I haven’t had a chance to tour the Olympics center, but Brendan O’Neill from Spiked Online did.

He gets a tour from Madame Wang Hui, director of media and communications who he said looks like she just came off the set of Sex and the City.

Madam Wang Hui

He seems surprised that the center was filled with young people, wearing casual clothes. He reveals the China is using the PR firm Hill & Knowlton to show China in a more positive light to the world.

Here is an example of Hill & Knowlton’s advice:

Hill & Knowlton recently helped China to spin its Olympic death stats. Journalists around the world were saying that six labourers died while working on the Bird’s Nest stadium, when in fact two labourers died. Hill & Knowlton advised the Chinese to change their press release so that it didn’t say ‘Only two labourers died while making the Bird’s Nest’ but rather ‘Only two labourers died during the construction of all Olympic venues’. ‘Very useful advice!’ says Li Zhanjun.

I thought the figure was actually six.

He quotes a figure that 800,000 international tourists are expected to attend the games. 500,000 was usually quoted, before the visa troubles started and this morning on CNN I heard the figure was revised to around 150,000 foreign tourists.

He also visits the Shichahai sports training center and was impressed as I was with the facilities.