China declares it is ready to stage greatest Games

China declared Thursday it was ready to stage one of the greatest Olympics ever, even as pollution concerns and human rights controversies hung over the final day of preparations for the opening ceremony.

As the world's best athletes poured into Beijing and the Olympic flame passed over the Great Wall, Games organisers sought to shift global attention on to what they promised would be a spectacular celebration of sport.

"We have prepared for the Beijing Olympics for seven years and now we are ready... we are very confident indeed that we will stage a successful Olympics," organising committee spokesman Sun Weide said.

"Of course we hope that these will be a great Games, even the greatest."

For China, the Games are an opportunity to show the world how far it has come since the communists came to power in 1949 following a brutal civil war, and particularly the past three decades of phenomenal economic development.

The Olympics offer a promise of becoming an historic moment showing China's social as well as economic transformation, similar to the 1964 Games for Japan and the 1988 event for South Korea.

"China is a nation in transition, with a great future, tremendous potential and some challenges," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said after arriving in Beijing.

"I believe history will view the 2008 Olympics as a significant milestone in China's remarkable transformation."

Nevertheless, the vast array of controversies that have swirled around the Olympics this year continued Thursday to bedevil the Chinese leadership, from the smog that has stubbornly hung over Beijing to human rights storms.

A mixture of pollution and fog again cut visibility across Beijing to a few hundred metres (yards) despite much publicised emergency measures to improve air quality.