Restrictions in China dampening festive feeling

All the security efforts are drawing attention to something Chinese leaders have hoped to play down — that China is still a police state, if a chaotic one. They are also raising questions about whether a festive Olympics is possible.

Nightspots near the Worker's Stadium and Worker's Gymnasium, where boxing and other events will be held, have been ordered shut for the games, as a security precaution. Elsewhere, bars and restaurants which often stay open until the last patron leaves, have been told 2 a.m. is the limit.

Rural Chinese who flock to the capital to seek redress for grievances that local officials ignore already have been sent home, while known dissidents have been jailed, put under watch or told to leave.

Arbitrary enforcement of rules, long a staple of life in China, is falling hard on ordinary Chinese. As construction sites are shut down in July to try clear the city's notorious smog, and small restaurants closed for being dirty or other unspecified reasons, many of the city's migrant workers - who make up more than a fifth of Beijing's 18 million people - will be left without pay. Many are leaving.

"Temporarily closed for the Olympic period,'' read the sign on the Xi'an Cured Meat Buns restaurant, near the Silk Alley market, a tourism hotspot filled with knockoffs of designer clothes. At the also-shut Old Sichuan Homestyle restaurant nearby, an employee said he and his five co-workers were soon leaving for home near Sichuan, out of money.

"Those of us who don't have licenses all have to close,'' said Zhao Jingchun, a plump, middle-age, laid-off factory worker who runs a small crepe stall to make money. She planned to flout the restrictions. "No matter how strict they are going to enforce the rules, I have to work. I need to eat.''

The tighter visa requirements keeping foreigners out have been accompanied by recurring police checks on places where foreigners live and orders for those properly papered to register at local police stations.

The sweeping controls have reinforced perceptions that the government wants to head off even legitimate protests.

"Some security measures are understandable. Look at the United States after the 9/11 terrorist incidents,'' said Xu Youyu, a retired philosophy lecturer and frequently outspoken critic of government policies.

"But the system in China doesn't have to give the same considerations to civil liberties. The government is strengthening control and supervision over people who have no intention of disrupting the Olympics. This is a violation of basic human rights and undermines the promises made when bidding for the Olympics,'' Xu said. "This is intolerable.''

With the city feeling emptier and less lively, those left feel part of an elaborately staged event meant to show a perfect but unreal Beijing to the half-million athletes, journalists, dignitaries and tourists expected to come to the games.

"It's not about having people enjoy the Olympics. If nobody came that would be a successful Olympics,'' said Anne Stevenson-Yang, an American private equity consultant in Beijing. "It's theater. The foreigners are there as props but the fewer the better.''

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