With the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics drawing near, the world will focus its attention on athletic competition rather than the politics of the Games. That minds will be diverted from China’s human rights failures will no doubt be welcomed by its government, since it will no longer be confronted by questions about the persecution of Tibetans, the imprisonment of journalists, and its record of steadfast support for Zimbabwe and other bloodthirsty regimes.

But there is another reason why China’s Communist leaders will hail the arrival of the actual sporting events: Chinese athletes are certain to excel at running, diving, rowing, and other Olympic endeavors. In addition to having put on the most lavish Olympics spectacle ever, China will be able to boast of having emerged as one of the world’s superpowers in sports.

China’s amply funded sports apparatus has been mobilizing toward the 2008 Games for years. China placed third in the medals sweepstakes in the 2004 Athens Games, behind America and Russia. China finished with nearly 40 fewer medals than did the U.S., but in gold medals it was only four behind America.

This year, China’s goal is to be number one. That is an ambitious standard for a country that didn’t even participate in the Games until 1984. But China already leads the way in sports like diving and gymnastics, and is primed to expand its dominance to other venues. As its athletes grab medal after medal, observers are likely to conclude that its victories on the playing fields are additional evidence of China’s status as a world leader. Some may go a step further and see athletic triumph as a testament to the strength of the Chinese political system.

But, in fact, there is little to admire in Beijing’s sports strategy. Nor is it worthy of emulation, certainly not by those who believe that individual freedom is an inherent value of athletic competition.

The Chinese athletes who will be on display in Beijing are the product of a system that begins, in some cases, at ages six or seven. Sports officials scour the country for children with the right physical equipment. They remove them from their homes and place them in one of 3,000 sports academies, where they may spend years training for the sport that the state has assigned them. Usually the children are limited to a few home visits a year. For the parents, this system — more like indentured servitude or military conscription than athletic recruitment — entails great sacrifice given China’s one-child policy.

The training regimen is brutal: six or seven days, hour after hour, year after year, sometimes under the tutelage of coaches from the old Soviet bloc. Injured athletes are placed under great pressure to train through the pain. For the very few who rise to world-class stature, the payoff is a lifetime of comfort in the national sports machinery. For the rest, life after competition can be grim, given that the athletes have no real preparation for life beyond sports.

As part of their Olympics medals strategy, Chinese authorities launched the 119 Project eight years ago. The project was named for the number of medals in those sports with different weight classifications or race lengths. In other words, medal rich sports, not sports which appeal to the Chinese people or which Chinese athletes have historically excelled at.

Among the most unsettling implications of the Chinese system is how it obliterates the concept of sports as something based on individual choice and talent. American athletes are inspired by love of sport, inner drive, and patriotism. Whereas Chinese athletes have been turned into disposable state assets.

Despite their embrace of the market and other changes, China’s leaders continue to believe, as Chairman Mao declared, that athletic triumph is like a “spiritual nuclear bomb.” They are willing to use tried-and-true totalitarian methods to advance their country’s standing in international sports. In doing so, they are following what the Nazis, Soviets, and other totalitarian states did by using the Olympics to burnish their image.

Many hoped that when Communism collapsed the Olympics would be transformed into something in which politics and the state no longer played so pervasive a role and the natural relationship between freedom and athletic competition was restored. Instead, the designation of China as the host country has ensured that these Olympics, like several before them, will be identified with dictatorship, not democracy.

By embracing — and possibly forwarding — the Soviet model of athletic development, China has reinforced the ethically warped proposition that totalitarian methods are acceptable in the universe of international sports.

Mr. Puddington is the director of research at Freedom House.