The Australian, the biggest-selling national newspaper in the country, has highly praised the efforts made by the Chinese government in preparing the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games.
"We should all wish the People's Republic of China success as host of the 2008 Olympics, for which it has made heroic efforts to prepare itself," Frank Devine, a senior columnist with the newspaper, said in an article published Friday.
The article, entitled "China, this is the World," said China has spent a lot of money on Olympics-related construction in Beijing.
"The city has doubled the capacity of its public transport system. It has not only spruced up its neighborhoods but had a go at sprucing up its citizens, imposing sanctions against two of their favourite pursuits, smoking in enclosed spaces and spitting," said the article.
It pointed out that in an effort to reduce air pollution, China has closed down a number of factories in the vicinity of Beijing and, by cumulative restriction and decree, "has cut the number of cars on its streets by one-third."
The article also mentioned the first Olympic Games in Asia, staged by Tokyo in 1964, which it said were an image-transforming triumph for the host country.
As a result of the Olympics, the world embraced Japan's culture and products, it said.
"The 1964 Olympics helped Japan merge virtually seamlessly with the modern world," the article said.
The article went on to say that when a country takes on the expense and sweat of staging the Olympics, it professes a willingness to display itself to the world as it is, bright side uppermost.
"But this is not an invitation for outsiders to try to remodel it in their own image," it said.
Journalists reporting on the Beijing Olympics "will deliver a portrait of China's realities beyond anything we have previously seen," the article said.
"Olympics coverage may also afford the Chinese, as it did the Japanese, useful perceptions of how others see them," it added.
Source: Xinhua
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