China before the Olympics 奥运前的中国

Welcome to a (rather dour) party 党的盛宴，让人“生厌”？

July 31st 2008 | BEIJING

China is keen to show its best face at the games and that face is indeed a lot better than it once was. But do not expect any dramatic slide from authoritarianism
中国急于借奥运展现其最好的一面，而相比从前来说它确实好了不少。不过别指望它会戏剧般地脱离专制。



TENS of billions of dollars have been spent, lavish sport venues erected and the world’s biggest airport terminal built. Hundreds of thousands of police, soldiers and civilian security volunteers have been mobilised. Beijing is braced for the Olympic games and the country’s leaders for a huge political challenge. For them the event is about how an emerging great power will be judged by a sceptical world.
耗费数百亿美元，奢华的场馆和世界最大的机场航站楼拔地而起。数以万计的警察，士兵和民间安保志愿者已动员起来。北京为奥运做好了准备，中国领导人则为巨大的政治挑战做好了准备。于他们，奥运事关疑虑重重的世界如何看待崛起的中国力量。

In a country still struggling to cope with the needs of millions of homeless and bereaved citizens in the aftermath of May’s deadly earthquake, and where recent outbreaks of unrest have roiled many towns, the leadership has declared that putting on a good games is its “number one priority”. Communist Party and government officials at every level know that their careers are at risk if anything occurs on their watch that disrupts the Olympics.
在五月可怕的地震后，中国尚在努力安置数百万家破人亡的人民，最近又有许多城镇爆发骚动，然而中国领导人宣称，办好奥运乃是“第一要务”。各级党委和政府官员非常明了，一旦辖内发生任何事情干扰奥运，自己便前途堪忧。

The government-organised vigilantes in their baseball caps and “Good luck Beijing” T-shirts patrolling the streets in search of potential troublemakers might look like a throwback to a China of the distant past: an era when no one was safe from the prying eyes of neighbourhood spies. But few people seem to resent their presence, or even the party’s relentlessly upbeat rhetoric about an event that has disrupted, sometimes massively, the lives of hundreds of thousands. Most Beijing citizens still seem proud and delighted that their country is staging the Olympics.
政府组织的安保志愿者身着棒球帽和“好运北京”T恤在大街小巷巡逻，寻找可能的捣乱者。这像是回到了中国遥远的过去，那时隔邻互探，人人自危。奥运影响了 数十万人们的生活（有时还很严重），而党的歌功颂德对此毫无怜悯。然而，少有人对此不满。大多数北京市民仍为中国举办奥运而自豪，高兴。

The party has tapped into a nationalist wellspring fed by history textbooks and popular culture that portray early 20th-century China as a country derided by foreigners as the “sick man of Asia”. The man regarded as the spiritual founder of China’s Olympic movement, a pre-communist educator called Zhang Boling, is quoted as saying that “a great nation must first strengthen the race, a great race must first strengthen the body.” Officials try to play down China’s medal prospects at the games, but the goal is clearly to win more than America and erase any last trace of the sick-man label.
历史教科书和流行文化将20世纪的中国描述为被西方列强嘲笑的“东亚病夫”，这滋养了民族主义，党则将其物尽其用。前共产党时代教育家张伯苓被尊为中国奥 运精神奠基人，据载，他说过“强国必先强种，强种必先强身”。官员们试图减少中国奥运夺奖数的预期，而事实上目标显然是超过美国，抹去“病夫”标签的最后痕迹。

This nationalism is both an asset to the party (it helps to bolster its sense of legitimacy) and a complication in its efforts to convince the world that China’s rise poses no threat to Western interests. One Chinese official says privately that he had worried about a “clash of civilisations” emerging between China and the West in the wake of the unrest in Tibet last March. Few would begrudge China some self-congratulation as it rakes in the medals. But with memories still fresh of the virulent outburst of anti-Western fervour, and with protests (sometimes unruly) by ethnic Chinese around the world at the West’s “bias” against China, nationalism will be under anxious scrutiny at the games.
民族主义既是党的有用资产（有助于确立其合法性），也是其努力说服世界中国的崛起不会威胁西方利益的障眼法。一位中国官员私下说，他为三月西藏骚乱后中国 和西方的“文化冲撞”而担忧。当中国将奖牌收入囊中，没人会吝啬少少自得之意。然而抵制西方的热潮在中国铺天盖地的爆发还让人记忆犹新，世界各地华人又在 抗议西方对中国的“偏见”（有时这难以驾驭），这使得奥运期间民族主义将被密切监控。

China’s leaders would instead prefer outsiders to focus on how much the country has changed and how much it is at ease in the world. The official slogan of the games, “One world, one dream”, reflects this (albeit with an unintended hint of Maoist ideological conformity). But here too it has problems. The protests staged in Western cities in April against the Olympic torch relay raised the nightmare in the minds of China’s leaders of similar action at the games. To keep potential demonstrators out it has tightened visa restrictions, ignoring the complaints of foreigners whose business in China has been disrupted.
中国领导人宁愿外部世界关注中国的巨变，以及它与世界何等地和平相处。北京奥运的官方口号“同一个世界，同一个梦想”便反应了这一点(虽然也无意中流露了 毛泽东主义者的意识形态一致性)。然而这也有问题。4月西方城市针对奥运火炬传递的抗议，在中国领袖的心中留下梦靥，担心奥运会上故事重演。为排除可能的 示威者，中国加紧了签证限制，无视那些在华生意受挫的外国人的抱怨。

Without citing any evidence, Chinese officials say that these games have become more of a target for terrorists than any others in Olympic history. Western diplomats are not so sure. The presence of so many foreign dignitaries, including George Bush and Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, at the opening ceremony—and others, among them Britain’s Gordon Brown, at the finale—presents an obvious security risk. But there are widespread suspicions that China is over-egging the threat in order to justify blanket security and prevent the Dalai Lama’s supporters (and other dissidents) from taking to the streets. Tibetans who try to check into hotels can expect unusual security attention.
在没有任何证据的情况下，中国官员声称本届奥运在奥运历史上前所未有地成为了恐怖分子的目标。西方外交界则没这么确定。奥运期间外国显要云集，乔治·布什 和俄罗斯总理普京出席开幕式，英国首相布朗等人出席闭幕式，安全风险显而易见。然而，许多人依然怀疑，中国对威胁的强调是“借鸡生蛋”，以名正言顺地祭出 安全大旗，防止达赖喇嘛的支持者（和其他异议人士）走上街头。入住旅馆的西藏人将受到异乎寻常的“关注”。

Protest-free games?
无抗议奥运？

Well before the Tibetan unrest signs had appeared that China was tightening the screws on dissent in order to keep the games protest-free. In 2001 a senior Beijing official pledged that hosting the games would “benefit the further development of our human-rights cause”. Officials from the International Olympic Committee made similar predictions. But Amnesty International, a human-rights group, said in a report published this week that there had been a “continued deterioration” in China’s human-rights record.
早在西藏骚乱的信号出现之前很久，中国已对异议人士念起紧箍咒，试图打造无抗议奥运。2001年，北京官员保证举办奥运将“有助于中国人权进一步发展”。 国际奥委会官员也有同样的预期。然而人权组织大赦国际 (Amnesty International) 在本周披露的报告中说，中国的人权记录“持续恶化”。

Amnesty’s report lists numerous repressive measures adopted by China to ensure an orderly games: arresting dissidents, detaining people who try to present their local grievances to the central authorities in Beijing (a tradition that is officially sanctioned, but which often results in retaliation by local officials), and making more liberal use of a handy method of punishment, known as “re-education through labour”, which involves sending people to prison camps without trial.
大赦国际的报告列举了中国为保证奥运秩序而采取的众多压制措施：逮捕异议人士，拘留来北京向中央政府上访的各地人们（上访是一个官方允许的传统，但是带来的结果通常是地方官员的报复），滥用“劳动改造”，在没有审判的情况下将人们送入监狱。


Doing really rather well, thank you
做得真不错，谢谢了

Among those detained is Huang Qi, an online activist based in Chengdu, a city near the earthquake zone. Mr Huang had been a prolific publisher of human-rights news on the internet; recently he had been trying to help parents of children killed in the earthquake in shoddily built schools. He has been accused of acquiring state secrets, a charge that often heralds a jail term. Last year the police arrested an activist in Beijing, Hu Jia, who had told a European Union parliamentary hearing that China had not lived up to its Olympic promises on human rights. He was jailed for 3½ years for “inciting subversion”.
黄琦便是成都一位被拘留的网上维权人士，这座城市就在5·12震区旁边。黄先生此前在互联网上发布了许多人权新闻，最近一直在试图帮助那些孩子丧生劣质校 舍的父母。他被指控“非法持有国家机密”，这通常会导致监禁。去年，警方在北京拘捕了维权人士胡佳，他在欧盟议会听证会上称中国没有达成关于人权的承诺。 他因“煽动颠覆国家政权”被判入狱3年零6个月。

The government worries about the sort of accusations made by Amnesty, even as it rejects them. On July 23rd it declared that three public parks in Beijing could be used for protests during the games (normally no demonstrations, except very occasionally anti-Japanese or anti-Western ones, are tolerated). But permits will still be necessary. It is safe to say that critics of Chinese policies on Tibet, Darfur, Xinjiang (where Muslim Uighurs are chafing at Chinese rule) or the outlawed Buddhist sect, Falun Gong, will not be getting them. Moreover, the parks are far from any Olympic venue. One of them contains a replica of the White House in Washington, a setting that China may have fewer qualms about seeing as a backdrop for protests.
中国政府否认了大赦国际的指控，但依然不敢对此掉以轻心。7月23日，中国政府宣布奥运期间北京的三所公园设立游行示威点（中国政府通常不容忍示威，极个别抵制日本或 西方的除外），不过均需申请并获批准。毫无疑问，若是批评中国在西藏、达尔富、新疆（该地区信仰穆斯林的维吾尔人不满中国政府统治）和非法的佛教派别法轮 功等问题上的政策，显然难获批准。此外，这三所公园均远离奥运场馆。其中之一有华盛顿白宫的模拟建筑，以此为背景进行示威，中国官方无需疑虑。

Many Chinese, however, are neither surprised nor particularly disappointed that the Olympics will not offer a greater chance to speak out. Some determined activists such as Huang Qi and Hu Jia may be resentful, but many Chinese intellectuals would argue that over the past seven years since China was awarded the games their ability to speak out on sensitive topics has continued to grow. Although a few are jailed, many others whose words might have landed them behind bars in the 1980s or 1990s are still at large. Most ordinary urban Chinese would say that their lives have improved since the beginning of the decade, helped not so much by any change in party policy but by a booming economy.
奥林匹克没有给言论自由带来更大的机会，但许多中国人并不因此感到惊奇，或特别的失望。有人确信，像黄琦、胡佳这样的维权人士将怨恨政府。但实际上，许多 中国知识分子会声称，自从中国申奥成功，7年来，他们对敏感话题公开表达的权利一直在增加。虽然有些人被监禁，但并未因言获罪的人也非常多，如果是在 1980或1990年代，他们早就在监狱里了。大部分普通城镇居民认为，自2000年以来他们的生活水平提高了，这主要并非党的政策改变，而是因为经济的蓬勃增长。

Andrew Nathan of Columbia University in New York, who is co-editor of a forthcoming book on how Asians view democracy, says that of the eight countries and regions surveyed, public satisfaction with the regime was highest in authoritarian China. The other places studied were five new democracies (South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Mongolia), a non-democracy (Hong Kong), plus democratic Japan where satisfaction was lowest. The authors are not optimistic that China is on the brink of democratic change. It is, they say, “poised to join the list of developed countries with large middle classes and non-democratic regimes”.
纽约哥伦比亚大学教授黎安友 (Andrew Nathan) 即将作为联合编辑出版一本关于亚洲人如何看待民主的书，他说在该书观察的8个国家和地区中，公众对政权的满意度最高的恰是专制中国。其他几个观察对象包括 5个新兴民主国家和地区（南韩、台湾、菲律宾、泰国和蒙古），1个非民主地区（香港）和1个民主国家日本，其中日本满意度最低。作者对于中国是否处即将步 入民主并不乐观。他们认为，中国准备“带着庞大的中产阶级和非民主的政体步入发达国家行列”。

This might be a disappointment to optimists who had hoped that the huge international attention focused on China as the games approached would help to change its authoritarian politics for the better. When Beijing was chosen to host the games, many wondered whether the 2008 Olympics might play a political role similar to that of the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and Mexico City’s 20 years earlier. In both those cases the games emboldened pro-democracy activists (although they did not restrain the Mexican authorities from shooting many dozens of them). The Beijing games have not had anything like such a galvanising effect—except in Tibet.
奥运的临近带来了国际舆论前所未有的聚焦，乐观的人们原本指望中国的专制政治能因此变好，现在看来要失望了。当北京被选为奥运举办地，许多人猜测2008 奥运是否会像1988年汉城奥运和20年前墨西哥奥运那样扮演政治角色。在汉城和墨西哥，奥运给了民主派人士勇气（虽然并不能制止墨西哥当局开枪打死数百 人）。北京奥运似乎没有产生类似的效用——除了在西藏。

Enter the internet
进入互联网

Economic and social change over the past few years has a lot do with this. In 2001 China had recently all but completed a sweeping privatisation of urban housing. The impact of this was enormous. It stimulated demand for consumer goods and better housing and gave swathes of urban China a big economic stake in the preservation of the party-dominated status quo since anti-party unrest might jeopardise valuable new assets.
过去几年经济和社会的变化与此有莫大干系。在2001年，中国完成了城镇住房供给的彻底私有化，影响深远。它刺激了对生活消费品和更好的住房条件的需求，由于反党骚乱可能危及这些新的资产，它给都市中国带来了经济投资的牵绊，这有助于维持一党统治的现状。

It also, crucially, nurtured the development of a non-party-controlled civil society of landlord associations, independent lawyers and environmental groups who pushed for the protection of property from the party’s arbitrariness or the value-destroying impact of pollution. These developments have been helped by the rapid penetration of information technology. China’s official internet-monitoring body announced this week that China had passed America to become home to the biggest population of internet users.
至关重要的是，它还滋养了非党控制的市民阶层，包括房主协会，独立律师，环保组织，他们推动了财产保护，免受党的专横处置，也避免环境污染使资产价值降低。信息技术的迅速普及促成了这一切。中国官方的互联网监测机构本周宣布，中国已经超过美国，成为网民最多的国家。

The internet’s spread has created an opportunity for vigorous public debate that hardly existed a decade ago. The authorities try to block sensitive discussions, using keyword filters and an army of “net nannies” employed by portals and internet service providers. But the impact of these efforts is limited, with savvy users quickly finding ways of circumventing government blocks. One clever technique has been to use online software to render Chinese-language script vertically instead of horizontally. This has baffled the keyword detectors, for now at least.
互联网的发展为激烈的公众辩论创造了机会，这在十年前几乎不存在。官方通过关键词过滤和各大门户和ISP雇佣的网警，试图屏蔽敏感讨论，不过收效甚微，因 为机智的网民很快找到避免和谐的方法。一个聪明的技巧是使用在线软件，将汉字竖直排版而不是水平排版。这让关键词探测难以得逞，至少目前如此。


Isn't it lovely about the games?
奥运不是很美好吗？

The torrent of information now accessible online (even if Amnesty’s own report is blocked in China) and the ability to discuss it give many young urban Chinese a sense of freedom that their parents could only dream of at that age. It is these young Chinese who lashed out most vociferously against the West earlier this year. Among their bitterest complaints was that some Westerners viewed them as brainwashed, an accusation that they hotly denied.
互联网上可以获得庞大的信息（虽然大赦国际的报告在中国被屏蔽了），讨论这一切也成为可能，这给了中国城镇的许多年轻人自由的意识，而他们的父母在之前的 年代只能白日梦想。正是这些年轻人在今年的早些时候摇旗呐喊，反对西方。他们最大的抱怨之一，是一些西方人总以为他们被洗脑了，他们激烈反对这种指责。

If there has been some positive impact from the Olympics themselves on political change in China, it has been in roundabout ways. Chinese troops in Lhasa preferred to let Tibetan rioters rampage for two days rather than move in to stop them, fearing that large-scale bloodshed would lead to boycotts of the games. The scale of the rioting that ensued in the security vacuum had what were probably unintended consequences: sympathy protests across the Tibetan plateau, an outcry from the West and the outpouring of nationalist sentiment across China.
如果说奥运自身给中国的政治改革带来了积极的影响，那也是无心插柳的曲线救国。拉萨的中国军队让西藏的暴徒闹了整整两天，而没有立刻介入阻止，因为担心大 规模流血会导致对奥运的抵制。在这种安全真空中骚乱扩大，后果可能出乎意料：声援遍及西藏高原，西方世界强烈抗议，而民族主义情结的爆发席卷中国。

It may well have been an effort to curb this outpouring and create a more positive atmosphere for the games that shaped the government’s response to the earthquake in May. A commentary on the government’s website called the disaster, which killed some 70,000 people, “a good opportunity” to improve China’s image ahead of the Olympics. Foreign and Chinese journalists (both normally kept on short leashes by the authorities during natural disasters) were allowed to pour in.
中国政府在5月对地震的反应，很可能就是努力抑制民族主义情结，为奥运营造积极氛围的一种努力。政府官网上的一条评论，称这场死亡70000人的灾难是在奥运前改善中国形象的“一个好机会”。中外记者（在自然灾害中他们通常被官方严密限制）也被允许大规模进入。

This unprecedented access stimulated a lively debate in China, in the traditional media as well as online, about the need for a freer press and a better flow of information from the government. Some of this advice appears to have been taken up. Very unusually, the official media have been quick to report the recent riots that have broken out in different parts of the country. The central authorities, which are normally especially secretive about such things before a big event, have tolerated—if not actively encouraged—such publicity.
这种空前的采访自由在中国的传统媒体和互联网上引发激烈讨论，针对更开放的言论自由和更大的政府透明度的需求。一些建议似乎被采纳了。官方媒体极为罕见地 迅速报道了不同地区最近发生的骚乱。中央政府在大事当前通常对此类事件尤为封锁，如今却容忍——如果没有主动鼓励的话——了这些报道。

Local thuggery
地方的扼杀

Another big change in China in recent years, however, has been the central government’s diminishing grip on the actions of local officials. China, as its defenders at home are quick to point out, is no longer totalitarian. It is a mix of jostling bureaucratic and economic interests which push officials sometimes towards thuggery and sometimes towards greater tolerance. The central government may be guilty of turning a blind eye, but some of the human-rights abuses that Amnesty describes are perpetrated by local governments at their own whim.
中国近年的另一大变化，却是中央政府对地方官员控制力的减弱。正如国内的辩护者急于指出的那样，中国不再是极权主义国度。一边是蹒跚的官僚政治，一边是对 经济的兴趣，这让官员们有时倾向于扼杀，有时又倾向于更大的容忍。大赦国际描述的一些人权侵犯其实是心血来潮的地方政府所为，中央政府可能仅仅罪在睁一只 眼闭一只眼。

The government’s response to two of the recent riots illustrates this. On June 28th thousands of people rampaged through the town of Weng’an in the southern province of Guizhou, setting fire to a police station and burning several police cars. The violence was triggered by what many of Weng’an’s citizens believed was an official cover-up of a girl’s murder by a group of boys rumoured to be related to local officials. The police said the girl had committed suicide.
政府对最近两起骚乱的反应正是注脚。6月28日，数千人们在南部省份贵州的瓮安暴动，火烧公安局和数辆警车。暴乱的导火线，是许多瓮安市民相信官方掩盖了一群据传是地方官员亲属的男孩对一名女孩的谋杀。警方称女孩死于自杀。

The town’s authorities tried to cover up the news, but people began posting accounts online. Internet censors tried to delete these as quickly as they appeared (the portals and service providers that do the censoring often prefer to err on the side of caution rather than risk losing their business by upsetting the authorities). But the news got through and the local government—bludgeoned in this case successfully by higher-level officials—lifted coverage restrictions. Chinese and foreign journalists flocked there.
瓮安当局试图掩盖消息，但是人们开始在互联网上传播。网警立刻试图删除这些信息（这些过滤由门户网站和ISP完成，他们通常宁愿错杀一千，而不愿冒被当局关闭的风险）。但消息还是传了出去，地方政府——在这一事件中是迫于高层压力——取消了封锁，中外记者蜂拥而入。

Reports in the state-controlled media expressed unusual sympathy with the protesters’ grievances. Weng’an’s police stuck to their story about the suicide, but provincial leaders sent a clear signal that they too believed that the citizens had a point. They promptly dismissed the town’s government, party and police chiefs, accusing them of a long-term pattern of brutish behaviour and insensitive handling of people’s complaints.
国家媒体的报道不同寻常地表达了对抗议者的同情。瓮安警方仍然坚持是女孩死于自杀，然而省级官员明确表示，他们相信人们的愤怒自有缘由。他们迅速将瓮安政府、党委和公安的主要领导解职，指称他们长期以来作风粗暴，不闻民间疾苦。

Three weeks later another riot erupted, this time in the neighbouring province of Yunnan. Hundreds of people rioted in Menga, a village on the border with Myanmar, in a dispute between rubber farmers and the management of the factory to which they sold their produce. A villager was shot by police. When his son went to help him, he too was shot. Both men died.
3周以后，另一桩骚乱在邻省云南爆发。在毗邻缅甸的孟连，胶农与收购他们产品的工厂发生争执，数百人骚乱。一村民被警察开枪击中，他的儿子试图帮他，也被击中。结果双双死亡。

Again the media responded quickly, but this time a nervous local government kept a grip on the news. Journalists were stopped at a police checkpoint several kilometres from the scene of the shooting. Provincial-level propaganda officials said they were unable to persuade the local authorities to co-operate. A foreign ministry official in Beijing (perhaps disingenuously) said that in emergencies local governments could override regulations introduced last year for foreign journalists that were billed at the time as allowing freedom to travel anywhere, except Tibet, during the Olympic period.
媒体再次迅速报道，然而这次紧张的地方政府进行了限制。警方在距枪击现场几公里外设卡阻截记者进入，省级宣传官员称无法说服地方政府合作。北京一位外事官 员（可能违心地）称，在紧急状况下地方政府可以不遵守去年引入的规定，该规定允许在册外国记者奥运期间在中国除西藏外的任何地区自由行动。

But even as security is being tightened around Beijing for the games, lively debate continues in the Chinese media about lessons that might be drawn from these riots. No one is openly calling for multi-party politics, at least not in the press. But more media freedom, less government secrecy and greater efforts to consult the public are being commonly demanded. Referring to the party’s insistence that “positive propaganda” prevail in the press, the Beijing News said that the only thing that could be called “negative news” would be a lack of timely access to information. Even the normally stodgy Xinhua News Agency has weighed in.
虽然比赛期间北京周边加强了安保，中国媒体依然激烈讨论应从暴乱中吸取的教训。无人公开呼求多党政治，至少媒体上没有。然而人们普遍呼唤更多的新闻自由， 更少的政府秘密，以及更进一步的政务公开。党坚持在报道中要以“正面宣传”为主，而新京报称唯一的“负面新闻”就是不能及时披露的信息。甚至一贯保守的新 华社也参与进来。

The government has made a cursory effort to make the internet more accessible during the games. Blocks have been lifted on a few banned websites: Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia), BBC News and Playboy, a site that offers pictures of naked women. But the Chinese-language sites of Wikipedia and the BBC remained barred.
奥运期间中国政府匆匆解封了一些网站，包括维基百科（一个在线百科网站）、BBC新闻和花花公子（一个提供裸女图片的网站）。然而维基中文和BBC依然和谐中。

If there is any hope in the near future for an acceleration of political change, the period after the games will be one to watch. Leaders and officials at every level will begin to relax after months if not years of preoccupation with this event. Olympic security restrictions will be removed. Dissidents will stick their heads up again. Debates spawned by China’s recent crises are likely to become less fettered.
如果说政治改革加速在近期有何希望，奥运后的一段时期有待观察。在被这桩大事牢牢占控了数月乃至数年之后，各级领导人和官员将开始松懈。奥运安保限制将取消。异议人士将重新探头。近期诸多危机引发的争执，很可能被放松限制。

Big questions will be asked in the build-up to the 30th anniversary in December of the party meeting that launched the country’s policy of “opening and reform”. Some liberal intellectuals have been saying that China is more than ready for the next stage of reform, namely that of its politics. The 20th anniversary next year of the Tiananmen Square protests will keep this issue simmering.
12月的党代会是中国“改革开放”国策确立30周年纪念，届时将会提出重大问题。一些自由派知识分子声称，中国对下一阶段的改革已经迫不及待，所指便是政治改革。明年天安门事件20周年纪念将使这一议题升温。

Stresses in the leadership, covered up for the sake of Olympic unity, may also become more apparent in the months ahead. In October there will be a meeting of the party’s central committee, the first since February, at which there is likely to be a lot of soul-searching. A sharp focus will be on the economy. With inflation persisting, the stockmarket in the doldrums and the pace of economic growth beginning to slow, there will be bickering over this issue too.
奥运的齐心掩盖了中国领导人的压力，但未来几个月压力将日益明显。10月，党将召开自2月以来的第一次中央委员会，很可能会做许多反省。一个尖锐的议题是经济。通胀持续，股市萧条，经济增速放缓，必将有一番争吵。

And when the party’s over?
奥运之后呢？

After the Olympic party (a dour one if security officials do not relax), many in China are likely to wonder whether it was really all worth it. Wang Yang, a member of the ruling Politburo and one of the more outspoken leaders (a rare breed), has called for tolerance of public grievances. Attempting to suppress people’s views might create an “opinion quake lake”, he said recently, referring to the perilously unstable lakes that were formed by landslides during the Sichuan earthquake. China’s leaders would do well to take heed.
在奥运盛宴（如果安保官员不放松限制，这场盛宴简直让人“生厌”）后，中国的许多人可能会怀疑它究竟是否值得。政治局委员汪洋是较为坦率的领导人（一个异类），他呼吁要体察民情。近日他说，压制人民的观点，无异于人为制造“言塞湖”，意指四川地震后山体滑坡形成的岌岌可危的堰塞湖。中国的领导人着实要好好留意。