San Francisco - Violent protests, military cordons, international rumblings of a boycott - these are not the makings of an auspicious start to this summer's Olympics, an event treated by Beijing as China's global coming-out party.
Yet the country is facing all three, with the fallout stemming this time from Tibet rather than Falun Gong protesters or pro-Taiwan separatists - two groups that most analysts expected to impede plans to present a flush and modern China on the world stage.
The Olympic flame arrived in Beijing early on Monday aboard a specially chartered flight from Greece. Security was tight at the Chinese capital's airport amid worries about possible protests.
The flame was later taken to Tiananmen Square for an official welcoming ceremony. On Tuesday the official torch relay will begin, with runners departing to Almaty, the Kazakh capital, on the first leg of a journey through 19 countries in April before it makes a three-month tour around China.
Attacks on China's image are to be expected for a country throwing itself into the international spotlight. After all, the media's glare is also coveted by any group that has a grievance against Beijing's policies on religious, ethnic or political dissenters. Protests representing these groups are only likely to increase during the countdown to the Games, which open on August 8.
Already the temperature surrounding the events has gone up in a variety of places around the world, starting with the symbolic procession of the Olympic torch. Demonstrators marred the lighting ceremony this past week in Greece, a normally staid affair. And controversy has even erupted in San Francisco, as the city looks for ways to keep order on the torch procession route, which hasn't been disclosed to the public.
However, barring a more drastic and bloody incident like the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, analysts say that international reproach of the way Beijing has handled Tibet seems unlikely to escalate much beyond finger-wagging. Nor, they say, will that pressure have much impact on China, apart from wounding its sense of national pride.
"The symbolic importance of the Olympics is way beyond its actual value," said Richard Baum, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who specialises in Chinese politics. "This was going to be the debutante ball. It's invested with an enormous amount of historical and cultural baggage."
And even bruised pride is not expected to get in the way of the country's efforts to become a respected global power on an even economic footing with other developed countries.
"In the long run, national interests will trump hurt feelings - and the national interest is to become more integrated with international powers," Baum said.
Lhasa riots
The hue and cry over China's policy in Tibet stems from demonstrations that began earlier this month in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to mark the anniversary of an unsuccessful 1959 uprising against Chinese Communists, whose rule over what is now a Chinese province is contested by many ethnic Tibetans.
By the end of that week, those protests had devolved into violent street riots, with Buddhist monks engaged with Chinese security forces and Tibetans attacking and burning businesses operated by the Han Chinese, the ethnic group that makes up about 90% of China's population, as well as those of Muslim Hui.
After initially staying on the sidelines, Chinese police moved in to quell the rioting, cordoning off parts of the city populated by ethnic Tibetans and arresting protesters. Some witnesses charge that Chinese police fired into crowds. Most foreign accounts called the military response restrained compared to authorities' previous crackdowns of protests in Tibet and elsewhere - restraint likely due to heightened scrutiny in advance of the Olympics.
Chinese authorities say about two dozen people have been killed in the unrest, which they have blamed on a "clique" lead by the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who runs a Tibetan government-in-exile in India. His organisation has denied those charges and put the death toll at 140.
Foreign boycotts?
Other nations responded to the week's events by urging China to show restraint, though some political leaders made veiled threats of using the Olympic Games to register their dismay with the country's policies.
In the US, House speaker Nancy Pelosi drew condemnation from China's foreign ministry after she met with the Dalai Lama last week and told an audience of ethnic Tibetans that "the cause of Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world".
The Bush administration is taking a more neutral tack, with the State Department urging the Chinese government to avoid using force or violence when it confronts protesters.
France's newly minted President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he would consider a boycott of the Games, but he referred specifically to his own attendance at the opening ceremony.
In Britain, Prince Charles has said he'skip the Olympic events altogether, though he planned to do that well before the recent Tibet events unfolded. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he'll attend the events as planned.
"Because of China's weight in the world, posturing by the United States and Europe have been pretty restrained," said Todd Lee, a managing director with Global Insight. "They don't want to hurt their long term relationship with China."
China responded to the first wave of media reports on the Tibet protests by restricting news about and from the region, actions that have led to a bifurcated view of what happened. Foreign news organisations reported that Web sites and television broadcasts mentioning Tibet were blocked in China in the days after the riots, while foreign journalists were prevented from travelling to the region.
Meanwhile, China's official news outlets and independent Chinese news blogs have lambasted biased "Western media" for distorting the protests in Tibet and overlooking violence directed against Han Chinese in the region.
This week, foreign journalists were allowed back to the country for monitored visits to the burnt-out areas of Lhasa.
Beacon for protest
International debate on whether to boycott some ceremonies, if not the actual athletics, is likely to continue in coming weeks as the Olympic torch makes a promotional tour around the world. During the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece Monday, members of Reporters Without Borders were arrested after unfurling a banner that depicted the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs.
When the torch makes its only North American stop in San Francisco April 9, several protests on China's political and human rights policies are expected. The office of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, in an apparent effort to shield the Olympic events from some of these protests, has withheld details of the route the torch will take as it winds through a city with a population that's roughly 20% Chinese descent.
The Tibetan riots "will encourage foreign (groups) to organise demonstrations and campaigns targeting the Games," said William Overholt, director of the Rand Corporation's Centre for Asia Pacific Policy. Moreover, he said, the Tibetan riots could trigger parallel actions by groups like the Falun Gong religious supporters or the ethnic Uighurs from the northwest province of Xinjiang.
But Overholt doubts any "serious country" will withdraw from the Beijing Olympics. And outside relatively ethnic and religious small groups, there seem small odds that Chinese citizens will mount the type of broader act of civil disobedience that led to the Tiananmen Square protests, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200 to 3 000 people.
"Most Chinese are proud of their country's accomplishments and support the Olympics as a symbol of national esteem," Overholt said. "Those feelings are widely shared, including by most supporters of improved human rights and faster democratisation."
- Dow Jones