No Games of chance for China

By Rebecca MacKinnon
Beijing Bureau Chief

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The International Olympic Committee's thumbs up on Beijing’s Olympic bid was a welcome piece of good news after a rough patch for China’s international image.

For the past month, Chinese officials have been tussling with the United States about the incursion of a spyplane onto its territory, taking offense over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and handling international criticism over its crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group and arrests of Chinese-American scholars.

A young pilot named Wang Wei became the symbol of China’s defensiveness -- the need to guard the motherland against attackers and bullies who don’t respect China’s territory and don’t want it to become a strong nation.

His plane went down after a collision with the U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane. The Chinese media calls him a martyr who sacrificed his life to defend his motherland.

Now another man named Wang Wei is in the headlines, symbol of an open, cosmopolitan China . . . a jovial host to people from all over the world.

This Wang Wei (same Chinese characters as the pilot) is Secretary General of Beijing’s Olympic Bid Committee.

He was the Face of China to international viewers and readers after Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC Evaluation Commission, praised Beijing’s Olympic bid, saying “we believe the Beijing games would leave a unique legacy to China and to sport.”

Wang Wei’s modest reaction: “Over the next 60 days we’ll do our best to promote our readiness to stage a great Olympics in a new Beijing.”

The IOC noted that many more Olympic venues are still unbuilt in Beijing than in Paris and Toronto. But that’s not what worries Beijing bid officials.

They admit Beijing’s biggest challenge is not physical, but mental: an image problem.

In Beijing on Wednesday, a colleague of the second Wang Wei, Wang Hui, said she’s concerned Beijing is much less understood than Paris and Toronto. (Wang Hui rhymes with “wei" . . . no relation to the other Wangs.)

Ms. Wang pointed out that many more IOC members have been to the other two cities, which means that media reports about China and its capital city could have a much greater influence on how members vote.

“We feel the comments about Beijing from international media are sometimes not objective or fair,” she said. “They don’t really know Beijing.”

The solution? Soon after the IOC inspection team visited in February, Beijing’s bid committee approached a major Western public relations firm, Weber Shandwick Worldwide.

In 1993, when it bid for the 2000 Olympics, Beijing chose not to involve foreigners in marketing its bid, and lost by a narrow margin. This time Wang Wei and his cosmopolitan colleagues are not taking any chances.

“Beijing has an important story to tell and our global network is ready to take on the challenge,” said Shandwick’s Peter Poulos, in a press release announcing Shandwick’s new client issued in early May.

Shandwick employees were aggressively present in Lausanne, Switzerland after the IOC issued its report, scheduling interviews for Western journalists with members of the Chinese delegation.

Two more pr professionals hired by Shandwick were on hand as Wang Hui spoke to reporters in Beijing.

“Give us a call if you need anything,” said a smooth-talking young man. “I understand some journalists have had problems with access in the past.”