China’s upset 4-1 win over Taiwan in the first round of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month was a small but important step for a team that battles for recognition and funding.

Although trounced by Japan and South Korea in earlier matches, the politically tinged match renewed China’s bragging rights over the self-ruled island, which Beijing declares as its own territory and has vowed to bring back to mainland rule, by force if necessary.

The loss was a bitter pill for Taiwan to swallow, which was also beaten by China at the Olympic Games, and has a far deeper baseball following stemming from U.S. aid and soft power flowing into the island in the decades after the Chinese civil war (1945-1949).

“We have to accept it, and the fact that China have made great steps in baseball,” said Taiwan coach Yeh Chih-Shien.

It was also a surprise for me, having already consigned Chinese baseball to the waste-heap of history, after it emerged in January that a local developer had started to dismantle Beijing’s Olympic baseball venue with a view to replacing it with a shopping mall.

The win over Taiwan aside, China finished eighth out of eight at the Olympic Games.

Baseball, like softball, has been trimmed from the Olympic line-up and won’t be played at the 2012 London Games. It will have to fight for inclusion at the 2016 Games against other hopeful sports, including squash, rugby, golf and karate.

This bodes ill for the game’s development in China, where government funding is almost exclusively channeled into a rigid state-run sports system charged with producing champions for international competitions.

Still, there’s nothing like a good dose of patriotism to help open up the government coffers.

The idea of its national team getting smacked around the Olympic stadium in front of home fans by the world’s seven best teams stung sport officials into action after Beijing won the bid in 2001. A professional league was set up quickly, and money was thrown at American coaches and trainers to hone China’s top players into a team. Those players were also flown across Asia for bruising encounters against better teams at international tournaments.

Although China got creamed at the Games, victories on the international stage are looked upon favourably by government sporting mandarins. There’s nothing like jingoism to open up government coffers, and China’s bitter rivalry with neighbours South Korea and Japan might just see it try to make more inroads on the world stage. 

Still, the game’s local custodians face an uphill battle to build a following for the sport. Only a few dozen fans generally turn up to matches for the local professional league, and the game remains all but a mystery to the man on the street.

It’s still not clear whether a seed was planted at the Olympic baseball venue among the few thousand Chinese who saw their team get walloped. While they enjoyed top quality sport, they were also told to pay close attention to the play, lest a fly ball pop them in the eye when they weren’t looking.

Photo caption: China’s infielder Hou Fenglian (L) slides home safely while Taiwan’s catcher Kao Chih-kang looks on in the first inning during the World Baseball Classic (WBC) Tokyo round in Tokyo Dome March 7, 2009. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

Sebastian Coe says London is undaunted at having to follow Beijing when it hosts the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2012.

“It’s a massive responsibility,” the chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games told a news conference on the eve of the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

“We don’t find it daunting. I can only relate it to when I was sitting in a stadium when I was still a competitor watching an outstanding performance in my own event,” added the twice Olympic champion middle distance runner. 

“I didn’t feel cowed by it, I went out and wanted to emulate it or even better it… Beijing has delivered a spectacular Games and we will also deliver a spectacular Games.”

Click here to read the full story.

PHOTO: Brazil’s Lucas Prado (R) celebrates with his guide after they won the men’s 100M T11 final at the Bird’s Nest, during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Sept 9, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

My abiding memory from these Games  will be watching Usain Bolt give everything he had to break a world record most of us had thought unbreakable.

Michael Johnson’s time of 19.32 in the 200 metres had never been seriously challenged before the Jamaican sprinter, a headline writer’s dream, decided it was finally time to get down to some serious work.

Bolt had won the 100 metres, and broken the world record, with ridiculous ease on the Saturday to set the Games alight. He was running so well that he had time to ease up well before the line and still record a commanding win.

Wednesday was different. Again, he had the race won well before the line, thanks to a brilliant bend, but there was no question of him slacking off as he hurtled down the straight. I could see him grimacing with pain as he neared the finish line before looking over to check the time.

The clock stopped on 19.31 but times are often rounded up or rounded down and there was a second or two to wait before we would find out whether he had broken Johnson’s world record or merely equalled it.

Those seconds seemed a long time for me — heaven knows what Bolt must have been feeling — but eventually the time was rounded down to 19.30. It was an incredible achievement for the Jamaican and a memory I will treasure.

This is the seventh and last in our series of Beijing snapshots — moments from the Games that will live long in the memories of all who witnessed them.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt in the 100m, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 6: Michael Phelps, by Derek Parr here.

PHOTO: Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks up at the scoreboard as he crosses the finish line to win men’s 200m final of the athletics competition in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 20, 2008. Bolt set a new world record with a timing of 19.30 seconds. REUTERS/David Gray

I’d expected the worst when I got to Beijing three weeks ago. I remember what it was like in another Communist country — East Germany with its suppressed and scared people coupled with deplorable service and shoddy quality everywhere you turned.

That’s roughly what I had in mind for China, although I knew Beijing itself would certainly be a more prosperous and modern place than East Germany, and with a bit of window dressing for the Olympics.

But China has turned out to be a lot different than I imagined. Even if it is perhaps a facade for the multitudes of foreign journalists like me getting their first taste of China, the single-most overwhelming aspect for me has been the wholehearted friendliness of the people.

I’ve been looking everywhere for that proverbial half-empty glass and the fly in my soup ever since I got here but instead have found mostly kind, helpful and friendly Chinese people who have been doing perfect 10-score back-flips to keep me and the fraternity of curmudgeon-like journalist colleagues from Seattle to Saigon happy.

I’m sure they’ve been drilled on how to be friendly and helpful to Lao Wai (foreigners) like me. The volunteers in Athens were all pretty friendly too, until the last day of the Olympics when they started ignoring my questions and the smiles disappeared. Here they haven’t stopped smiling or being helpful yet.

It doesn’t mean there haven’t been angry, tense, frustrating moments. And no one here can forget the ostracised and punished dissidents in China (you wonder why free speech runs into limits in such a powerful and proud country with so much going for it).

I’ve also had a few minor run-ins with rather inflexible local officials. But there is still no escaping the kindness, smiles and friendliness of the Chinese people everywhere you turn. It’s contagious.

Just before an interview with an athlete the other day, the battery on my tape recorder died. I turned to a local Chinese volunteer to ask if she knew where I might be able to buy, find or borrow a new one. “Sorry, no.” No worries, I told her. I’ll manage.

A few minutes later she ran over with new batteries. It was unreal. She had made it her personal mission to search the venue for a battery for me. Could anything like that happen in London in 2012?

My favourite line of the Olympics has been this one from a 22-year-old student walking on Tiananmen Square just before the opening ceremony. It sums it all up best: “My heart is bursting with excitement about the Games. I want the people to see what is special about China.”

PHOTO: Volunteers stand near targets with arrows during the men’s archery individual ranking round at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 9, 2008. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

Michael Phelps trouncing his rivals is always something fantastic to see, and here in Beijing it took your breath away to watch him so often leave everyone else for dead.

But the races which stick most vividly in my mind are the two in which gold appeared to have escaped him.

First of those was the 4×100 freestyle relay. I thought the race was lost for the U.S. when Frenchman Alain Bernard turned for the last length nearly a second up. But Jason Lezak had other ideas and snatched victory with the swim of a lifetime. I’ll never forget the sight of Phelps roaring his joy and release.

Then there was Miroslav Cavic reaching for gold in the 100 fly, only for Phelps, charging through the faster, to swing his arms over, hit the wall first in that final lunge and win by just one hundredth of a second. I’d expected Phelps to catch him earlier but thought, at the death, he’d run out of time to do it.

The next day Phelps made it eight in the medley relay and I had been lucky enough to witness each movement of his swimming symphony.

Swimming is my sporting passion. I’d been in Munich for my first Olympics in 1972 but was covering gymnastics and couldn’t get to the pool nearby to see any of Mark Spitz’s seven golden swims. Thirty-six years on, it was all the sweeter to watch Phelps take his place as arguably the greatest Olympian of them all.

I may have missed the seven but I got the eight.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the sixth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

One more to come.

PHOTO: Michael Phelps of the U.S. competes during his team’s victory in the men’s 4×100 meters medley relay swimming final during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Aquatics Centre, August 17, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

As Olympic visitors started to worry on Sunday about airport return traffic, cars in Beijing were being parked on sidewalks again.

Night clubs were open after an anti-prostitution blitz a few weeks ago. Once banished vendors scrummed on sidewalks to sell Olympic pins, the collection of which had grown to a competitive roar among locals close to the Games.

In shopping districts, you’d win gold for walking 100 metres in under an hour, a silver to stay standing amid shoves and a bronze to hear yourself talk on the phone.

China’s athletic dominance at a terrorism-free Olympics motivated celebratory locals to re-emerge into the streets over the final days of the Games, clogging venues with bodies and cars, basically returning to life as usual.

The coming-out followed a chill over Beijing orchestrated earlier this summer to reduce the risk of upsets during the country’s signature event.

“There’s a happy atmosphere now in Beijing,” said Sky Zhou, 23, a government employee, on Sunday as he joined crowds of police, military and athletes in lining up for the closing ceremonies. “Two weeks ago there was an atmosphere of anticipation.”

Before the Olympics, Beijing sent migrant workers home, removing the ubiquitous din of hammers and the smell of poured cement at construction sites. Beijing car owners can drive only on alternate days, hollowing out once gridlocked intersections the size of small sports fields.

Planes all but exceeded passengers at the normally packed Beijing airport. Chinese outside Beijing stayed home to avoid newly mandated interrogations at highway or railway checkpoints about their reasons for visiting the capital. For a while it was oddly reminiscent of the outbreak of SARS in 2003, when 2,500 people got sick in Beijing, at least 190 died and there was a ghostly feel about the city.

“The Olympic atmosphere is better than the normal one,” said university student and Games spectator Long Su, who has lived in Beijing for four years. “The construction sites have faded out, and my feeling is that Beijing has gotten cleaner.”

Riding a wave of sporting euphoria after its best Olympic performance in a century, Britain accepted Olympic host-nation status from China on Sunday with a huge street party in front of Buckingham Palace.

Owen Wyatt catches up with Olympic gold medallists Michael Phelps and Bradley Wiggins as London throbbed with 40,000 partygoers at a live concert to start the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics.

It was everything the event was not supposed to be. The Olympics should embody sportsmanship and fair play. Taekwondo is about discipline and civility in a fight.

Unfortunately Cuba’s Angel Vaoldia Matos forgot about both in the heat of his bronze medal bout.

Matos was leading 3-2 against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov when he slumped to the floor rubbing his leg. When he was disqualified for exceeding a minute’s injury time, his coach rushed on to the mat and Matos exploded in anger, reacting to the referee’s call by clocking him with a well-aimed kick to the head.

The discipline of the taekwondo mat descended into chaos as both Matos and coach stormed out, with the head of the World Taekwondo Federation in hot pursuit.

The sport’s governing body reacted swiftly and strongly. Both were banned for life from the sport for what the federation said was behaviour that strongly violated “the spirit of taekwondo and the Olympic Games.”

Matos’s bouts in Beijing were struck from the Olympic record. Order was restored.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fifth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: The greatest dive in Olympic history, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Angel Valodia Matos of Cuba kicks referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden during his men’s +80kg bronze medal taekwondo bout against Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 23, 2008. REUTERS/Issei Kato

The million dollar question on the minds of many: Will China change after the Olympics?

I’ve worked intermittently in Beijing for 11 years and in Taipei for 15, but analysing the world’s most populous nation, and an opaque one for that matter, is like a blind man feeling an elephant.

In many ways, I expect it to be business as usual for the Communist Party post-Olympics, resisting political change and tightening the security noose in restive Tibet and Xinjiang. But my money is also on ordinary Chinese clamouring for greater freedoms and forcing their government to be more transparent and accountable.

Chinese have never had it this good since the 1949 revolution, enjoying unprecedented personal freedoms after three decades of liberalisation transformed the country from an economic backwater into the world’s fourth-biggest economy.

They have traded their Mao suits for business suits. They are no longer rationed food and have more than enough to eat. They can choose where to live, travel, study and work and don’t need Party approval to tie the knot.

There is no turning back the clock. As China seeks its rightful place in the world, it is likely to be more open and integrated with the rest of the world.

The word “Westernisation” is still taboo among Chinese leaders, but many of my Chinese friends fancy jeans, McDonald’s hamburger, Kentucky fried chicken, Coca-cola, Hollywood movies and rock and roll. Many Chinese have yet to forgive and forget Japan’s wartime atrocities which Japanese ultra-nationalists claim were fabricated, but Beijing’s roads are filled with Japanese cars and Chinese youth are obsessed with Sony Playstations and Nintendo Game Boys.

With or without the Games, China will change at its own pace.

There is no need to gaze into the crystal ball to find out what China’s future will be. The weather in recent days may be a barometer: cloudy one day, thunderstorms another and finally bright sunny skies.

PHOTO: This combination picture shows the Olympic flame before (L) and after it was extinguished during the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium August 24, 2008. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

The Water Cube was almost silent as a slight blonde man who two years earlier was not even diving leapt off the ten metre platform, twisted and somersaulted through the air and slid into the water with just the slightest of splashes.

Matthew Mitcham resurfaced to an explosion of applause and as the judges’ scores came up his smile of delight dissolved into tears of disbelief.

He had snatched a medal gold from the Chinese favourites with just one, perfect dive.

For the next hour the Australian looked how I always imagined Olympic gold medalists should — overwhelmed with disbelief and delight.

In some ways it was incredible Mitcham was even in Beijing, much less topping the podium. He had battled depression and burnout, retired and come back before he turned twenty. And shortly before he came to Beijing he went public about his sexuality, the only openly gay male athlete at the Olympics.

I felt sorry for the Chinese diver who came second. But after watching his team mates take the other seven medals, some apparently more relieved to have done their duty than excited about the result, it was an unforgettable upset.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fourth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Matthew Mitcham of Australia competes in the men’s 10m platform diving final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 23, 2008. REUTERS/Phil Noble