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With international condemnation of China's harsh crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement casting a shadow on this week's survey of Beijing, Mayor Liu Qi said his city's bid should be measured on sporting merits alone.
The People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, carried an interview with Xinhua news agency which quoted Liu as saying China was "firmly opposed to any attempts to foil Beijing's bid on the excuse of human rights".
Liu, president of the Chinese capital's bid committee, said China's size and sporting accomplishments set it apart from 2008 rival candidates Osaka, Toronto, Paris and Istanbul.
"We are a sports superpower of 1.2 billion people who passionately love the Olympics movement but have never hosted an Olympiad," Liu said. He cited a public opinion survey which showed 94.9 percent of Beijing residents supported the bid.
The 17-member IOC inspection team will survey Beijing from Wednesday to Saturday and their findings will help the IOC choose among the five candidates in a vote in Moscow on July 13.
China has struggled to keep the focus off its human rights record, one of the reasons why Beijing narrowly lost out to Sydney in a 1993 vote for the 2000 Games.
But its efforts have run up against strong international reaction to a steady flow of images of Beijing police kicking and punching Falun Gong protesters on Tiananmen Square since 1999.
Human rights activists and aggrieved groups in China have urged the IOC to use its leverage with Beijing to win freedom for political prisoners and to halt to harsh Chinese policies.
To counter China's assertion that politics must play no part of the Olympics movement, human rights activists cite the IOC code of ethics which enshrines the dignity of the individual.
The latest to seize on this week's inspection was the banned Zhong Gong meditation group, which called on the IOC on Monday to press Beijing to free jailed members, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said.
Zhong Gong has suffered the same fate as the better-known Falun Gong, banned as an "evil cult" in 1999.
Police were increasing their vigilance against possible protests by Falun Gong members, who have demonstrated almost daily since China banned the movement. Some 150 leaders have been jailed and thousands of ordinary followers sent to labour camps.
Beijing got a grim warning of what could go wrong during the IOC tour when a man the government said was a Falun Gong adherent committed suicide by setting himself ablaze on Friday in an area of the capital that is home to several Communist Party leaders.
The death of the 25-year-old shoe-polisher followed self-immolations by five purported Falun Gong adherents, including a 12-year-old girl, in Tiananmen Square last month. One person, the girl's mother, died.
In the final weekend before the IOC visit, Beijing tried to push aside images of protests at Tiananmen, using the Square as the finish line for a woman's marathon race and the venue for a mass display of traditional martial arts and calisthenics.
Mayor Liu called on Western media to "make objective descriptions of developing China" and focus on its competence in running sporting events.
Liu also indicated Beijing saw an advantage in its location in Asia - which has hosted the Games only twice, in Tokyo in 1964 and Seoul in 1988. A Beijing Olympiad "would broaden the scope of the Olympic movement", he said.
Reuters