Revelers crammed into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to await the announcement by outgoing IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch in Moscow on Friday, July 13th, 2001. Not since the 1989 democracy protests that ended in violence had so many people converged on downtown Beijing, although many were prevented from entering the square by columns of armed police lined up four deep.

Private cars, a relatively new phenomenon in this fast-changing country, packed the boulevard into the square. Firecrackers, supposedly banned in the capital, crackled through the night. Patriotic songs rang out through the night. From street cleaners to businessmen, many Chinese seemed to have a similar interpretation to the vote in Moscow. China tonight somehow arrived on the international stage.

In all, the celebrations tonight seemed to mark a coming of age for China, which resumed participation in the Olympics in 1984 and lost a bid to host the Games in 2000 by two votes to Sydney.

"I want to express the gratitude of the International Olympic Committee to all five candidate cities for their excellent work," Samaranch said. Then, as people huddled around radios and mobile phones, Samaranch said the words China had been waiting to hear: "The games of the 29th Olympiad in 2008 are awarded to the city of Beijing".

Instantly, Tiananmen Square was awash with red flags and the din of thousands of cheers.

Jiang grateful

Chinese President Jiang Zemin made an unannounced appearance and gave the exuberant crowd his "warmest congratulations."

A visibly moved President Jiang Zemin, followed by the rest of the ruling standing committee of China's Politburo, high-fived a crowd gathered amid a sea of Chinese five star flags at the Millennium Tower, built two years ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Communist takeover. Shouting "Comrades!" Jiang urged Chinese to work together to put on a great Games.

"Comrades! We express our deep thanks to all our friends around the world and to the IOC for helping to make Beijing successful in its Olympic bid," President Jiang Zemin shouted to the crowd after he and other members of the cabinet and Communist Party politburo appeared briefly on stage in Beijing.

"I hope the whole nation works hard along with residents of the capital city to stage successful 2008 Olympic Games. I also welcome our friends around the world to visit Beijing in 2008."

Within moments, traditional lion and dragon dancers were weaving their way through police and revelers, and endless streams of Beijing's 13 million residents were pouring towards the city center from every direction on foot, in cars and on bicycles.

Beijing won the race for the 2008 Games at the second round of a secret IOC ballot, receiving 56 votes. It defeated Toronto (22), Paris (18) and Istanbul (nine). Osaka was eliminated in the first round of voting, with six votes. The win exorcises the demons of Beijing's failed bid in 1993 to secure the 2000 Games, which it lost to Sydney by a mere two votes.

First Chinese Olympics

The 2008 Games will be the first to be held in China, the world's most populous nation with 1.3 billion people, and the first held in an Asian city since Seoul staged the 1988 Games. Human rights were a clear factor in Beijing's loss in the race for the 2000 games, coming so soon after the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square in 1989. This time, IOC delegates decided that awarding the 2008 games to Beijing would be a catalyst for faster reform in China.

Captains of industry predicted the Games would mean greater economic development. Senior Chinese intellectuals worried that the Games would only serve to strengthen the rule of the Communist Party over China, holding back political reforms. Others hoped that – as with South Korea in 1988 – the Games might push China to embrace greater political freedom.

Early international reaction to the decision was mixed, with some opposition U.S. lawmakers expressing anger at the decision. Human rights watchdog Amnesty International, refusing to either welcome or condemn the decision, urged China to improve its human rights policies.

Beijing has committed nearly $22 billion for improvements to its infrastructure and environment in the lead-up to 2008; building highways and subways, improving Beijing's noxious air and upgrading health care and communications. Beijing's leaders have also pledged that the Olympics would help further reforms. The city's bid committee said more that than 95 percent of Beijingers approved of the push to host the 2008 Games, giving it the highest support rating of all five bidding cities. 

"This has a huge meaning for us," said Zhang Mingeng, a real estate mogul in Beijing shortly after a colleague had doused him with pungent Chinese champagne at a roof-top party on a skyscraper here. "It constitutes a recognition of China by the international community. The world is saying here are the rules, play by them and you can become a member of the international community. China has arrived!"

Wang Dong, an itinerant construction worker, had a similar view: "This means people around the world will stop bullying China for a while," he said, reflecting the widespread view of many Chinese that China always seems to get a bad deal. "We won!"

"We've shown the world that China has changed since the days when we were a poor and rural country," said Ren Zhongqiao, a physics major, as his classmates hugged and jumped up and down behind him on Tiananmen Square.

The victory tonight is but one of two major events facing China this year – each with great potential significance for the future of this country and its political system. In November, China is expected to enter the World Trade Organization and agree to a litany of market-opening measures that will constitute a serious shock to China's economy that, while it has boomed mightily for the past two decades, has also benefited from protective tariffs and monopolies that will be swept away by the WTO.

Then and now

The celebrations tonight also underscored how different China has become since 1993 when the Olympic bid for the 2000 Games was awarded to Sydney.

Then China's government, sensitive to allegations of human rights abuses, made a show about releasing several prominent political prisoners, such as long-time dissident Wei Jingsheng, although subsequently many of them were re-arrested and jailed.

This time, Beijing seemingly paid little heed to criticism of its human rights record. In the run-up to the vote, China launched a crackdown on some of its more liberal newspapers, shutting at least two and removing several prominent editors. It also conducted a tough campaign against the Internet, investigating 68,000 Internet bars around China and shuttering 14,000. It declined to release five people, including Americans and permanent residents of the United States, who have been arrested on espionage charges. And, according to Amnesty International, it has executed more than 1,700 people in the past three months, many for non-violent crimes.

Some Chinese worry that China's victory would slow the process of political change here and give the Communist Party a boost in its bid to maintain an iron grip over the levers of power.

"More and more people in China want fundamental change, want political reform," said a leading Beijing intellectual, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared arrest. "But this victory could give the [Communist] Party another excuse to ignore those calls."

He also worried that real estate companies in league with party big-wigs would conspire to profit from the spending spree. Another widespread concern, he said, is that the government will institute a nationwide tax to pay for the Games.

"Given the corruption in this society," he said, "I don't really think many people want to pay more taxes."

Others, however, expressed hope that the Games would bring change.

"The Olympics means China's doors are going to be forced open even wider," said Liu Bo, a 26-year-old graduate student in linguistics. "That is going to bring about change that even the Party won't know how to deal with."

Samaranch gets his legacy

The IOC will at the weekend elect a replacement for Samaranch, who had wanted to make selecting Beijing as one of the legacies of his 21-year tenure.

Meanwhile, Beijing's chief rivals Paris and Toronto can now only dissect their bids to find out what went wrong. Some observers say the Paris bid was hampered by the unlikelihood that the IOC would allow two European cities in a row to host the Olympics. The 2004 games will be held in Athens. Toronto was seen as the most athlete-friendly choice, but it put crucial votes from African IOC delegates in jeopardy after a verbal gaffe by Toronto's mayor Mel Lastman just weeks before the vote. Prior to departing for Kenya to lobby African IOC delegates, Lastman quipped that he saw himself "in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me".

In the fallout of the IOC decision, one thing is certain -- the losing cities will blame politics for the decision to hand China the 2008 Games.

Back on Tiananmen Square, the proposed site for beach volleyball at the Games, thoughts were not so profound. Most people were just trying to have a good time.

"Everyone in China is extremely happy, especially us people in Beijing," Ge Xuezhe, a 22-year-old car repairman, shouted over the din of the crowd tonight.

Ge then took off into the night, waving a large Chinese flag, shouting "Beijing! Beijing!"

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