By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) - China exuded optimism on Tuesday about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saying its centuries of culture and history would light up the world, even as organisers came under renewed pressure to fulfil a media freedom pledge.
"We will show the world 5,000 years of splendid Chinese history, the significant achievements of modern China and the zeitgeist of the Chinese people," said the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, in a New Year's Day editorial.
"This is the year that 1.3 billion sons and daughters of China have been ardently expecting, the year when more of the world's gaze will be fixed on China, the year that will be etched into the history of the People's Republic," it added.
While recognising that unprecedented challenges lay ahead for the year as a whole, the editorial said that there would be far more opportunities than challenges.
"We are standing at a new starting point in history," it said, just over eight months before the Games open in Beijing on August 8.
While the way ahead is expected to be anything but smooth sailing, the editorial did not allude to looming problems such as the pall of smog which still plagues Beijing or frequent foreign criticism of China's human rights record.
Authorities are also well aware that groups such as Free Tibet campaigners or China's growing band of domestically dispossessed are hoping to use the Olympics to highlight their complaints in front of a massive global audience.
PRESS HARASSMENT
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said on Monday that reporters were still being subjected to harassment, interference and even violence while doing their jobs, despite government promises to grant total press freedom.
The group said there were "repeated violations" of temporary new regulations supposed to massively free up the reporting environment, including in such sensitive regions as Tibet and Xinjiang, although it added the new rules were a positive step.
Foreign journalists are now allowed to interview anyone without first getting government permission, and to go pretty much anywhere in China, although Tibet remains largely off-limits. Domestic media are still tightly controlled.
"The FCCC hopes that as a lasting legacy of the Games, the regulations will be made permanent, and will be fully implemented nationwide, including in Tibet and Xinjiang," it said in a statement.
But China hit back at repeated censure of its human rights situation by the United States, European Union and pressure groups, releasing late on Monday via its official Xinhua news agency a series of pieces lauding progress.
While Xinhua made no direct mention of the Games, Beijing has been subject to particular criticism for forcibly evicting residents to make way for Olympics-related projects, and for detaining dissidents it fears will embarrass China.
"Human rights, as a concept, have become a constitutional principle, a mainstream subject in the political life of both the Party and the state," it quoted Dong Yunhu, vice president of the China Human Rights Research Association, as saying.
