Go, Teams! Learning The Drill In China

"Organized cheering groups show the strong ability of the government to call on ordinary people for help," said Beijing sociologist Guan Kai. "In the West, it's unimaginable."

Officials say training is also instilling the spirit of good sportsmanship in fans. It's a quality that can be lacking at some sporting events. At a soccer match in February at the East Asian Championships in Chongqing, Chinese spectators threw plastic bottles and sticks when Japanese players greeted their supporters. (After the Chinese team lost, fans also hurled rubbish at the Chinese team bus.)

At the Olympics, the Chinese have a new chance to put on a good face before old foes. Organizers plan to make the best of it.

"In our instructions, we especially emphasized this. They should cheer for both sides in order to show that the Chinese are very tolerant," said Yuan Xuzhong, secretary of the organizing committee of the federation's Beijing Workers' Cultural Progress Cheering Team.

Retirees, not necessarily the rowdiest of sorts, so far seem happy to comply.

"We'll listen to our leaders and follow their instructions," said Li Mei, 50, a retired steel company worker. "We volunteers are organized by the state, so there's no need to worry."

Not everyone here appreciates the stage-managed approach. Some critics say organized cheerleading illustrates China's emphasis on presentation over substance, an approach that has hampered its ability, they say, to deal with many Olympic-size problems, such as the traffic that is expected to overwhelm Beijing and the pollution that may make it harder for some athletes to compete.

Other critics have argued that the Communist Party is less interested in embracing Olympic ideals of freedom and openness than in bolstering its own legitimacy before a domestic audience.

"Cheering should be voluntary and not imposed by the state," said Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Peking University and author of several books about soccer.

Dissident author Wang Lixiong, who, along with his wife, Tibetan essayist Tsering Woeser, has been under house arrest in Beijing since before the riot in Lhasa last month, was struck by the parallels between the cheering sessions and the Cultural Revolution.

"It reminds me of the bound-foot grandmothers who performed 'loyalty dances,' " he said. "Although the contents are different, the root cause and logic are the same."

News researchers Zhang Jie and Liu Songjie contributed to this report.