He stressed the need for the country's myriad security services to start snooping on disgruntled citizens in earnest, by 'strengthening information gathering and research'.

Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, said the key goals for this year's preparatory Olympic work would be a 'well-prepared [security] command system at different levels'.

'Security is a major component of the preparatory work which needs to be shifted to Games-time competitive operation this year,' he said.

Olympics security chief Qiang Wei also chipped in, saying Beijing would remain on high alert and security measures would be fine-tuned during 2007 to ensure a 'safe and harmonious' games.

'We all know the world today is far from peaceful,' said Qiang, head of the Olympic security co-ordination group.

'As an unprecedented sports event, the Olympic Games has been a target of international terrorist groups. Therefore, to protect people we will be taking proactive measures to envisage every possible threat.'

Security is where politics and the spirit of the games' must dovetail if the event is to be both safe and successful.

With a legion of active, vociferous critics and protest groups at home and abroad, China is undoubtedly a unique Olympic security case. It is little wonder, therefore, that Beijing has instigated perhaps one of the greatest security crackdowns in recent times to flush out and extinguish all threats, known or perceived.

Paranoia has reached fever pitch in the belief that any number of disgruntled peasants and frustrated intellectuals, oppressed ethnic minorities and leaders from disputed territories, or people with sinister geo-political motives from overseas rivals, will use the Olympics as a platform to gain international attention.

Many China watcher argue that instead of bringing about new freedoms, socio-political change and general enlightenment in China, the Olympics is actually providing a grand excuse for the edgy authoritarian government to tighten its grip and crush all dissenters under the licence of 'Games security'.

Of course, a genuine terror camp manufacturing terrorists planning to attack innocent people during August 2008, or any time, must be eliminated.

And the world was duly informed last week that police killed 18 terrorist suspects and arrested 17 others in a shoot-out in northwest Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. But what about the other areas of restlessness in China's diverse and fragmented society? What we are not hearing about is as much of a concern as what is officially revealed.

Religious groups and political dissidents we already know are oppressed, as are peasants and other citizens who try to mobilise protests so as to voice their concerns, many of which fall under that catch-all for most of China's social ills - corruption. Moreover, the frequency and intensity of security crackdowns has been steadily growing in recent years to ensure the country remains united as it transits rapidly from a poor Communist backwater to world economic superpower. Books by intellectuals are banned, daring editors silenced, challenging lawyers jailed, bloggers forced to identify themselves and many a website banned, while aggrieved citizens are bundled into the back of police wagons for daring to utter a peep.

Allowing foreign journalists to flood in and interview whoever they please wherever they please, is a cause for celebration. But the international media might find, because of the need for a 'safe and harmonious games', that all the mouths willing to tell the real stories about this complex nation are zipped shut by the heavy hand that will steer the country through 2007, China's special 'Year of Security'.