new Chinese antitrust law.

Other News

A coal mine flooded in southern China, trapping 36 miners and killing at least seven.

China has more smokers than the United States has people. Unsurprisingly, China's anti-smoking campaign is not having the desired effect.

China, as part of its ongoing efforts to be culturally sensitive and have its people on their best behavior for the Olympics, is displaying posters informing its people of eight things they should not ask foreigners:

1. Don't ask about income or expenses.
2. Don't ask about age.
3. Don't ask about love life or marriage.
4. Don't ask about health.
5. Don't ask about someone's home or address.
6. Don't ask about personal experience.
7. Don't ask about religious beliefs or political views.
8. Don't ask what someone does.

Oh, and if you're a guy, here's a tip on how to be a gentleman:

Men should help women carry things, but must not help women carry their handbags.