WHILE Sino-US relations are too important to both sides to self-destruct over the Olympic issue, there cannot have been a China-watcher in America who was not intrigued to see how the IOC members voted.
The choice of a site for the 2000 Games has brought the mistrust between the two nations into sharp focus.
To read the papers over the past two months, one could easily be led to believe that the Cold War drama had been extended to a sequel, with China taking over the role once played by the Soviet Union. It had several acts: the US accusations that China wasselling prohibited missile parts to Pakistan; the failed attempts by Clinton officials to gain reassurance from Beijing, leading to the imposition of sanctions; the adverse publicity over the Golden Venture and other alien-smuggling ships; the Congressional calls for Beijing's Olympics bid to be rejected; the condemnation of the treatment of expelled activist Han Dongfang; the renewed calls for MFN to be revoked next year; the diplomatic fiasco over the Yinhe's alleged (and invisible) cargo of chemical weapons; and, last week, another proliferation claim - that China was about to test a nuclear bomb.
Boy, those US spy satellites had been having a busy holiday season. To China - which naturally replied to most of these bombshells with counter-blasts in the official media - the US was using diplomatic warfare to punish it in the same way it used live ammunition to stalk Somali warlord General Aideed.
CHINA, to the majority of the American population who do not have intellectual access to State Department diplo-speak, was suddenly Public Enemy Number One. With the Soviet Union deceased, Cuba crippled, and Iraq and Iran on leave, Beijing was the new bogeyman for the post-Cold War party - the regime that tortures political opponents and arms Islamic enemies.
In Washington last week to accept a human rights award, Hong Kong businessman and dissident-watcher John Kamm sounded the gloomiest note so far, saying that having spoken to people in the adminstration, he was certain that as things stood, China had virtually no chance of retaining MFN next year.