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China starts Olympic countdown in spectacular fashion
2007-08-08
China kicked off the final year countdown to the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday with fireworks and a spectacular ceremony on a dazzlingly lit Tiananmen Square. With 10,000 invited guests on hand and millions more watching live on television across the nation and around the globe, the crowd cheered as a special clock hit the moment marking one year before the 2008 Games begin. More than 100 singers belted out "We Are Ready," Beijing's anthem for the coming year and one of many colourful music and dance numbers performed in front of the brilliantly illuminated gate into the historic Forbidden City. International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge took to the stage to pledge that next year's Games would prove to be an international showcase for the emerging power. "Beijing and China will not only host a successful Games for the world's premier athletes, but will also provide an excellent opportunity to discover China -- its history, culture and people," Rogge told the crowd. "The world is watching China and Beijing with great expectations." Plenty of Chinese star power was on display -- including appearances by Jackie Chan and Canto-pop crooner Andy Lau -- in an extravaganza that bathed the normally grey square at the heart of Beijing in a kaleidoscope of colours. But the biggest cheer of the night went to homegrown NBA star Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets, who took to the stage as the performances wound down, waving the flag of the Beijing Olympics organising committee to a rapturous reaction. Rogge and many others have said the Beijing Olympics are already one of the best-prepared ever, with construction of 31 top-quality venues to be completed well ahead of time. But he earlier revealed that not everything was going as well as planned, and that the IOC was willing to take the unprecedented step of postponing events at the Games if the city's notorious pollution was particularly bad. "We are going to put the athletes' health first. We'll have contingency plans in action," he told CNN. He said that pollution should not pose a problem for athletes competing in sports with a short duration. "But definitely the endurance sports, like the cycling race where you have to compete for six hours, these are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed to another day," he said. Beijing is one of the world's most polluted cities but Chinese officials have stressed repeatedly that they are doing everything they can to ensure the 10,000 athletes will be able to compete next year in clean air. Wednesday's festivities began when a million Chinese performed traditional tai chi and other exercises in parks throughout Beijing, while hockey and rowing test events got under way at the venues that will hold their Olympic competitions. China's leadership is attaching an extraordinary level of importance to the world's premier sports event, seeing it as a coming-out party to mark the rise of a new and influential global player. But it is also being seen by rights groups and activists as an unprecedented opportunity to pressure China's communist rulers, and they have sought this week to take some of the shine off the countdown celebrations. Already this week overseas activists, US lawmakers and domestic dissidents have made headlines by targeting the Chinese government over issues such as Tibet, political oppression, media freedoms and the violence in Darfur. Tiananmen Square is also where the military brutally crushed democracy protests in 1989, leading to the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people -- and security was tight for Wednesday's party.
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