China celebrates its ancient past and modern power at the Olympics opening this afternoon, seeking to shift the global focus from rights criticisms to sport.
The ceremony caps seven years of work that reshaped Beijing and sets the seal on an economic boom that has seen China and its 1.3 billion people emerge as a new superpower.
"The historic moment we have long awaited is arriving," President Hu Jintao told world leaders including US President George W. Bush at a welcome lunch, saying the Games were an opportunity for reconciliation across the globe.
"The world has never needed mutual understanding, mutual toleration and mutual cooperation as much as it does today."
More than 80 leaders and royals will attend the ceremony in the head-turning, metal-latticed Bird's Nest Olympic stadium.
Advertising its new economic clout, China has invested $43 billion on the Games. Some $100 million, twice the 2004 Athens bill, has gone on "big bang" opening and closing ceremonies.
The Games start at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month -- the number appropriately symbolising fortune -- before an estimated global audience of at least one billion.
Some 15,000 performers and 29,000 fireworks will give the Games a glittering start. Film director Zhang Yimou, whose work was once banned in China, was given the task of condensing 5,000 years of Chinese history into one show.
The careful choreography extends well beyond the stadium.
A security force of 100,000 police fanned out to prevent attacks and protests, while dissidents have been swept away.
Many are being held under house arrest, while others have fled to distant provinces or been taken on enforced "holidays" by state security minders, human rights groups and activists said.
"I can go outside, but I have to ride in the police car with my guards wherever I go," said Yu Jie, a dissident-writer speaking by telephone. "It's absurd, because I have no interest in the Olympics, not even in watching them on television."
SMOG PERSISTS
The elements, though, have proved hard to master.
Authorities have closed factories and pulled millions of cars off the road, yet smog and haze enveloped the capital on Friday -- obscuring views of the futuristic skyline.
There was also a chance of showers in the evening, despite talk Beijing would use experimental technology to ward off rain.
With hours to go, foreign activists issued an on-air challenge to the host city with a pirate broadcast, calling for freeing of political prisoners and lifting of censorship.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said China's attempts to control the media "would never succeed". Their words were often drowned out by a local official broadcast.
In Hong Kong, a lone protester unfurled banners on the largest suspension bridge on Friday calling for human rights.
And in Nepal, police detained at least 740 Tibetan refugees who tried to storm Beijing's consular office to protest against Chinese rule in their Himalayan homeland. Suspected Islamist separatists killed 16 policemen in western China on Monday, and on Thursday a little-known Islamist group issued an Internet threat to the Games.
A video dated Aug. 1 carried pictures of the Beijing Olympics logo in flames and a speaker holding an AK-47 assault rifle and wearing a face mask, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S.- based firm that monitors statements from militants.
The best-known face of Chinese sport, 7ft 6in NBA basketball player Yao Ming, will lead his team at the opening ceremony.
But in a move that could embarrass both China and Sudan, U.S. athletes chose former Sudanese refugee Lopez Lomong, a victim of government-sponsored Arab militias in the south who fled at the age of six in 1991, to carry their flag around the track.
China is a major oil investor and arms seller in Sudan, and global campaigners blame it for failing to pressure Khartoum to end the conflict in its western region of Darfur.
Unfortunately for the Olympic ideal of global harmony, the two Koreas failed to agree to march at the opening as a unified team even though they managed that in 2004 and 2000.
Though Bush said he was coming for sport not politics, he gave a speech in Bangkok en route voicing "firm opposition" to China's detention of dissidents. At the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, he reiterated on Thursday "our belief that all people should have the freedom to say what they think and worship as they choose".
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he preferred a "softly, softly" approach in pressuring for change in China.
The finer points of global geo-politics are unlikely, however, to dampen the enthusiasm of many Chinese.
"My heart is bursting with excitement about the Games," said Zhu Shegqiang, a 22-year-old student walking through Tiananmen Square. "I want people to see what is special about China."
Sporting action hits top gear the day after the ceremony.
After weeks of less than glowing headlines, China can look forward to a probable publicity boost. The first gold will almost certainly be awarded in the 10m air rifle contest on Saturday, and Chinese shooter Du Li is a strong favourite to win.
After coming third in the medal table in 2000 and second in 2004, China is hoping to topple the Americans this time around.