Charles Lee persuaded the Chinese to defy a Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

By LYNN ZINSER

The call he will never forget came for Peter Ueberroth in the middle of the night on May 12, 1984, over a crackling phone line from Beijing. It carried the news he felt would determine if the Games he was working to organize in Los Angeles that summer would succeed.
At the other end of the line was Charles Lee, the man he had dispatched to persuade the Chinese to send their team to the Olympics for the first time. Mr. Ueberroth, the leader of the Los Angeles organizing committee, was asking China to defy a Soviet Union-led boycott announced four days earlier. The Soviets said the boycott would keep 100 countries away from the ‘84 Games. If the Soviets succeeded, Mr. Ueberroth said, “we were done.
Salvation came when Mr. Lee called and told Mr. Ueberroth, “They’re coming.
Now, no matter what political issues arise - and with China there are many: human rights, Tibet, its relationship with the government of Sudan - large-scale boycotts are no longer part of the discussion. Political statements come in smaller forms: which heads of state will attend or stay home, whether athletes will speak out about their political views. Recently, President Bush announced he would attend the opening ceremony. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have said they will not.
Mr. Ueberroth, now 70 and the chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, will lead the American team into China with a deep sense of gratitude. He believes China saved the Olympics.
“When I got the phone call that they were coming, well, it still gets to me right now,” Mr. Ueberroth said recently. “It changed the whole face of the Games.”
In 1984, the political climate was tense. The Soviets were recruiting countries to retaliate for the United States’ decision to stay away from the 1980 Moscow Games, a boycott that 61 other countries joined. The Soviets announced on May 8, 1984, that their team would not come to Los Angeles because of fears for their athletes’ safety, claiming they had agreements from 100 countries to do the same.
Mr. Ueberroth said he saw the list. At the top was China. His response was to assemble a team of envoys who could appeal to officials in undecided countries and persuade them to come. Mr. Lee, a prosecutor in Los Angeles who is not Chinese but speaks fluent Mandarin, took a small group to China. Mr. Ueberroth asked a woman on his staff, Agnes Mura, to lead a group to Romania; she had been born there. Mr. Ueberroth went to Cuba.
Mr. Ueberroth was unable to sway Fidel Castro. But Mr. Lee’s visit was a triumph, and Ms. Mura delivered the perhaps more stunning news later in May that tiny Romania would defy the Soviet boycott.
Ms. Mura, then 35, had escaped communist Romania when she was 19. Her job at the time was to organize volunteer translators for the Games. She said Mr. Ueberroth, learning of her background, asked her to go to Romania. The semi-secret trip to her homeland terrified her.
After a few days of talks, the Romanians agreed in principle to attend the Games.
Ms. Mura said she knew the magnitude of what Romania, then a country of about 23 million, was doing.
But Mr. Lee’s visit to China, Mr. Ueberroth believed, held the Games in the balance. Mr. Lee, now 62 and retiring as a Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles, visited China several times in the ‘70s and ‘80s and was fascinated by a country that had long been closed to foreigners.
“ There were very few Westerners there and very, very few Westerners who spoke Chinese,” he said. “So I really enjoyed talking to people.”
On his trip in May 1984, Mr. Lee said, he and his group were welcomed by the Chinese sports ministers in Beijing. After meetings, the ministers told him China would come to the Games.
“Initially when they said, ‘We’re coming,’ they believed since they said it, there’s no need for anything in writing,” Mr. Lee said. “I just kept asking and asking. Finally they very graciously gave me the letter, which was a fantastic thing.”
Only 14 countries boycotted the 1984 Games .
Ms. Mura said she would watch the Beijing Games with a keen understanding of their significance.
“I know having lived in a communist country what it’s like to open your doors, she said. “For the people of Beijing, it is going to give them a feeling of connectedness that they started in ‘84.