Olympic torch: lightning rod?

The Olympic flame arrives in Beijing on Monday, where a second torch will be lit and taken to Tibet, where Chinese mountaineers will attempt to take it to the top of Everest. China has said there are no plans to change the torch's two scheduled visits to the region, where anti-China protests turned violent in mid-March.

China's response to the unrest in Tibet has put Beijing's human rights record in the spotlight, frustrating the country's leadership, who had hoped for a smooth run-up to the August Olympic Games. The United States, United Kingdom and Germany have already condemned China for its response to the protests in Tibet; French President Nicolas Sarkozy has refused to rule out a boycott of the Olympics.

Beijing protests that foreign human rights groups are being opportunistic, using Tibet to smear the Olympics. Yet if it turns out that a massacre or even severe repression has taken place, it will make it almost impossible for many Western political leaders to attend the opening ceremony.

China wants to appear cooperative to the world, an image it is cultivating assiduously. The Olympics are just one part of a strategy to situate China in the minds of the international community as a stable, responsible power that nonetheless rejects the interventionist norms of Western governments on humanitarian grounds. Yet difficulties over Tibet appear intractable, and risk undermining its attempts to burnish its international standing.