Beijing in 1985 was an optimistic city. I loved Chinese culture but if I wrote about what my friends at the top of Chinese culture were telling me, they would surely get into terrible trouble. Meanwhile I came to detest Chinese politics which was then, like now, the politics of a dictatorship.

The suit was admitted under the principle of “universal competence” adopted by the Spanish judiciary in 2005 and under which Spanish courts can hear cases of genocide and crimes against humanity wherever they occur and whatever the nationality of the defendant.

The aim of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium is to allow Chinese Internet users to visit any site they like, without government interference. But their efforts have turned into a technical game of cat and mouse, with Chinese censors working to block tools created by the group.

But human rights advocates accuse the Chinese government of using the pretext of terrorism to silence dissent and clamp down on ethnic minority groups. Some security experts say many of the surveillance measures will probably stay in place after the Games, to bolster the reach of the authorities.

International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge said he expected some form of protest by athletes given the contentious nature of China’s human rights record and policies. The IOC was “not worried”, Dr Rogge said, because he felt confident “athletes will have common sense”.

Much remains unfree in China. The rights of public expression and assembly are sharply limited; minorities, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang Province, are repressed; and the party exercises a nearly complete monopoly on political decision making. But increasingly Chinese people can also live where they want to live, travel abroad when they can afford to, and find broader support for their property rights in the courts.

“If you are stolen, call the police!” With the eyes of the world on Beijing, Chinese authorities have tried to eradicate from menus and road signs many offbeat and nonsensical translations they fear could offend foreigners.

The International Olympics Committee was maintaining yesterday that no secret deal had been done to allow China to maintain its censorship of the internet and to continue to spy on emails. But its shift in forcing China into last-minute concessions told a different story.

The loosening of restrictions, however limited, came after senior International Olympic Committee officials on Thursday spoke with Olympic organizers and urged them to reconsider their decision to maintain a ban on politically sensitive sites, which critics said violated previous pledges China had made to provide uncensored Internet access to reporters.

We now know that when China’s top-level delegation bid for Beijing to host the 2008 Games seven years ago, promising a new China, they lied. As I write this, more than 150 websites are being blocked - including BBC China and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle - journalists are being harassed, and areas such as Tiananmen Square are being tightly restricted.