Former professional basketball player Chao Ying Ma, 83, who moved to the United States in 1991, feverishly watches the Olympics on the 17 Chinese stations she subscribes to via the Internet from her North Kingstown home.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

SOUTH KINGSTOWN –– Few Americans have heard of Liu Xiang, but the Chinese champion hurdler has an intense pocket of fans at the University of Rhode Island, where Chinese-born students have breathlessly followed every turn of their country’s Olympic games.

“These games have brought a lot of attention to Beijing,” and have shown the best of modern China, says Yuan Li, 28, a URI library sciences student from central China.

International praise for the games has worried former Chinese political prisoner Xu Wenli, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, in Providence. He follows the Olympics not as sport, but as politics.

The world is watching China, and for several Chinese natives in Rhode Island, there are conflicting views on what that means.

For the URI students in their 20s and early 30s, the Beijing Olympics have been an immense source of pride, for both the logistical success of the games so far and the strong performance by Chinese athletes in a wide array of sports.

But Xu Wenli fears that the Chinese government “will feel better about itself due to the games,” which could serve to “strengthen one-party rule.”

In an off-campus apartment near URI, Yuan Li and her husband, Peng Li, say they have spent several late nights in front of the television since the games began, too excited to sleep. The technical achievement of hosting the games and the performance of China’s athletes has left them very proud, Yuan Li says. “Especially the opening ceremony, which was the best one I have seen.”

China is leading the gold medal count at the Beijing games, and has medaled in events the country has not normally excelled in, such as swimming. “Before, China was always known for gymnastics and table tennis,” she says. “But now running and swimming? How can I even say the feeling?”

On the track, Chinese runner Liu Xiang won the 110-meter hurdles in Athens four years ago to become China’s first-ever gold medal sprinter. He begins a defense of his title tomorrow, and the Chinese contingent at URI will be watching. “We can create a new history by winning gold medals in all fields, not just the traditional ones,” Yuan Li says. “We’re really proud of our country now because of the way they have held the games and that [the athletes] are doing really well.”

Guizhi Wang, 32, came from China seven years ago to study at URI. She can barely tear her husband away from the games on television. “I think China has been doing very hard things to make the Olympics successful,” she says. “It’s worth it. The whole world looks at China in a new way. It’s not about the old culture anymore.”

On the other side of the state, former dissident Xu Wenli says he has seen very little of the athletic competitions, but has followed the political side of the Olympics over the Internet. He fears that the International Olympic Committee made a mistake by choosing Beijing to host the games.

In 1981, Xu Wenli was jailed for advocating for democracy in China. He had published a pro-democracy newsletter and organized people in favor of democratic reforms. He served 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He continued his political activities when he was released, and in 1998 was sentenced to 13 more years for organizing a political party.

He received a medical parole in late 2002, and came with his wife to Rhode Island to live with their daughter. Xu Wenli, now 65, lives on Providence’s East Side.

“The Chinese Communist Party says not to mix politics and the games, but the way the Party is politicizing the games surpasses the politicization of the Berlin games in 1936,” says Xu Wenli.

“Having [the games] in a nation like China that does not cherish human rights and freedom is not a blessing to the rest of the world,” he says.

In North Kingstown, 83-year-old Chao Ying Ma sits for hours in front of her television, watching Olympic broadcasts on Chinese-language satellite channels, sometimes from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., according to her daughter, Yan Ma, the director of the Confucius Institute at URI.

Chao Ying Ma was a professional basketball player in China’s Zhejiang Province in the 1950s, and then coached Ping-Pong and tennis. The Chinese native was briefly a political prisoner in the 1960s, confined and questioned extensively because she had attended a Christian missionary school, her daughter said.

On Friday afternoon, Chao Ying Ma watched a Chinese language recap of recent competitions. She speaks little English, but can recite the names of Olympic basketball stars: Yao Ming, the center on the Chinese national team, and “Kobe,” meaning Kobe Bryant of the NBA’s Los Angles Lakers and Team USA.

She could not have imagined, she said through her daughter, that the Chinese athletes would win so many gold medals in these games. It’s a sign, perhaps, of a rising standard of living in China that allows its people to spend more time perfecting their sports.

marsenau@projo.com