Games bring China's rulers political gold

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - The successes China can claim from holding the world's biggest sports event are likely to entrench the patriotic zeal and political muscle that pulled the country through a tumultuous build-up to medals triumph.

The Beijing Olympics came laden with critics' hopes that the intense international gaze on China would help relax the Communist Party's stranglehold on power.

But the Party ran the Olympics according to its own formula, to impress citizens with the winning ways of one-party rule while smothering domestic dissent and garnering international stature.

"Demonstrate the superiority of the socialist system in concentrating energies to accomplish grand feats," President Hu Jintao told Beijing Games organisers days before the opening.

As China ends the Olympics proudly on top of the gold medal table, the Party emerges surer that its hold on patriotism and top-down political power can stay unthreatened, said Shi Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing.

"The government has used the Olympics to display its organising strength and win over the public with a new kind of self-confident nationalism," said Shi. "Perhaps Western powers should expect fewer, rather than more, concessions from China."

The Beijing Olympics were never certain to turn out this way.

Before the Games, China was buffeted by international turbulence over restive Tibet, ties with Sudan, censorship and shackles on dissent, and fears about food safety and pollution.