China's official motto for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, "One World, One Dream," is beginning to seem like one big joke.

To secure the Games and all the prestige that comes with them, China's government promised that it would do more to respect human rights and that the media covering the Games would be free of censorship. With just weeks to go before the Games begin, neither has proven true.

Isolation only hardens totalitarian regimes, so the gamble the International Olympic Committee took when it awarded the Games to China was worthwhile. But it's a gamble that the committee, the athletes and China will lose if the story of the Games becomes not one of athletic accomplishments and international brotherhood but repression, censorship and violence.

Each day, it seems, brings additional proof that China did not deserve to host the Games. The latest came Friday when the English language South China Morning Post reported that Chinese authorities planned to secretly ban blacks and Mongolians from Beijing bars during the Olympics. Some Africans had been selling drugs in Beijing bars, and some Mongolian women were working as prostitutes, according to Canada's Globe and Mail, but the planned ban is reportedly a blanket one.

Blacks living in Beijing are reporting regular harassment - being asked to pay higher cover charges to enter bars and forced to show passports when white foreigners are not. Bar owners have reportedly been forced to sign a pledge to ban all "undesirables" during the Games. One can only imagine the consequences for violating the ban.

What will happen when black tourists are turned away and they go to the press?

Chinese authorities are reneging on promises of press freedom, denying visas to some visitors and journalists assigned to cover the Games and limiting the hours that networks televising the Games can operate. So far, they've only been authorized to broadcast from 6 to 10 a.m. and 9 to 11 p.m. Satellite access, which has been severely restricted, will supposedly be permitted during the Games, but no one is counting on it.

All demonstrations, commercial messages and protests are strictly prohibited, but when a protest occurs, it's news. With much of the world angry over China's repression of Tibet and the blind eye it's turned on the genocide in Darfur, protests are likely. But the networks, which spent vast sums for the rights to air the Games, fear that they will lose their investment if they report the news. Others fear worse. Some international journalists, including several for American networks, have reported getting anonymous death threats linked to coverage of protests in Tibet.

Innocent Chinese are suffering as well. Chinese authorities have been evicting and tearing down the slum homes of people living near the Olympic venue and banishing mental patients, beggars and others who might send a less than glossy image of the nation out to the world. That too, is news that the world will want to see.

The Chinese government seems unable to resist exerting rigid control to prevent dissent and project a false reality. Unless it does, the international stature it hoped to achieve by hosting the Games will be that of a brutal oppressor. The choice is theirs, but at the moment, the world's small ration of respect for China's government is shrinking, not growing.