The Olympic legacy

On Saturday when the Chinese commemorate the first anniversary of the Beijing Olympics, there would be plenty of rhetoric about legacies of the historic event.

The politically-minded might lament China's failure to live up to some of their expectations. China remains more like what it has been than what they had wished it would become. Those preoccupied with environment and sustainable development, too, might complain about setbacks. Authorities no longer appear anxious to do whatever it takes for ensuring high environmental standards. And, we are almost sure to hear the same old line that the world should not have awarded the Games to the capital of this country.

Unless one had looked at the Games as a potential turning point in the history of contemporary China, which it never was, the legacies are rich and of far-reaching significance, for both China and the world. No matter how eagerly some interested outsiders had wished that the historic occasion would help to maneuver fundamental changes to their own tastes, the Chinese embraced it as a new starting point. In that sense, the Beijing Games did a great job.