Beijing’s Winter Olympics may hasten China’s break with the West

TO A GREAT number of Chinese, their country has never been as impressive as it is today. They see it as self-evident that China—their increasingly strong, modern motherland—is a worthy host of uplifting global events such as the Winter Olympics, which are set to open in Beijing on February 4th.

At the very same moment, an opposite consensus is forming in the West. In many free societies, China’s rulers are increasingly seen as capable but cruel. They are credited with prodigious feats, whether that means girdling the nation with high-speed railways or sending rockets to the Moon. But they are seen as unbearably repressive, too, notably towards ethnic and religious minorities in such regions as Xinjiang. To Western sceptics, it is grotesque to allow the pageantry of the Olympics to be co-opted by such a regime.