ABSTRACT
The Olympic Games and politics have long been linked. This is especially true of the 2008 Olympic Games staged in Beijing, the capital city of People’s Republic of China. The Games attracted over 10,000 athletes, over 50,000 media personnel, hundreds of thousands of tourists, a million volunteers and over four billion TV viewers across the world, which put China at the centre of world attention. The highlights of the successful bid, the eye-catching art airport terminal and stadiums, and the spectacular Opening and Closing ceremonies as well as the incidents during the Olympic torch relay on some European and North American legs made the Games one of the most politicized events in recent history. Arguably the Games might ‘have far more inuence than any other Games in history’ (Penn 2008: 80-81).
