In July 2001, when Beijing was named host city for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese leaders, International Olympic Committee officials and quite a few media commentators confidently predicted the event would signal a global turning point.

The 2008 games would cement China's reputation as an emerging superpower. It would show that the once-insular nation had become a gracious and full participant in the world community. But most of all, it would be a landmark moment in the steady evolution of the world's largest communist state toward a much more open, tolerant society.

This sunny narrative was precisely what enabled Beijing to win over the IOC. It was eagerly pushed by China-friendly CEOs from around the world.

"This is China's chance to step onto the world stage," one U.S. business executive told Newsweek in February 2001. "It would ensure that the forces of good in China win out over the forces of evil." The same article quoted a foreign business executive as saying, "It will be impossible for China to host the Olympics and not open up."

Seven years later, the sunny narrative and its eager salesmen could not look more wrong. China's authoritarian leaders continue to limit basic freedoms and engage in broad human rights abuses. A violent crackdown on Tibetan pro-democracy protesters earlier this year showed the same contempt for dissent seen in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

There has been no evolution toward a more open society — or evidence of a new willingness to play by and respect international rules. This was reflected in China's complete abrogation of its promise to the IOC to allow thousands of visiting journalists the same sort of broad freedoms afforded journalists covering the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

Instead, in recent weeks China has decreed there will be many limits of many kinds - on who can be interviewed and when; on what neighborhoods can be visited; even on Internet access for foreign journalists.

There are also reports that journalists with a history of ever writing anything critical of China are the ones most likely to have trouble getting visas. Beyond that, even the most mundane requests — to transfer equipment or set up satellite trucks — are viewed with hostility, suspicion and resistance.

So much for the notion that China is a self-confident, maturing nation willing to undergo a critical examination.

And so much for the view that China's explosive growth shows it has a particularly able leadership elite. By bullying the very reporters they hoped would minimize or ignore all their broken promises, China's leaders have made a terrible mistake. The result: The Beijing Olympics are at least as likely to set back China's image as help it.

Should this happen, it would only embitter China toward the rest of the world — not bring us all closer together. So much for the grand hopes of 2001.

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