Can Beijing Olympics be Compared to Nazi Olympics of 1936?

British media compared Beijing 2008 to the Nazi Olympics of 1936, Chinese government was offended: It's a huge insult!

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said that the comparison of Beijing Olympics with Nazi Germany's 1936 Berlin Olympics by British media was "an insult to the Chinese and world people".

Adolf Hitler’s glee at exploiting the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a showcase for Nazism turned to fury when the black American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals. The Chinese leadership must by now be wondering whether staging the Games in Beijing will bring the regime more accolades than brickbats. Be careful what you wish for, as Confucius probably said.

So China had every reason to expect a trouble-free Olympics that would show its best face to the world. In Berlin the anti-Jewish notices were taken down in the weeks preceding the Games. In Beijing the use of cars has been restricted to reduce air pollution.

With the news blackout imposed by China on the country’s interior we cannot know whether the Tibetan protests are opportunistically linked to the forthcoming Games. But the Olympics are a political factor and the situation is dynamic. The eyes of the world are turned disapprovingly on Chinese policies.

History repeating itself: Beijing 2008 mirrors the 1936 Berlin Olympics which were no more than a hugely successful propaganda coup for Hitler.

Despite the four gold medals of Jesse Owens, the Germans were able to hoodwink the world into believing that they were as civilised a nation as any other.

And now, history is all set to repeat itself.

In fewer than five months, our athletes will once more be playing sports in a nation whose dictatorship is cruelly at odds with the most fundamental freedoms that we in the West take for granted.

Yet again, we are being told that the Olympics will be a force for good, and will help a totalitarian regime to adopt more liberal policies. Such thinking is, at best, hopelessly naive and, at worst, downright deluded.

Those who believe that Beijing 2008 will improve China's shameful human rights record are surely as myopic to the realities of modern China as the appeasers of the 1930s were towards Hitler.