MOSCOW — The 2008 Summer Games are going to Beijing, the International Olympic Committee decided Friday.
Although the choice came as no surprise, it is controversial because of concerns over China's record on human rights.
"This will be very beneficial to China and for the rest of the world," IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said of Beijing's selection. "Possibly today opens up a new era for China."
Beijing has long been considered the favorite over rivals Toronto, Paris, Osaka and Istanbul, even as groups including the European Parliament condemned its bid.
The Chinese capital proved pundits right in Friday's vote by secret ballot, winning the majority needed in the second round of voting with 56 of 105 votes cast by IOC members.
Toronto and Paris fought hard but were no match for Beijing. Toronto came in second with 22 votes, followed by Paris with 18 and Istanbul with nine. Osaka was knocked out in the first round.
There had been some hope among Beijing supporters that the city would win a majority of the votes cast in the first round, just like Salt Lake City did in 1995 to capture the 2002 Winter Games.
But the victory was decisive enough for the usually reserved backers of Beijing's bid to literally jump for joy as they watched the results on closed-circuit television in the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel where the IOC is meeting through Monday.
Mitt Romney was with the bid cities in a separate hall when the vote was announced. "China erupted," the Salt Lake Organizing Committee president said. "They hooted like they'd won the Super Bowl."
Romney, who had spoken out in support of Beijing's bid earlier this week, said "the world will be watching China" for the next seven years to see if Games organizers follow through with their pledge to promote human rights.
Guobin Li, deputy secretary general of the Beijing bid committee, said hosting the 2008 Summer Games will be "a great opportunity for the Chinese people." He said having the Games will show the world the progress China has made on many fronts, including human rights. "We're normal persons," he said, joking that many Westerners believe Chinese women still have bound feet.
Kevan Gosper, an IOC vice president from Australia, said he was pleased with Beijing's win. "They deserved it against two very very strong contenders."
Jacques Rogge, an IOC member from Belgium and a candidate for the IOC presidency, said he was not surprised by Beijing's win. "They were the front-runners. It's not a dark horse that won."
But IOC member Gerhard Heiberg, who organized the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, said he had expected the Games to go to Toronto. "I think everybody was a little astonished at the results," he said.
Heiberg also struck a cautionary note about giving the Games to Beijing, saying the IOC should now monitor human rights developments in China. "We have a responsibility," he said, "by giving them the Games."
Home to one-fifth of the world's population, China has never hosted an Olympics. Samaranch, who is stepping down next week after 21 years as IOC president, made no secret of the fact he wanted Beijing to win.
Beijing came close in its first bid eight years ago, losing the 2000 Summer Games to Sydney, Australia, by just two votes.
For the IOC, which saw its reputation battered by the Salt Lake bid scandal, the allure of an Olympics in China is both political and practical.
The IOC's carefully cultivated image as an instrument of world peace will get a boost if the Olympics do succeed in further opening the Communist country to outsiders.
And there's money to be made in the world's largest consumer market — especially by the largely American group of corporations including Coca-Cola and McDonalds that contribute millions of dollars to the IOC to become Olympic sponsors.
Beijing may not be in the best time zone for American television, but Dick Ebersol, head of Olympics for NBC, noted the network is owned by General Electric Corp. "Obviously, China is the largest new market in the world," he said.
A 2008 Summer Games in Beijing is also good for the U.S. Olympic Committee, which will back an American candidate city for the 2012 Summer Games. Had Toronto been chosen, the chances of the Olympics coming back to North America four years later were virtually non-existent.
Friday's vote for Beijing may also be a factor in Monday's election of a new IOC president.
There is some suggestion the IOC will now be reluctant to pick a president from Asia. That means that Un Yong Kim's bid to become the first Asian to hold the IOC's highest office could be in trouble.
Kim, from South Korea, had been seen as a top vote-getter, along with Rogge. Dick Pound of Canada was trailing behind the pair, but the other two candidates, Anita DeFrantz of the United States and Pal Schmitt of Hungary, are long shots.
The only real surprise during a full day of bid-city presentations came when Toronto's bid team was asked about racist comments made by the city's mayor about traveling to Africa to meet with sports officials.
Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman had told a reporter last month he was "scared about going there. . . . I see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."
The mayor has since apologized to African sports leaders, both in person and in a letter. That apology has been accepted, Keba Mbaye, an IOC vice president from Senegal, told the assembly. "On behalf of my African brothers . . . the incident is now closed."
Lastman did not speak during the presentation Friday but did make a brief appearance in a video, talking about the city's lively nightlife. He declined to comment to reporters here.
After Friday's decision was announced, Charmaine Crooks of the Toronto bid committee said, "We knew Beijing was going to be a strong contender." Asked if she was surprised that IOC members did not more closely question Beijing's bid members about China's human rights record, she said, "Maybe they feel they've heard all the answers. They hit a lot of the right buttons."
Presentations to the IOC membership Friday by the bid cities provided some details that IOC members would have seen for themselves had visits not been banned after the Salt Lake scandal. Such trips were where many of the excesses associated with the 2002 Winter Games bid occurred.
Ten IOC members were either expelled or forced to resign and another 10 disciplined for accepting more than $1 million in cash and gifts from Salt Lake bidders.
Toronto's bid team talked not just about their plan to center sports facilities along the city's waterfront but also how they'd take care of their VIPs. IOC members were promised private cars, five-star hotel rooms and access to the exclusive Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
Paris offered to turn over any profits from hosting the Games to the IOC, along with all temporary facilities to aid athletes in less-developed countries. They attempted to show their city as warm and friendly, going so far in a video as to portray the stereotypical snobbish French waiter as not only helpful but willing to speak English.
As reflected in Friday's vote, Osaka and Istanbul were all but out of the race after the IOC's evaluation commission raised questions about how their Games would be financed.
Paris appeared to have lost momentum. And in the end, Toronto's bid team may have come on too strong for the still-staid IOC. Some members seemed startled when the Canadians' presentation began with Native American dancers and drummers winding their way through the session.
The Toronto team even gave Samaranch a gift at the end of their presentation, a Native American staff known as a "talking stick," made of an elk horn and decorated with the five Olympic rings. Samaranch smiled, and jokingly said to DeFrantz that he was "the pope" as he carried it back to his seat to adjourn the meeting for lunch.
E-MAIL: lisa@desnews.com