The people of Beijing have been asked to rid themselves of bad habits and clean up their language as part of improving the city’s environment ahead of next year’s Olympic Games.

Beijing Olympic chief Liu Q, seen here, in addressing the ‘ceremony of mobilization and pledging of the people from all circles for Olympic one-year countdown’, stressed it was up to individuals to ensure the city was ready to host the Games.

Liu, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), said, ‘Every citizen should behave in a civilized manner, cast away ugly habits, clean up their language, clean the environment and clean the air.

‘We should push the environmental campaign and effectively solve the problem of spitting and littering. Every citizen should voluntarily keep the city clean, acting by themselves from now on to clean and beautify our home.’

Spitting, littering and the unwillingness of many Chinese to stand in line have been identified as potential blights on the city’s image. (Difficult to be too severe about the unwillingness to stand in line. The French have this down to a fine art. And, for littering, London is considerably worse than Beijing. Perhaps Paris would be a good example to follow. That is a very clean city.)

Liu Qi said security was vital to hosting a good Games and measures would be taken to avoid protests or confrontations with the city authorities. He said, ‘We must guarantee a safe and stable Beijing society . . . and construct an impregnable fortress to ensure safety and stability.’

Which means that protesters and political rallies will definitely not be welcome.

His rallying call was, ‘At the one year countdown I, representing BOCOG and the city government and Municipal Party, am calling on all Beijing citizens, young and old, city or village dwellers, no matter what their job or where they come from, to take action at once.’
Source: China Daily