Aug. 29--This year's Olympics must be counted as a success from both an athletic and a showmanship standpoint, although it cost the Chinese government some $40 billion. The games also were notable for highlighting the rise of new media: People around the world accessed more than 1.2 billion pages and 72 million video streams on NBCOlympics.com through the Internet, while Yahoo drew even more unique visitors.

In the wake of what Chinese officials viewed as something of a coming-out party for China's place in the world as a Great Power, however, it's unclear what this international showcase might mean for China's future -- especially regarding political freedom in the country with the largest population on Earth.

Chinese communist authorities obviously were sensitive to the potential for embarrassing incidents in conjunction with the games and worked hard to prevent them. Some efforts were at least outwardly benign -- legions of "volunteer" squads filled with smiling people trying to assist tourists in having the most pleasant experience possible, highly organized events, and adjusting schedules to make for the most interesting live TV coverage possible given time-zone differences.

But not everything done to assure a perfect spectacle was so benign.

Those smiling volunteers often prevented tourists from going where they really wanted to go. Unsightly houses and neighborhoods were simply bulldozed. Known dissidents were jailed for the duration. The Chinese government designated several protest zones for "authorized" protests, but didn't authorize any protests from the few applications it got. Foreign protesters were detained and deported.

Will the fact that foreign governments and the International Olympic Committee were generally silent about China's manifest human-rights problems convince Chinese authorities that their model -- liberalized economic policies combined with strict one-party rule and tight discipline -- will work for the indefinite future? Or will the increased contact between China and the outside world, combined with a growing middle class and persistent problems in Tibet and Muslim-dominated western provinces, lead to some political liberalization as well?

We can only hope for the latter.

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