The Chinese have on their game face.
We in America are well familiar with the attitude of a home team's fans whenever covetous visitors are about to step on their turf.
This is our house; we set the rules.
So it is with China: its Olympics, its rules.
Outsiders may cry out that the rules abuse human rights. But instead of grateful thank yous from the abused, mostly what China's critics have heard back are shouts of "How dare you!" from the loyal fans.
The Chinese are pumped, swelled with national pride that they are hosting the Olympics. And they don't want anyone bringing them down.
Indeed, thousands of Chinese picketed French-owned Carrefour stores in their country after anti-China demonstrators waylaid an Olympic torchbearer traveling through France.
Once the torch has been fired up tonight in Beijing, China wants the world's eyes glued to events on the tracks, fields and arenas where the athletes will be competing.
But so did this country when it hosted the Summer Games in Los Angeles and Atlanta. After all, isn't the Olympics just about sports?
No, not really.
If politics weren't meant to be part of the Olympics, then the organizers of the modern Games should have never allowed teams to identify themselves by nation.
Since they are, the athletes following their country's flags into the stadium tonight will also bear the weight of each nation's politics, treatment of its people and others, military strength and economy.
That China in the seven years since it was awarded this Olympics has not made the environmental and democratic progress that the West had hoped for has led to much handwringing about these Games.
The International Olympic Committee seemed greatly chagrined to learn last week that promises of an increase in Internet freedom for visiting journalists were being broken. China finally relented a bit, but the Web won't be wide open.
President Bush will be at the opening ceremonies, becoming the first U.S. president ever to do so on foreign soil. In remarks yesterday in Bangkok, Thailand, Bush said: "America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents and human-rights advocates and religious activists. . . . We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights."
But the speech seemed perfunctory. If Bush felt that strongly about China's strongarm tactics, he wouldn't be in Beijing. And if China really cared about what others thought, its response wouldn't have accused Bush of meddling.
Still, China has changed some because it wants its Olympics to be remembered positively.
Enough pollution remains to threaten the health of athletes, but transportation and environmental changes have been made that should positively impact the population long after the Games are over.
China has not done enough as Sudan's major trade partner to bring relief to the oppressed people of Darfur. But Chinese President Hu Jintao is said to have helped persuade Sudan President Omar al-Bashir to accept a United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force.
There have been no similar signs that China intends to loosen its grip on Tibet. And, if anything, dissidents have been dealt with more harshly as the Games approached, with the regime seeking to keep them out of sight and out of mind.
But that won't happen. Because the Olympics are about politics as much as they are about sports, and China will find out - as the winning countries' flags are being flown and national anthems played - that truth, too, will triumph.