Ever since it won the right to host the 2008 Olympics seven years ago, China has been hoping that the summer Games would substantially raise its international prestige as hundreds of thousands of people - including tens of thousands of journalists flock to the Chinese capital from around the world. But there is now a growing danger that the opposite may happen.
This is because the government, which is investing billions of dollars on the Olympics facilities and doing everything possible to maintain political stability, has launched a crackdown on political activists and human rights campaigners, resulting in bad publicity for the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party.
While opinion surveys show that China's image was improving a few years ago, the situation was reversed as the government cracked down on dissent beginning in mid-2005.
A UPI/Zogby poll in May 2007, for example, showed that 87 per cent of Americans held an unfavourable opinion of the Chinese government.
Moreover, surveys in Russia, South Korea, Britain, France, India, Lebanon, Spain, Germany, Japan and Turkey show that China's image in 2007 was worse than in previous years in all of those countries. This decline in image is in all likelihood related to the political crackdown in China.
Many arrests
Although figures for 2007 are not yet available, but in 2006 there were more than twice as many arrests as the previous year for the political offence of endangering state security - a charge used to silence journalists, civil rights lawyers and advocates of religious freedom.
While 296 individuals were arrested in 2005, the number jumped to 604 in 2006. All signs are that the crackdown is continuing and, in fact, intensifying.
At the end of last year, Chinese police seized a leading human rights advocate, 34-year-old Hu Jia, from his Beijing home and, on January 28 he was formally arrested and charged with "inciting subversion of state power" and because "state secrets" are said to be involved, the trial will be closed and Hu will in all likelihood be given a stiff prison term.
Hu's arrest has led to an outcry outside China. The US State Department has raised the case with China and the European Parliament has approved a resolution condemning his arrest and calling on the Chinese government "not to use the Olympic Games as a pretext to arrest and illegally detain and imprison dissidents, journalists and human rights activists who either report on or demonstrate against human rights abuses".
A month before he was detained, Hu took part via webcam in a European Parliament hearing at which time he criticised China's handling of the preparation for the Olympic Games.
He reportedly said it was "ironic that one of the people in charge of organising the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations."
There have been some signs of reform in the run-up to the Olympics, such as a drop in the number of executions. China has also issued new rules governing organ transplants to curb widespread abuses. While these steps are welcome, in overall terms China has moved backward.
Deplorable
The arrest of Hu is particularly deplorable. He was an early Aids and environmental activist but in recent years has been functioning as a one-man human rights commission, drawing attention to such people as the blind self-taught legal activist Chen Guangcheng, now serving a four-year prison term, the civil rights lawyer Guo Feixiong, now serving a five-year term, and the crusading defense lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been repeatedly detained.
The Chinese government frequently responds that the human rights situation is much better now than previously and, when the case of Hu Jia was brought up, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded: "Chinese people know best about China's human rights situation."
It is certainly true that things used to be much worse during the Maoist period. The government now no longer intrudes into the larger areas of people's private lives. But the situation is still deplorable and there is no reason for either the international community or the Chinese government to be satisfied.
If China wants to burnish its image in the international community, it will have to do a lot more in the coming months.
If it wants to show the world that it is serious about safeguarding its people's human rights, Beijing should ratify the international covenant on civil and political rights, which it signed 10 years ago. That would send a message to its own people and to the world that it really respects human rights.
Frank Ching is a Hong-Kong based commentator.
