Is China facing a terrorist threat?

Olympics organisers stress that venues are safe from terrorist attack, but the plight of the Uighur Muslims has been ignored at the country's peril

The killing of 16 Chinese policemen just days before the start of the Beijing games - the lead story for the Guardian - was the worst kind of publicity for the Chinese government in the run-up to the Olympics.

It has highlighted the plight of Turkic-speaking Uighur Muslims, who make up 8 million of the 19 million population in Xinjiang, a mineral-rich region three times larger than France.

Despite Chinese fears of terrorism, Rosemary Righter in the Times does not think the episode is a harbinger of other attacks. "China does not have a terrorist problem, in Xinjiang or anywhere else. It might not even have a nationalist problem if it gave Uighurs a fairer deal. Beijing needs to wake up and smell the kebabs and acknowledge the Uighurs' right to be themselves. The threat to the Olympics is minimal."

Commentators take up the broader question of what the Olympics means for China. Victor Cha, in the International Herald Tribune, chides those who criticise Beijing for not opening up more politically. He argues that the Olympics spotlight has already forced China to change its foreign policy, putting pressure on Sudan in Darfur by withdrawing trade privileges, and on the Burmese junta by cutting arms sales. "Pre-Olympic pressures affected political change that years of diplomacy could not."

Minxin Pei, writing in the Financial Times, is not so sanguine. He laments the absence of non-governmental organisations from the preparations for the games. The weakness of Chinese NGOs, he argues, is a rude reminder that the political evolution historically associated with economic development is not taking place in China.

George Bush, who is on his way to China for the opening ceremony on Friday, neatly reflects the world's ambivalence to Beijing in an interview with the Washington Post. He says it's hard to tell whether human rights have improved in the past eight years, but emphasises the importance of engaging the Chinese. The Post says this is a striking comment, from a president who came to office with aides depicting China as a "strategic competitor" and surrounded by hawks who looked suspiciously upon the Chinese government.

Just in case we forget that the Olympics is supposed to be about sport, many papers carry a picture of the British marathon runner Paula Radcliffe, whose prospects may have been blighted by a spider that bit her on the toe three weeks ago.