91Èȱ¬

Have you ever invited people round and then worried beforehand that no one would show up, and that even if they did they would probably hate the food, criticise the carpets, break all your glasses, and possibly even throw up on your sofa?

That may be a little bit like what China felt before the Games began. Here's a guess at the country's worst fears as the Olympics approached.

* World leaders would boycott the opening ceremony. The VIP seats in the Olympic stadium would have to be filled with volunteers or with world-leader lookalikes to hide the embarrassment of so many no-shows.

* The city's pollution would be so bad that the marathon runners would have to carry head torches and maps to make their way along the route. In the unlikely event that anyone actually finished the race, no one would be able to tell who won, since the photo-finish equipment would be unable to see through the smog.

* Pro-Tibet/democracy/Falun Gong protesters would rush onto the track in the final steps of the 110m hurdles and trip up Liu Xiang just as he was about to cross the line to win a gold medal.

* Chinese athletes would be attacked by nerves and fall off the diving board/crash off the uneven bars/drop the weightlifting bar onto their feet, and fail to win any medals.

But those worst fears have not been realised. Plenty of world leaders came to the opening ceremony. Not a single country has boycotted the Games. Beijing's pollution hasn't forced any endurance events to be postponed (thanks, in part, to a lot of rain). Protesters haven't disrupted any Olympic events. Chinese athletes have won more gold medals than anyone else. Beijing has even hosted two of the most astonishing performers in Olympic history : Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

In other words, phew.

But, of course, there have been a few problems. Journalists arriving to cover the Games found that China was still blocking a number of news and human rights websites - breaking the Communist Party's promise that there would be complete freedom to report during the Olympics (after a bit of a row, many of the websites were unblocked a day or two later).

In many venues there have been large numbers of empty seats - a puzzling contrast to the scenes of desperation we saw in the days before the Games when local fans queued in the heat for two days to get tickets.

Then, there was the revelation that the pretty girl who sang at the opening ceremony was actually miming to the voice of a not-so-pretty girl (there's been a mini-campaign on the internet to persuade the Olympic organisers to allow the not-so-pretty girl to sing at the closing ceremony).

There's also the case of the two grandmothers who have been sentenced to a year's re-education through labour, after they applied to demonstrate in one of the parks set aside for protests during the Olympic Games. One of the grandmothers has no teeth and only one good eye - it's hard to imagine how she could get by in a labour camp.

And one problem still lies ahead. The International Olympic Committee is investigating whether or not some of the Chinese female gymnasts who did so well during these Games were under age. If the IOC finds that China faked the age of some of its gymnasts, this country could lose at least two of its gold medals.

Do these problems - blocked websites, empty seats, a miming little girl, grannies sentenced to a labour camp, an investigation into gymnasts - overshadow China's numerous triumphs at these Games?

It entirely depends on how confident China now feels. I've learned that this is a country which is acutely sensitive to any kind of criticism - however minor. But it also seems that China has gained a huge amount of confidence during these Games. Nobody has stopped this country from putting on its dazzling show. There's been no international conspiracy to do China down. Everyone has come - and most appear to have been hugely impressed by what they have seen - the city, the architecture, the performances.

Still, every event has its mistakes. How this country handles criticism of its Games will tell us a lot about the confidence of a post-Olympic China.

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