WE are pretty much cock-a-hoop," says Anne Holmes of the Free Tibet Campaign, reflecting on a week of publicity that has put her cause at the top of political and news agendas across the globe. "I think the last week has made it clear that China can't have a big Olympics party and expect everyone to celebrate with what is going on in Tibet."

You could tell, as another two protesters fell under a phalanx of running policemen outside the British Library last Sunday morning, that the progress of the Olympic torch through London was not going to be a PR success.

The journey of the "sacred flame" was supposed to be a 58-day celebration of the Olympic spirit and of an ascendant China. As it was borne through 21 countries and across 85,000 miles, the torch was ostensibly being paraded to celebrate the sporting themes of brotherhood and competition. But it was - and there was no doubt about this - also meant to be a symbol of the way 21st-century China is ready to claim its place as a modern, economic superpower.

But symbols can be read in different ways and, for some, sport is just war by other means. For thousands of pro-Tibetan protesters, who turned the progress of the torch into a public relations apocalypse, the route of the flame to Beijing represents the huberistic progress of a repressive regime that has stamped on human rights and cultural freedom in Tibet for 50 years.

They vowed not to give the torch a safe passage and succeeded in turning the ceremony into an obstacle course for unsuspecting athletes and dignitaries who have had to run a gauntlet of agitators determined to snuff out the Olympic flame.

And the protesters didn't just succeed in inverting the symbol of harmony and peace into a reminder of repression. At one stage the London mob was in danger of turning "stopping the torch" into the capital's latest outdoor sports craze. As its progress was followed across the city by live television cameras throughout the day, 37 people were arrested trying to impede the torch.

The next day, in Paris, police running alongside the "guardians of the holy flame" - the spooky Chinese security officers that form the close security detail for the torch - had to use tear gas to keep protesters at bay and officials had to extinguish the torch on five occasions. In San Francisco on Wednesday, thousands turned out to demonstrate, which led to a bizarre situation where the torchbearers ran a few yards, disappeared into a warehouse, and then reappeared on a bus.

Under the relentless scrutiny the pressure has piled on politicians to make an appropriate response. Gordon Brown sought to clarify his position - saying he would not be attending the opening ceremony in Beijing, only the closing one. It is a response designed to appease the domestic audience while not offending the hosts but which will leave neither satisfied.

Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, has used the same tip-toe diplomacy, declaring she will not be at the opening because she has already scheduled a tour of China later in the year Neither will the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon attend August's opening ceremony of the Olympics. Although the reason for his absence was cited as "scheduling issues", it will only add to China's concerns that it is being unfairly vilified by the international community.

"It is not good for China's image to have so many dignitaries miss the opening ceremony, but it depends on how it is done," says Dr Yiyi Lu, a China expert with Chatham House.

"Angela Merkel's government says she never intended to go and she is going to China later in the year anyway. This is very different to coming out in public and saying that it is because of the poor human rights record that you are boycotting the ceremony."

The Chinese government, explains Lu, thinks it is very unfairly treated and will harden its position from now on, not just in Tibet, but to any criticism from the West. "It seems to me that there is a little bit of an emotional reaction going on," says Lu.

That was clear in the quick slapdown Chinese government officials gave the International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge when he admitted the protests had brought the Beijing games to a "crisis". While lamenting the protests, Rogge then felt obliged to state there would be no deviation from the flame's planned route which will see it taken through Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

"The idea of a torch being paraded through a city cowed by military occupation does not bear thinking about," says Anne Holmes of Free Tibet. But Chinese people see the issue very differently from those in the West.

"They do feel upset and quite angry," says Lu. "The Tibet campaign does not a have much popular support inside China where people were already angry about the protests and the riots in Tibet."

The hundreds of Chinese who turned out to cheer the Olympic torch through London, who were largely ignored in the television coverage, proved that not everyone waving a red flag could have been a Communist Party stooge. They jeered wildly as the Tibet protesters made their way past, demonstrating that unrest in Tibet has done nothing except rally support for China's leadership among ordinary Chinese.

"In Western countries it can be seen as virtue for politicians to respond to public concern but this whole idea of saving face is very important in Chinese culture," says Lu.

"They feel the China bashers are using this opportunity to attack China and to be seen to give in to unreasonable demands and well-planned attacks is very difficult for the Chinese government to do."

In short, the torch relay will continue regardless of the negative publicity now surrounding it. The relatively serene passage of the Olympic torch through Buenos Aires, the Argentinian capital, on Friday was clearly only a temporary reprieve in what has now become a human rights relay across the globe.

On its only stop in Africa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, there is unlikely to be any roadside protests, although the Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai, has said she will not take part in the three-mile relay through the capital.

In Islamabad, home to the Pakistan government that has been a close ally of China in the crackdown in Tibet, protest will be limited. There, China fears action by supporters of the Uighurs who have demanded independence for the Muslim majority of Xinjiang province in western China.

The next big flashpoints will be New Dehli on April 17 and Canberra on April 24. Australia and Japan made it clear the blue-suited guardians of the Olympic flame, the Chinese security detail Seb Coe privately described as "thugs", would not be welcome in their countries.

China planned the global torch relay with immense care to highlight its growing economic and political power, much in the same way as the Nazi leadership used the 1936 run from Athens to Berlin to project the Third Reich as a modern, dynamic state with rising international influence.

The themes of brotherhood forged out of trials of physical strength are great propaganda gifts for China's Communist regime, with its love of public displays.

However, it could also spill over into public antipathy towards the London 2012 games if the message is that the Olympics are merely an arena for self-aggrandisement for politicians.