China's Games party set for "big bang" start

SHOW'S ON: Fireworks explode over the 'Bird's Nest' during a rehearsal for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

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Keywords: Opening Ceremony, Beijing Olympics

Beijing: China celebrates its ancient and modern power when the Olympics open on Friday, looking to put criticism behind it as world leaders arrived in Beijing.

The opening ceremony is the culmination of seven years of hard work that reshaped the capital, and sets the seal on a sustained economic boom that has seen China emerge as a new superpower. "It's a historic combination of a great country with a great sport event," Chinese newspaper the People's Daily said.

Guests in the head-turning "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium will include US President George W Bush, who flew in straight after making some of his bluntest criticism on human rights.

Displaying its new economic clout, China has invested $43 billion on the Games. Some $100 million, twice the 2004 Athens bill, has gone on "big bang" opening and closing ceremonies. The elements, though, have proved stubbornly hard to master.

Authorities have closed factories and pulled millions of cars off the road, but smog and haze enveloped the capital on Friday morning — obscuring views of the futuristic skyline. It all kicks off at 2000 hours (local time) on the eighth day of the eighth month — the number symbolises fortune in China — before an estimated global audience of one billion.

With 12 hours to go, foreign activists issued an on-air challenge to the host city with a pirate broadcast, calling for freeing of political prisoners and lifting of censorship. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said China's attempts to control the media "would never succeed". Their words were often drowned out by a local official broadcast. Small groups of foreign protesters have also popped up in Beijing this week, but have been whisked off quickly by police forming part of a 100,000-strong security force.

Suspected Islamist separatists killed 16 policemen in western China on Monday, and on Thursday a little-known Islamist group issued an Internet threat to the Games. A video dated August 1 carried pictures of the Beijing Olympics logo in flames and a speaker holding an AK-47 assault rifle and wearing a facemask, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a US- based firm that monitor statements from militants.

In Hong Kong, a lone protester unfurled banners on the largest suspension bridge on Friday calling for human rights.