Meanwhile over 300,000 residents  have been forced to move from their homes as Beijing gears up to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

For the first time in history, this year the Olympic flame arrive in China. After today's lighting of the torch in Olympia, the flame will travel 78 thousand km and five continents, passing through various cities which have hosted the Games before finally reaching Beijing on May 5. Beijing will play host to the next Olympic Games in 2008.

When the flame arrives in the capital 120 persons (athletes, celebrities, and ordinary citizens) will take part in carrying the torch around many different places of the city over the course of two days.

Vice–president for the Olympic Games Organizing Committee,  Jiang Xiaoyu, said that the "torchbearers will cross the places that show both the ancient and the modern parts of Beijing."

Contrary to what was promised, the torch was scheduled to be carried atop Mount Everest. But the idea has been halted due to financial, technical and perhaps even political problems. Previously, Beijing had announced that two persons, one of which was a Tibetan man, would climb to the "top of the world" with the Olympic torch in hand, as a sign of friendship and lessening of tensions between Beijing and Tibet. 

Much more so than in Athens, the 2008 Olympics are having a huge impact on China. The choice of Beijing as the next site of the Olympic Games is seen as sign of international recognition of the giant economic steps the country has made in recent years.  

But the Games also represent the opportunity to reveal the country's many dark sides. Due to urban restructuring as the capital gears up to host the next Olympics entire neighborhoods are being demolished to build hotels, shopping centers, skyscrapers. 

People living in such districts are thus forcedly kicked out of their own homes and without proper help or compensation.

Last February the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions reported that 100,000 Beijing families were forced to move from their homes, each domestic unit composed of an average of three persons.

Yesterday, Human Right Watch's New York offices published a special dossier on forced demolitions in China. AsiaNews has also dedicated a dossier titled "New Churches Built to Destroy Even More", centering on the same general argument. (MR)

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• olympic
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• demolitions