Let the games begin. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. The paralysis of smog. The terror of the secret police. The anxiety of a closed society pretending be open.

Welcome to the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, which begin officially on Friday morning (St. Louis time) but, in fact, already are underway. And scheduling problems are the least of the difficulties these games present.

For only the second time in Olympic history, the site of the games is a bigger story than the fact of the games. The first time was Berlin in 1936 when Adolf Hitler used the Olympics as a coming-out party for National Socialism. The world can only hope the Beijing games don’t have the kind of sequel the Berlin games did.

Still, the walk-up to the Beijing games dealt far more with China’s problems than with athletes bidding for glory. Yes, Michael Phelps of Baltimore may turn out to be the greatest Olympic swimmer ever, and Shawn Johnson of Des Moines may be this Olympiad’s gymnastics sweetheart, and coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University finally could end the nightmare for the American men’s basketball “Dream Team.”

But what about China’s human rights record, its crushing of dissent in Tibet, its support for outlaw regimes in Africa and Asia, its air pollution, its censorship of what turns out to be a not-quite-World Wide Web?

President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to attend the opening ceremonies, is ignoring all of that. Sadly, that’s the correct decision. It’s better to deal with China than not. Besides, the U.S. Treasury reports that as of the end of May, China held $506 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. If the banker holding your mortgage invites you to a picnic, you almost have to go.

China first bid for the Olympics in the early 1990s and was bitterly disappointed that the 2000 games went to Sydney, Australia. By July 2001, the government was ready with new pledges of openness and partnership, and Beijing easily outpointed Toronto in the International Olympic Committee voting for the 2008 games.

Indeed, the coming of the Olympics has been a source of immense national pride for most of China’s 1.3 billion people and, particularly, for its new middle class. Look at us, they say: We’re no longer wearing Mao suits and bicycling through the streets. We’re wearing jeans and Italian fashions, talking on our cell phones and burning gasoline. Just like you.

We’ve built a new airport and Olympic facilities that are architectural masterpieces. See our new cities and subways and highways. We’re no longer merely producers; we’re consumers. We can spend $40 billion on the Olympics and not bat an eye. Try that in any other country in the world.

George Orwell said “Serious sport is war without the killing.” America knows the truth of that better than most nations, having invented the now universal practice of waving flags and chanting the nation’s name to celebrate international athletic triumphs. The Olympics are supposed to be about individual athletic achievement, but that disappeared long ago in the U.S. medal race with the Soviet Union.

So who can blame the Chinese for shrewdly analyzing the Olympics schedule and focusing their efforts on sports in which the most medals are available, such as rowing? The Chinese intend to not only host the Olympics, but also to “win” them. Rowing alone offers 14 chances for gold medals, and when they tally the medals, a gold in quadruple sculls counts just as much as a gold in soccer.

The Chinese have built a sports training program that rivals that of East Germany during the Cold War. Children as young as three are plucked from their homes and inserted into national sports training centers. They don’t have the pushy parents and sports agents of the United States. They have sports as an instrument of nationalism.

That’s at once good news and bad news. It means the government will do everything it can to ensure the Olympics are a success. But when the Olympics are over, that new nationalistic pride will need other outlets. That’s when the hard work begins.