Columnist Dean Juipe: Beijing shouldn’t get the Olympics

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, July 10, 2001 | 10:16 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

I know a couple of guys who have been to Beijing and they say it's the most crowded, repressed and polluted city in the world.

Add in China's penchant for violence and the country's nonpermissive attitude toward freedom of expression, and the place sounds awful.

Yet, come Friday, Beijing is apt to be awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics in a move that runs counter to the very spirit of the Games.

Whereas the Olympics were once bestowed upon cities as rewards for their historical significance, their progressive outlooks and their affinity for fair play, Beijing offers no such attraction. It is being selected as much out of greed and opportunism as anything else.

China has 1.3 billion people and outsiders -- including the United States -- look at that mass of humanity and see dollar signs. Giving Beijing the 2008 Olympics allows entrepreneurs a foothold they have thus far been denied.

While the U.S. House of Representatives once considered a resolution decrying Beijing's Olympic bid, that vote was recently cancelled in the face of corporate pressure. Big business wants access to Beijing and feels the Olympics are the swiftest route to that marketplace.

Too bad the House didn't have the backbone to stand up to the Chinese, who, as a reminder, back in April kept 24 crewmen of a downed American military plane captive for 11 days.

Not coincidentally, only last week was the disassembled plane returned to the States.

Any of the International Olympic Committee's 2008 options, including Toronto, Paris, Istanbul and Osaka, are more deserving of the Games than Beijing, where any view that runs contrary to the government's is apt to land you in jail. (They're also big on executions over there, having shot some 1,781 prisoners in the back of the head just in the last three months; for comparison's sake, that's more executions than have taken place the world over in the last three years.)

But the IOC, meeting this week in Moscow, is going to select this vile city to host the planet's largest regularly scheduled celebration of peace, friendship and athletic competition.

It's as if the IOC has tossed its guidelines and rule book right out the window.

There's almost no giving Beijing the benefit of doubt, although it is only $800 to fly there and back from Los Angeles -- which I know only from being approached about going to the Evander Holyfield vs. John Ruiz heavyweight championship fight that's set for Aug. 4. (If the fight was today, Beijing might reconsider and reject its upcoming Olympic bid simply from being exhausted by the demands of "gimme, gimme, gimme" promoter Don King, who will be on a pillaging mission of his own once he gets there.)

You know, the Olympics don't always have to go to the most wonderful cities in the world. When Seoul got the 1988 Games eyebrows were raised due to Korea's autocratic ways, but the country was inching toward the democracy it more or less enjoys today and some would say the Olympics were a catalyst.

Beijing lacks that, or any other, saving grace.

And to hypothesize that it will be markedly different by 2008 is truly wishful thinking.