China's Games party set for "Big bang" start

By Andrew Cawthorne

BEIJING (Reuters) - China stages the most expensive opening ceremony in Olympic history on Friday, keen to put the world spotlight on its modern face and the sports action after a build-up that fired up the Communist government's critics.

Guests in the head-turning "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium will include U.S. President George W. Bush, who flew in straight after making his bluntest comments yet on rights in a nation many view as likely to rival his own for global hegemony this century.

China hopes media attention on issues like its rule of Tibet will end at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month -- the number symbolises fortune here -- when the Olympic extravaganza starts before an estimated global audience of one billion.

Displaying its new economic clout, China has invested $43 billion on the Games -- dubbed the greatest show on earth. Some $100 million, twice the 2004 Athens bill, has gone on what are set to be spectacular "Big bang" opening and closing ceremonies.

Small groups of foreign protesters have popped up in Beijing this week, but have been whisked off quickly by police forming part of a 100,000-strong security force that China has deployed in the capital to deter terrorists or demonstrators.

Suspected Islamist separatists killed 16 policemen in western China on Monday, and on Thursday two U.S.-based firms that monitor statements from militants quoted a little-known Islamist group as threatening attacks against the Games.

A video dated August 1 carried pictures of the Beijing Olympics logo in flames and a speaker holding an AK-47 assault rifle and wearing a face mask, said one firm, the SITE Intelligence Group.

In July, Chinese authorities denied claims by the Turkistan Islamic Party that it was behind a series of bombings ahead of the Olympics. Beijing has also issued statements this week that it was confident it could ensure a peaceful Games.

FLAG WAVING

The best-known face of Chinese sport, 7ft 6in NBA basketball player Yao Ming, is to carry the host nation's flag at the opening ceremony.

But in a move that could embarrass both China and Sudan, U.S. athletes chose former Sudanese refugee Lopez Lomong, a victim of government-sponsored Arab militias in the south who fled at the age of six in 1991, to lead their team round the track.

China is a major oil investor and arms seller in Sudan, and global campaigners blame it for failing to pressure Khartoum enough over the conflict in its western region of Darfur. Critics say the Sudanese government has again sponsored atrocities there.

Unfortunately for the Olympic ideal of global harmony, the two Koreas failed to agree to march at the opening as a unified team even though they managed that in 2004 and 2000.

And though Bush said he was coming for sport not politics, he gave a speech in Bangkok en route voicing "firm opposition" to China's detention of dissidents.

The finer points of global geo-politics are unlikely, however, to dampen the enthusiasm of many Chinese who have been waitiog and preparing for seven years for the biggest international event they have staged.