Chua Chin Hon asks if China's old habits will return once the Olympic flame is snuffed.

In Beijing

TONIGHT, Beijing will undoubtedly bring the curtains down on the 2008 Olympics with another spectacular show of mass display and fireworks. It will not top the stunning opening ceremony of course, but it is not expected to either.

The closing ceremony will instead be lighter in mood, allowing Beijing to let its hair down after 17-days of intense competition and global scrutiny.

But in many ways, the ceremony will mark the beginning of the real Olympics test for Beijing. The Chinese capital spent the last seven
years getting ready for the Games, building fancy new stadiums, cleaning up the air, improving public manners, and trying to live up to its pledge of greater media freedom.

But can Beijing stay the course? Or will the old problems and bad habits come roaring back once the Olympic flame has been extinguished?

No one's quite ready to take a bet on this at the moment. For one, some of the measures taken by Beijing to ensure success and clear
skies at the Games are simply unsustainable.

The government, for instance, grounded more than half of the city's cars, and ordered large swathes of factories on its outskirts and
neighbouring provinces to close in order to reduce pollution. Some fear air pollution will come back with a vengeance once these
factories are allowed to resume operation, for surely they will crank up production to make up for lost time.

Likewise, there are serious concerns that Beijing will roll back the relaxation of the rules on the foreign media and return to a more hardline way of dealing with journalists.

There's been widespread praise about the "new China" that was on display in the last 17 days. Let's hope the shine doesn't fade too soon.