Covering the run-up to the Olympics can be quite maddening in China. Chinese officials flood us with minute details but refuse to answer basic questions, such as about security, anti-doping measures or food safety.

Olympics officials offered a tour and a press conference earlier this week of the newly finished Olympic Village where some 16,000 athletes and officials will stay during the Games. The facilities are beautiful.

But a British colleague and I walked out of the press conference shaking our heads. Authorities offered excruciating detail about the double-glazing of the windows in the Village and the environmental considerations going into construction of the 42 dormitory-style six- and nine-story buildings.

When it came time for questions, only three were taken, and the answers were boilerplate.

So what about security at the Village? What preparations have been made? To prepare well, one has to visualize who might attack and how. Who are the potential assailants?

Plenty of people might read this and say: China doesn’t need to detail this kind of information. One should just trust that China is well prepared for all contingencies. Okay. But one can easily build trust with a modicum of public information that indicates one has thought such contingencies out and is well-prepared.

From soundings of foreign correspondents, I can assure you that many of my colleagues are impressed with the “hardware” of the Games _ the facilities are beautiful, even stunning _ but there is much work to be done on the “software.” That means that questions go unanswered at news conferences, or responses to news events are not forthcoming.

Two examples: When the Sunday Times, a London newspaper, reported a couple of months ago that 10 workers had died during construction of the “Bird’s Nest” national stadium, it took Olympics officials days to respond, and they couldn’t get their facts straight even then. A second example occurred last month when Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg bailed out as one of the artistic directors of the opening and closing ceremonies, Beijing Olympics officials were no where to be found to respond.

This may sound like needless harping. If so, please enjoy the beautiful facilities. But if there is a real news event in the run-up or during the Games, Chinese officials will get a quick and painful lesson on managing information in an emergency. Either they will respond quickly and openly, or they will get a set of aches and bruises not worthy of a well-trained Olympic athlete.