Caijing magazine is an indispensable Chinese publication, conveniently now with an English-language website. Its Chinese name means economics and finance. Its editor, Hu Shuli, is one of the most influential women in China and is as brave as a lion. The business press in China has considerable latitude. She uses it.

In the latest issue: news on the ‘can Beijing possibly clear up its air before the Olympics?’ question. The magazine interviews Zhao Fengtong, vice mayor of Beijing with responsibility for traffic and related issues. The Asian Wall Street Journal has an English version of the full interview — Caijing’s English site has only a summary.

Zhao Fengtong discusses the recent experiment of banning half of Beijing’s cars from the streets for two days, to see what difference it made.

During the four days of experimentation, the entire city saw a decrease of 1.31 to 1.36 million vehicles on the road. This produced immediate results in air-quality improvement. The scientific information obtained from this provided a scientific basis on which to improve and perfect measures to guarantee Beijing’s air quality for the 29th Olympics. He is confident that there will be good air quality during the 2008 Olympics.
Source: Cajing

Reading the newspapers around the world one finds that athletes are worried about the weather at the Olympics — mainly in the hands of the gods — and the pollution, particularly from cigarette smoke. Now Beijing has banned smoking in taxis.

Smoking is now banned in all of the city’s 66,000 taxis for both drivers and passengers. Drivers will be fined $13-26 if caught smoking at the wheel.

Ma Yanjie, deputy head of the city’s taxi bureau said passengers caught smoking will have their names ‘exposed through media.’ The agency said green-colored ‘No Smoking’ signs have been posted in most taxis and the ban is now in force.

Other measures to allow Beijing to breathe — at least during the Olympic games — are limits to the number of cars in the city and the closure of factories. There will also be etiquette campaigns to stamp out bad manners like jumping ahead in line, spitting, littering and reckless driving.
Source: Canadian Business

All over the world the reporting on preparation for the Beijing 2008 Olympics is a hot topic for every newspaper. Reading the reports one senses a slow change from downright hostility to something approaching reason. Perhaps before too long the press will become Beijing Games 2008 boosters. Or perhaps that is too much to ask.

This report from Nova Scotia states China will be on target to host arguably the most spectacular, competitive and expensive Games in history.

Beijing is spending a record $34 billion to build and renovate 37 competition venues and construct hundreds of miles of new highways and subway lines.

(It is difficult to separate the figures out. What is normal improvement to the country’s superstructure and what is special efforts from the Games? Frequently the publicity fuzzies the picture but the figure quoted seems, on the face of it, to be an over-estimate.)

This report takes a slightly negative stance: ‘While the country’s Communist Party governance may be adept at meeting schedules, officials may be unable to clear Beijing’s air and prevent gridlock during the 16-day-long Games.’

In fact, Beijing has already demonstrated it can prevent gridlock by just banning a lot of cars from the roads and, now, making a lot of bicyles available.

Pollution is another matter but the government has already started pushing polluting industry away from Beijing while others will be closed down for the duration of the Games.

A study of 15 large Asian cities released in January by the Asian Development Bank found Beijing suffered the dirtiest air, with 142 micrograms of pollution particles per cubic metre. That was five times New York City’s average and more than seven times above the World Health Organization’s target for large cities.

Sun Weide, deputy director for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games said that to improve air quality during the Games, Beijing will force vehicles with substandard emissions off the roads, restrict production at factories in Beijing and surrounding areas and increase parkland. He said 28 million trees were planted in and around Beijing last year.

Beijing has kept construction on schedule. The 91,000-seat National Stadium and all other venues will be completed by March.

To smooth the way for as many as 1.5 million tourists expected to visit Beijing during the Olympics, Beijing is building a $3.6 billion airport addition that will more than double its size.

And the attitude towards visitors will be improved. Sun Weide said, ‘The Olympic Games will provide lots of opportunity for education. We’re trying to encourage the public to use elegant language, provide good service and of course to refrain from all kinds of spitting or cutting in line.’

The sudden world attention during the Olympics will be a ‘catalyst’ for positive change, according to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.

He said, ‘I am convinced that as much as the Games will enable the people of China to develop a new vision of their own society, they will help athletes and visitors gain a fairer perspective on China.’
Source: ChronicleHerald

Two years ago, Katie Melua had a hit with her song about there being 9 million bicycles in Beijing. Now it is nearly coming true. The Olympic city plans to put 50,000 bicycles for rent across the city ahead of the Games to curb pollution and ease congestion.

Brand new bikes will be available at 230 outlets close to subway stations, commercial districts, Olympic venues, hotels and office buildings as well as in big communities. They will be offered by Beijing Bicycle Rental Services.

The company has so far put 5,000 bikes for rent at 30 franchise outlets close to the Beijing Workers Stadium, the Drum Tower, the Forbidden City and the Xidan commercial street.

Before next August, the network will be expanded to cover major communities and all the Olympic venues. Wang Yong, general manager of Beijing Bicycle Rental Services said, ‘Organizations and individuals are welcome to join our service network for free, as long as they can provide an area about the size of one parking space.’

Wang Yong said his company would provide all the bikes for rent, and franchise outlets would get RMB1 a day for each bike they operate as running costs.

He said, ‘The outlets will also get profit sharing at the end of each month, based on their own business incomes. Not every outlet can make a profit, as people can rent a bike at one outlet and drop it somewhere else close to their destinations.’

The bicycle rental program is also sponsored by the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau as well as the anti-theft arm of the municipal public security bureau.

Police officer Wang Xiaobing said, ‘This is like a centralized management of bicycles so that citizens won’t have to worry about thefts.’
Source: JongoNews

Healthy food and sound air quality during the Games are vitally important. Now the Games are on a one year countdown it has become deadly serious.

Wang Wei, an executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee and seen in our illustration, told a press conference, ‘Our country and the Beijing municipal government are taking the food safety issue very seriously, especially for the Olympics. Actually, Beijing has hosted a lot of big events and there have been no problems regarding food safety in these events.’

According to organizing committee action guidelines state-of-the-art technologies such as global positioning satellite systems will be used to help track food during the production and distribution process.

All food entering the Olympic Village will carry a logistics code so to enable tracking.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine yesterday announced similar measures. Also at the press conference, the organizing committee spelled out contingency plans for improving air quality during the Games.

Wang Wei said, ‘Air quality is not only a matter for Beijing’s image, but also a matter concerning the health of athletes and the general public. In order to secure clean air during the Games, we will unveil some contingency plans and some of them will be rehearsed during the upcoming test events.’

In order to test the venues and organizing systems, Beijing will trial more than 40 test events before the opening of the Games.

Last November, Beijing imposed a six-day ban on at least 490,000 government vehicles and advised private drivers to take buses to make way for a summit meeting of Chinese and African leaders. Traffic was surprisingly smooth even in the busiest areas during the week and the air quality evaluated was much better.

Wang Wei said, ‘If we want to get cars off the roads, we want people to do it willingly. It is not only for the traffic conditions, but also for improving the air quality. We want to know the effects of those measures. During the test events, we will also establish some monitoring stations around the venues to supervise air quality.’

Acknowledging some public concern about the Games, BOCOG said it welcomed media reports that were objective, fair and comprehensive, but opposed the ‘politicization of the Olympics’.

The officials also played down the public and media’s high expectations of China’s athletes at the Games.

Wang Wei said, ‘As stated by our sports officials, China’s sports strength is still in the second tier of the medal tally. The unexpected is what makes the Olympics so appealing and exciting. We want to offer a fair stage for athletes from all over to perform well.’
Source: China Daily