With the approach of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, the Chinese government is making all kinds of preparations to host the Games and to welcome foreign visitors and athletes. It knows that the eyes of the world are increasingly turning to China.

To burnish its international image, it is teaching its citizens better manners, such as refraining from spitting in public so that they will not embarrass their country. And to fulfill a pledge made to the International Olympic Committee, China liberalized rules governing foreign journalists last January.

Many people hope that the overall human-rights situation in China will improve as well in the aftermath of the Games. This, after all, was what happened in South Korea in the wake of the Seoul Olympics of 1988. Beijing likes to say that it takes time to make changes and that the human-rights situation in China is better today than it has ever been. This is probably true. Even dissidents acknowledge as much, but many wish that the improvement could be a little faster and the steps taken a little bigger.

One recent example of change was the treatment of a 79-year-old physician and AIDS activist, Gao Yaojie. In the 1990s, she exposed how HIV had been spread in Henan province through illegal blood sales, with the connivance of provincial officials, resulting in thousands of people being infected with HIV.

As a result, in 2001 she was awarded the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. However, she was barred from leaving the country to receive the award. Again, in 2003, she was prevented from travelling to the Philippines to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.

This year, she was chosen by Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit group, to be a recipient of its 2007 Global Leadership Award for Human Rights. The provincial authorities' initial reaction was the same as before. They put Gao under house arrest so she could not go to Beijing to apply for a visa to the United States. Pressure was put on her relatives and friends, including her son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and brother, to persuade her to abandon the idea of receiving the award. Her son begged her not to go for fear that it would upset the authorities. Her brother asked her to pretend she was sick and so could not travel.

However, after U.S. senator Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened, the Chinese government relented and agreed to let Gao apply for a visa in Beijing.

After her arrival in Beijing, Gao was quoted as saying: "It is so painful that I think death is better than life. If I am dead, then nobody can force me to lie." (She is reported to have posted her will on her blog.)

But she did acknowledge that there had been an improvement. After all, international pressure had caused the Chinese government to lift the ban on her travelling abroad.

"It is progress," she said. "It would not have been possible 10 years ago."

So, in the case of this courageous lady, the situation has changed. But the change is in no way dramatic. In fact, it was only because of the personal intervention of a well-known American political figure that she was allowed to exercise what should be her basic human right: the right to travel abroad if and when she desires.

It is good that this elderly woman can finally personally receive a well-earned award, an experience that twice eluded her. But there has been no fundamental change to the system.

Local officials' initial reaction was to penalize her for unmasking their role in the spread of HIV/AIDS. Barring her from travelling abroad was logical. After all, allowing her to receive an award would have further publicized their own wrongdoing.

Even this year, the central government did not lift a finger to help her until it feared a diplomatic incident. The human rights of an individual, it is clear, do not count for much. The Chinese government acted not to protect her human rights but rather to protect itself from embarrassing publicity.

This is not the way it should be. China wants to be viewed as a responsible, sophisticated country, mature enough to host the Olympic Games. Its government should demonstrate in the way it treats its own citizens that it is truly mature, responsible, and sophisticated. Otherwise, once the Games are over, there will have been no change within China—and no change to its international image.