Britain's IOC member, Sir Craig Reedie, hilariously declared that the IOC's contract was ''with the host city, it does not become involved in politics''. Why then the IOC's frequent references to human rights? It is all humbug.

Tourists have understandably stayed away. The 119 Olympic five-star hotels are only 78 per cent full, booked almost entirely with Games officials financed by some taxpayer somewhere. According to the Beijing authorities, tourist four-star hotels are just 45 per cent full, with overall visitor numbers 20 per cent down on the same month last year. This must mean a collapse in private tourism.

This should surprise nobody. It is an open secret that both Athens and Sydney lost on their tourist account through hosting the Olympics. Normal visitors avoid Olympic cities for fear of crowds. The downswing in block bookings can take years to return to normal. Australia admitted as much with its subsequent slogan, ''Where the bloody hell are you?''

People who say the Games make money, except for builders and consultants, are talking rubbish. They are the greatest public spending hit on Earth. Not for nothing are Britain's Olympics officials taking their bonuses in six-figure salaries, rather than waiting for Lord Coe's promised ''profit''.

The Chinese have shrewdly taken the view that the popularity of the Games is not an issue. What matters is the avoidance of nasty incidents broadcast to the world. Hence the clampdown on visas, even for bona fide tourists. Over three-quarters of the tickets have been allocated to Chinese, to ensure there are no embarrassing empty seats on camera, as in Athens four years ago.

At this point, China can justifiably crow. It has given two fingers to the IOC. It has pressed an army of builders into ensuring it delivers the project on time. It has reneged on its pledge, which the IOC formally announced, that the Games would ''help the development of human rights in China''. Why should they?

As the China pundit Mark Leonard has pointed out, the undoubted liberalisation of the Chinese economy and lifestyle in recent years has been paralleled by ''an increasingly sophisticated control of the public sphere ... not Western-style democracy but a high-tech model of deliberative dictatorship''.

But if China is winning the sprints it has yet to get the marathon in the bag. The spotlight that is planned to bathe Beijing in Olympic glory is not as biddable as in the past. The security operation designed to turn China into a giant television studio is itself receiving adverse publicity.

The political cliche that dictatorship cannot censor every blog, mobile phone and digital camera holds true. China may discourage the world's public from coming to the Games with its visas and repression, but it cannot ensure that no rogue journalists get through, least of all when tens of thousands of them are in town.

Tibet has already garnered enough global publicity to incur the envy of every oppressed minority. After a decade in which Beijing has won only sycophancy from the world's political, financial and media community, it is now enduring much hostile comment and for no other reason than the staging of the Games.

For all the nonsense talked of the ''Olympic legacy'' usually an unusable out-of-town wilderness the true legacy of Beijing will be not sporting or architectural but political. The Games are essentially of minority sports, which is why the IOC has always built them up as celebrations of world chauvinism, and why China (and now Britain) must be seduced with glory into spending so much money on them.

If electronic communication can ruffle the well-oiled feathers of the communist/IOC apparat, if brave Chinese can defy those who oppress them in the name of world harmony and if journalists can break loose from their freebies and do a proper job, then the decision to go to China might be vindicated. Soft power will have scored a win. We might hear less of the thesis that you can buy off freedom with bread and a $40 billion circus.

These are big ifs, but by no means impossible. Whether it needed so much money and effort to reveal the true nature of the Beijing regime to the wider world I cannot say. But it makes me wonder what murky side of Britain may be exposed in the same glare in 2012.

Guardian