China Puts up Shiny Façade for the Olympics – Literally

Visitors walking down the freshly swept streets Luomashi Boulevard in Beijing don’t see the shops that are normally bustling with life on a typical day. Instead, they see an 8-foot wall, whitewashed and topped with roof pavers. It doesn’t just hide the shops. Behind them are the alleyway ‘huttong’ housing, which the government had hoped to clear out and demolish. Apparently, Chinese officials felt that the view of the shops and huttong would have put off foreign tourists, and they’ve been doing everything they can to make Beijing look nicer than it really is during the Olympic games. Residents didn’t leave in time, though – hence the wall.

From Boston.com:

“The government didn’t have enough time to get everyone to move,” said Zhang, a 40-year-old museum worker who only gave her surname. “So the wall went up for the Olympics. It is just to make a more beautiful environment for the city.”

She said she is willing to move if the developer offers her more money, though she declined to say what amount would be enough.

“I want to get on with my life,” she said. “Looking at the wall is very depressing.”

It’s yet another example of how Beijing is just putting up a façade for visitors from other nations, but this time, it’s literal. It makes you wonder how much the Chinese government cares about its people, considering that of the many promises it made during its bid for the Olympics, the only ones that were fulfilled were the ones benefiting tourists. Once again, China’s people seem to be left in the dust.

Link [Boston.com]

Beijing is Even Smoggy on Google Maps

There’s no hiding this kind of nasty funk in the air.  Beijing authorities might try to tell everyone it’s ‘mist’, but take a gander at the dirty lookin’ air hovering above the city on Google Maps.  Yuck.  How’d you like to breathe that in every day? Olympic athletes only have to deal with it during the games; Chinese citizens have to deal with it for life.

Link [Google Maps]

China Cleans up for the Olympics, but its Citizens Still Suffer

Looking out across the horizon from a tall building in the southeastern part of China on an average day, you won’t see much. The skyline is obscured by a gray haze generated by the country’s many polluting factories and automobiles. From the ground, sometimes it’s difficult to see the tops of the buildings around you. Though the area does occasionally see clear days, they’re getting fewer and further between.

The rather startling satellite image below shows a thick layer of polluted air covering a large swath of southeastern China. It was taken in January 2008 by NASA’s AQUA satellite. When you realize that China is the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter (recently taking the title from its previous owner, the United States), it’s not so surprising.

It’s hardly an ideal spot for world-class athletes to practice and compete, and yet here they are, opening day of the 2008 Summer Olympics, huffing and puffing, many wearing masks to protect their airways from the heavy smog. In fact, it’s so bad that endurance events like the marathon and road cycling will need to be postponed if smog levels continue to increase before the games are set to begin.

Many had hoped that the Olympics would provide a strong incentive for China to clean up their pollution problems, since the country pledged to present “pristine skies, waterways, and cityscapes” during its bid to host the games back in 2001. They’ve had seven years to follow through, but only started last-minute emergency efforts to reduce the obvious smog in the skies this summer.

An article by The Guardian on Wednesday explained the worrisome problem:

Official readings collated by Beijing’s municipal environmental protection bureau yesterday gave an air pollution index (API) of 91 for Beijing as a whole, and 87 at the Olympic stadium. The World Health Organisation regards an API of more than 50 as high, and a reading of 100 or more is considered unsafe. The authorities monitor air quality hourly, including levels of particulates, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, and take limited readings for ozone.

Of course, Chinese officials will tell you that the oppressing haze that cloaks the city is nothing but mist, and that the media is exaggerating pollution problems. They’ve even got the International Olympic Committee repeating their stance, with chairman of the medical commission Arne Ljungqvist stating, “The mist in the air that we see in those places, including here, is not a feature of pollution primarily but a feature of evaporation and humidity.”

China has spent the last month in a desperate race to clean up the air pollution in Beijing before the Olympics, going so far as to severely limit traffic within city limits and shut down hundreds of polluting factories and other businesses. The city is alternating the days citizens can operate their cars on the roads according to whether they have odd- or even-numbered license plates. Only Olympic vehicles and taxis are exempt.

Right now, the air pollution issue in China is big news because of the Olympics, but citizens of this populous, rapidly industralizing nation are the ones who will be facing it for decades to come. It poses little threat to visitors and athletes, who will only be exposed to it for a short period of time. Far greater is the danger it places upon the Chinese people: athsma, infections, heart disease and lung cancer.

The World Health Organization has deemed China’s air pollution the deadliest in the world, estimating deaths caused by indoor and outdoor pollution at 656,000 per year. Polluted drinking water kills another 95,600. Damaging air pollutants include ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter (a mixture of very small particles and water droplets). China’s people are breathing in coal smog, tailpipe emissions, concrete dust and plumes of who-knows-what from steel mill smokestacks.

Though China has been furiously struggling to clean up the air in recent times, things will undoubtedly go back to the way they were before after the games are over. All of these measures are merely temporary, and can’t be sustained. China isn’t likely to step up to the plate to protect its own citizens from health ills when the future of the country’s economy is top priority. The World Health Organization is currently trying to work with the Chinese government on more permanent measures, but considering China’s single-minded march toward building as many coal plants as humanly possible, success is doubtful.

Polluting factories play a vital role in China’s development, and the government cites the number of jobless people who would starve if they were shut down. They see it as choosing one or the other: economy or environment. The people of China, on the other hand, want to see more emphasis on cleaning up pollution. According to NPR, 93% of the residents in Shanxi province believe that cleaning up environmental pollution should be a priority.

The United States plays a large part in China’s energy and pollution problems. In pre-Olympics coverage, the media has largely ignored the fact that America and other Western nations bear some of the blame for China’s dirty air and water. As our country’s companies have moved into China to take advantage of cheap labor, they’ve created many of the factories that are now spewing toxins into the air the Chinese people breathe. The fact is that these companies don’t care if they’re harming the health of people on the other side of the earth; they care about their profit margin.

China certainly needs to step up and put regulations in place to control the issues that are harming citizen’s health so dramatically, but until we stop fueling the problem, not much will be achieved in terms of cleaning up this country of 1.3 billion people. Standards need to be created in the United States as well. Until we clean up our own country and demand that American companies take responsibility for the pollution they create in China, we can’t expect China to get very far.

We need to show other nations in the world that it’s possible to have a strong, growing economy that thrives on renewable, non-polluting energy. We’ve given China a very bad example to live up to, and that’s exactly what they’ve done – in the country’s own efforts to achieve better standards of living, they’ve made the same mistakes that the United States has made. We’ve got to set a better example going forward – a clean, green example.

Photo credit: Flickr user gbrunett + Yves Herman/Reuters + Flickr user Terminalnomad Photography

China’s Attempts to Clear Air Pollution Not Working

7 days to go, and Beijing’s attempts to clean up its air quality before the Olympics aren’t looking successful at all. Despite very aggressive efforts, it’s just too little too late. Despite the fact that the skies are still filled with smog, officials deny that air pollution will lead to a need to postpone some events. In fact, they deny that the pollution is there at all.

From Breitbart.com:

“Sometimes it looks like it’s a foggy day, but the air quality is actually good,” Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee, told AFP.

“Our confidence is based on our 10 years of effort (to clean up the air). We are now implementing a continued plan to ensure clear air during the Olympics.”

Chinese officials routinely refer to the city’s smog as “fog”.

Yeah, right. ‘Fog’. Keep telling people that, and over time they’ll really start to believe it, I’m sure. How crappy for Beijing’s residents. Once again, it’s clear that the government doesn’t care about their health – only about impressing foreigners during the games. Sad.

Link [Breitbart.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user WolfieWolf

Beijing Begins Temporary Efforts to Reduce Air Pollution

So it begins – Beijing’s Olympic shutdown was put into place last Sunday, restricting the number of cars on the road and shuttering pollution-emitting factories in preparation for the big event. It’s all an effort to temporarily clear the skies of Beijing’s famously thick air pollution, which would not only be an embarrassment for the city but could hamper athletic performance.

From MyWay:

Striking venues and $40 billion spent to improve infrastructure cannot mask Beijing’s dirty air. A World Bank study found China is home to 16 of the 20 worst cities for air quality. Three-quarters of the water flowing through urban areas is unsuitable for drinking or fishing.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has repeatedly warned that outdoor endurance events lasting more than an hour will be postponed if the air quality is poor.

Under the two-month plan, vehicles will be allowed on the roads every other day depending on even-odd registration numbers. In addition, 300,000 heavy polluting vehicles – aging industrial trucks, many of which operate only at night – were banned beginning July 1.

If I were a Beijing resident, I’d be pissed. You (might) get clean air for a few weeks, and then it’s back to being crushed by a wall of industrial pollution. Good times.

Link [My Way]
Photo credit: Flickr user Digging for Fire

China Shutting Down Factories to Reduce Pollution Before Olympics

China has been struggling with their poor air quality in the run-up to the Olympics, and they’ve finally come up with somewhat of a plan, even if it’s just temporary. The industrial port of Tianjin, 70 miles southeast of Beijing, has been ordered to shut down operations at 40 factories for 2 months. Officials are hoping that the temporary shutdowns will have an effect on air quality, which was recently reported to be 5 times the World Health Organization’s safety limit.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Beijing’s air quality remains a major concern for the Games as the city continues to struggle with pollution, despite a $20 billion government cleanup campaign. Beijing is also a victim of its neighborhood: pollution blows in from surrounding regions, which are dotted with coal mines, coal-fired power plants, steel mills, cement factories and other clusters of heavy industry.

The Olympic opening ceremony is Aug. 8, and meteorologists have said that officials must begin closing factories a few weeks in advance to make a difference. The suspensions in Tianjin will begin on July 25 and continue until Sept. 30, after the conclusion of the Paralympics in Beijing, according to Xinhua, the country’s official news agency.

Tianjin is a host city for the Olympic soccer competition, and work at 26 construction sites near the city’s Olympic stadium will be suspended.

A few other nearby cities will also be temporarily closing down factories and construction work, including Tangshan. Starting July 20th, Beijing will also be putting into place alternate-day driving restrictions to ease traffic and reduce pollution.

If only this weren’t a temporary measure. It’s great that they’re doing something about the problem before millions of visitors descend upon the country and start breathing in the nasty polluted air, but why not extend it? Aren’t China’s citizens worth the same care? Hopefully all of this will lead China to realize that all of that pollution needs to be controlled on a more permanent basis.

Link [International Herald Tribune]
Photo credit: Flickr user duffman34

Dirty, Polluted Air in Beijing Right Before the Olympics

The smog levels in Beijing right now are 5 times the safety limit. Chinese officials have thrown their hands up, saying they can’t do anything about it. Pollution tests by the Sunday Times confirmed that the levels are far above the standards set by the World Health Organization.

From the Times Online:

With just five weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Games, tests conducted outside the national stadium — known as the Bird’s Nest — and at Tiananmen Square, the starting point of the marathon, showed the air is thick with particulate pollution.

Even the Chinese government’s official air pollution index — which monitors a range of pollutants, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — is running at double the level recommended by the WHO.

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said: “We made a commitment to ensure air quality for the Olympic Games . . . as for whether we have reached the goal, that will be examined after the event.”

This has led many Olympic athletes to worry about whether they’ll be able to perform at their best. Haile Gebrselassie, the world’s leading long distance runner, has already pulled out of the games due to his athsma. The British team is training in Macau on the southern coast until the last minute to avoid the pollution as long as possible before the games start.

We’re calling it – the Olympics in Beijing are going to be a messy clusterfuck.

Link [Times Online]
Photo credit: Flickr user borkur.net