July, 2008:

Business Week – Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on July 28

The clock is ticking, the athletes are arriving, and Beijing’s air isn’t getting any better. For years, Chinese officials have known that the greatest threat to a successful Olympics might not be protests about Tibet or Taiwan or democracy but rather smog engulfing the National Stadium on Opening Day. Still, the government, which has done such a great job getting the different venues ready in time, seems to have dropped the ball when it comes to getting the air ready, too. The city started a plan to reduce pollution last week by limiting the number of cars allowed on the roads. (License plates ending in odd numbers on one day, ending in even numbers on the other day.) So far that hasn’t done much. Reuters reported yesterday on the opening of the Olympic Village in the capital, an event obscured by the pollution that “shrouded [the compound] in pea-soup fog.”

How worried are Chinese officials? Even the state-controlled media aren’t burying the news. Today’s China Daily, the mouthpiece of the government, has a front-page story that departs from its usual upbeat reporting about how well the preparations have been going. The headline: “Emergency green plan for Games.” The paper went on to report that Beijing “has not experienced a ‘blue day,’ that is healthy air quality, in the past four days.” No wonder officials are now talking about draconian measures to keep 90% of Beijing’s cars off the roads.

Meanwhile, here in Hong Kong (home of the equestrian events, as Jackie Chan reminds us), today wasn’t a great day for people with lungs either. A typhoon is hitting Taiwan, and when typhoons are in the neighborhood, for some reason the winds in Hong Kong seem to die and the air gets disgusting. On the other hand, the skies had been gloriously blue for the past few weeks thanks to winds from the south blowing away all the soot from Guangdong. No doubt Beijing residents – not to mention athletes and IOC officials – would gladly take a day or two of Hong Kong typhoon air in exchange for their gray skies.

BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing and co-host Olympic city Hong Kong were Monday blanketed in smog just 11 days before the Games, raising the stakes for organisers who were planning more emergency measures to clear the air.

Despite years of efforts to rid the Chinese capital of its notorious pollution and a raft of recent attempts at quick fixes, a typically thick haze cut visibility across Beijing to a few hundred metres.

With some athletes already training in Beijing and elsewhere in China, the persistent pollution was jeopardising China’s promise of a “Green Games”.

“I heard today if you are trying to look at the Olympic stadium, you can’t see it from 500 metres (1,600 feet). It’s awful, I think,” Dutch football coach Foppe de Haan said in Hong Kong, where his team is preparing for the Games.

Adding to the swirl of bad publicity for China, Greenpeace released a report saying Beijing’s air quality was still well short of international guidelines.

And a Japanese company that makes industrial-strength dust masks said Japan’s Olympic delegation would take 500 of his products to Beijing to guard against the pollution.

Last week Beijing ordered more than a million of the nation’s 3.3 million cars from the roads and closed dozens of polluting factories, apparently with little impact.

In a last-ditch bid to clear the skies before the Games start on August 8, the state-run China Daily newspaper said the government may ban 90 percent of private cars and close more factories.

The China Daily, citing an official with the city’s environmental bureau among others, said contingency measures such as the more extreme car ban could be implemented two days before the Games.

“We will implement an emergency plan 48 hours in advance (of the Games) if the air quality deteriorates,” Li Xin, a senior engineer with the bureau, was quoted as saying.

Nevertheless, the Beijing Olympics organising committee said it was still confident athletes would have little to worry about in regards to pollution.

“With the measures we have taken, we are fully confident that we can ensure clean air for the Games,” committee spokesman Sun Weide told AFP, adding some of the solutions would need more time to show results.

The pollution woes were not confined to just Beijing, reflecting the long-standing problems across China as the environment has taken a back seat to economic development over the past 30 years.

In Hong Kong, which will host the equestrian events, the city’s air pollution level was classified as high and horses preparing for the Games were forced to train in the smog.

A spokesman for the Equestrian Company, which is responsible for hosting the Olympic equestrian events, said a range of high-tech measures had been employed to protect the horses.

“We have kept our horses in a high-ceilinged, six-star stable,” the spokesman told AFP.

In its report, Greenpeace said levels of particulates, one of the major measures of pollution, were still twice as high in Beijing as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge warned last year that poor air quality during the Games could result in the suspension of endurance races such as long-distance cycling and the marathon.

However there have been no specific pollution levels given that would trigger the suspension of an event, and Greenpeace called on the IOC to issue minimum environmental standards for future Olympics.

Alongside pollution, security has become one of the highest-profile Olympic concerns for China.

The government has warned that alleged terrorists from China’s Muslim-populated northwest Xinjiang region were planning attacks on the Olympics.

But the state-run Xinhua news agency denied claims by a separatist group claiming to represent people in Xinjiang that it was behind recent deadly bus bombings in Shanghai and the southwestern city of Kunming.

Games village opens with fanfare and stars, but skies remain hazy

Martin Zhou – SCMP – Updated on Jul 28, 2008

Organisers of the Beijing Olympics opened the state-of-the-art athletes’ village in the capital yesterday in the presence of the mainland’s top athletes, led by basketball icon Yao Ming and superstar hurdler Liu Xiang .

The fanfare took place under hazy skies, however, and mainland authorities vowed to step up the fight to keep the city’s air pollution within tolerable limits in time for the Games, which open in 11 days.

About 300 athletes, coaches and sports officials stood solemnly in a square in the Olympic Village, northwest of the centrepiece “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium, as the Chinese flag was raised to the national anthem, marking the official check-in of the mainland delegation.

After the ceremony, almost all the athletes were bused out of the village to return to their training camps elsewhere in the city.

“Every team has its own training scheme to follow,” said Huang Yubin , head coach of the gymnastics squad. “Our gymnasts will not move in until August 3.”

Earlier in the morning, Chen Zhili , a former Politburo member turned Olympic Village mayor, presided over the inauguration of the complex, consisting of a 42-block residential compound and a vast recreational area.

A small number of competitors from other nations have moved into the sprawling village, but they have yet to have their flag-raising ceremonies – giving the host team the privilege of being first to raise their flag, in keeping with Olympic tradition.

The national team is also widely expected to shoot into first place on the medals table after selecting a 639-strong squad of Olympians – its biggest to date, and even larger than perennial Games superpower the United States. The Americans won slightly more gold medals than the national team at the last summer Games in Athens.

However, one potential black mark against the host nation was also evident at the village – a thick shroud of haze. The city’s daily air quality index, issued by the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau, rated the capital’s smoggy skies as “slightly polluted” yesterday.

Asked whether authorities would step up their battle against pollution, bureau deputy director Du Shaozhong answered with a resounding “yes”.

Beijing has sidelined up to 2 million of the city’s 3.3 million cars through a daily, odd-even plate policy applied to private motorists, and unprecedented tough restrictions on government vehicles.

Authorities have also scaled down production at pollution-heavy industries, and ordered a ban on construction at city-centre sites.

“In case of extreme weather conditions that impede dissipation of the pollution, we are preparing even more stringent measures,” Mr Du said at his third session of questioning on the air-quality issue by international media in as many days.

A bureau official said details of the new plan would be announced early next week, and could be implemented after the Games open on August 8.

“Under the additional emergency measures, only 10 per cent of the cars would be allowed to remain on the streets, while the traffic controls would expand into neighbouring provinces,” the official said. “Construction sites in the capital could also face a blanket ban.”

Rocky Mountain News – July 27, 2008 8:56 AM

Measuring air quality in something called “blue sky days” is a bit strange, kind of like how the U.S. government used to measure nuclear radiation in “sunshine units.” Something’s getting lost in the translation. But still, blue sky — meaning any day with acceptable air quality — is the benchmark that the United Nations uses to keep track of the air in cities around the world. The good news for these Olympics, if you believe the latest numbers: between July 1 and 25, there were 22 blue sky days in Beijing.

The bad news: there’s absolutely no way that those numbers are accurate.

Now, I only arrived July 2, but according to my track, I’ve only seen a blue sky five times since. Two of those days are what American meteorologists would call “partially cloudy.” By my count, there have only been three truly sunny days — days where the smog hasn’t been overwhelming, which is what the UN is really referring to with the term “blue sky” — here in Beijing. I saw more of the sun in four days in Hong Kong than I have in my entire stay in Beijing combined.

And another thing: the smog’s not going away. Beijing says that pollution is down 20 percent since the city cut the number of cars on the road by half, but the smog is as bad as it’s been all month. The photo at top right is the view of the skyline here in Northwest Beijing, about 15 minutes from the Bird’s Nest. Those buildings are less than a mile away from where I was standing when I took the photo. The photo was taken at about 6 p.m. today, a few hours before sundown.

It’s tough to exaggerate this: if the pollution does not clear away within the next two weeks, the smog will be the big story of these Olympic Games. It’s that hard to breathe in the city right now.

Chow Chung-yan – Updated on Jul 27, 2008 – SCMP

Don’t trust your own eyes, trust us, say environmental officials in Beijing.

An official yesterday insisted that Beijing’s air quality was “on good or moderate levels” and said the recent haze hovering over the capital was not due to pollution.

“Good air quality does not necessarily mean blue sky,” said Du Shaozhong , deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. “We should judge whether there is pollution by scientific statistics, not by what our eyes can see.

“You might not be able to see things in a [steamy] bathroom, but you would not [conclude that it’s due to] pollution,” Dr Du said.

Hours after his remarks, an air-pollution reading of 47 major cities released by Xinhua classified the air quality in the Olympic host city as Category III 1 – which is considered harmful to people’s health.

In fact, Beijing was one of the only two cities on the list whose air quality was classified as Category III 1 – the other was Ningbo .

All other major mainland cities had better readings.

It was the third day in a row that the air-pollution reading in Beijing was in the III 1 category, which is defined as having the potential to affect people with respiratory problems severely and making breathing difficult for most other people.

Beijing has been closing factories and taking cars off the road to improve the air quality as the opening of the Olympic Games is less than two weeks away. Many foreign athletes and trainers have expressed concerns over the pollution problem.

Shougang Group, one of the country’s biggest steelmakers, and several coking plants have been moved from the Olympic host city, where construction sites have also been ordered to suspend work.

More than 3 million cars have been forced since July 20 to run on alternating days based on even or odd numbers on their licence plates, a move expected to reduce about 60 per cent of car emissions.

Dr Du again pledged that the government would do what it took to ensure good air quality during the Games.

“Keeping an [acceptable quality of air] for the Olympic Games is a promise made by the Chinese government, and we will honour our commitment,” he said.

He discouraged people from wearing masks, saying it was “absolutely unnecessary”.

President Hu Jintao said that “more meticulous efforts” were needed for the success of the Beijing Olympics, Xinhua reported.

Speaking at a meeting of the Politburo, Mr Hu said hosting a successful Olympics was now the country’s “top priority”.

He ordered officials to spare no efforts to ensure the event was a success.

Earthwalker still on road to Beijing, despite rough patch

Dan Kadison – SCMP – Updated on Jul 27, 2008

It is not easy being green. Paul “Earthwalker” Coleman is “back on the road again” – but a friend is concerned for the British adventurer, who is trekking across China to draw attention to the environment before the Olympic Games.

Tony Henderson, the chairman of the Humanist Association of Hong Kong, a local advocacy and empowerment group, spoke to the Sunday Morning Post after receiving a troubling e-mail from Coleman earlier last week.

Mr Henderson said Coleman, his wife and a couple of fellow walkers had travelled through a rough stretch of land, where they encountered pollution, hassles and suspicion on their way to Beijing.

Even though Mr Henderson received a more upbeat e-mail from Coleman hours later and a positive phone call on Wednesday, he is still worried.

“Although we didn’t talk about it, I feel very clear that it’s better for some news about his predicament to get in the press,” said Mr Henderson, who became pals with Coleman before he set off on his travels in September.

On Monday, the Earthwalker sent Mr Henderson a message from Shandong province , saying he had received a special 10-day visa and was “back on the road again” travelling to Tianjin , near Beijing.

But in an earlier e-mail, Coleman wrote about pollution he saw before his group headed to a Nanpi county hotel. He described his fears of his visa expiring. And he offered his thoughts on locals looking out for terrorists, “foreign or otherwise”.

Yesterday, Mr Henderson sent the Post a more detailed report from Coleman that covered 10 straight days of travelling.

Coleman wrote that his account included: “Being kicked out of a hotel. Police harassment. Visa struggles. Extreme pollution. A road accident. Tree planting. Chinese action-minded people. Cover-ups. And the support of local people.”

The Post spoke to Coleman, 53, yesterday afternoon.

“This last month has been extremely stressful because it seems like there are all sorts of hurdles being thrown up at the last minute,” he said in Hebei province .

“I said to my wife it was easier walking through Africa, and I had malaria in Africa and walked through lion territory,” he said.

The Earthwalker and his wife, Konomi Kikuchi, left from Hong Kong for a 3,300km journey to Beijing in time for the Olympics.

The couple walked across the mainland, South Korea and Japan in 2006, and were invited back by Beijing’s Olympic Committee.

Coleman made the news last month when he came to Hong Kong to pick up an award, and was then unable to return to the mainland because of visa issues.

Mr Henderson said Coleman lost at least two weeks before being allowed in on a tourist visa.

The Earthwalker estimated that he had hiked more than 3,000km, and was 120km from Tianjin.

Coleman said he was fatigued from walking in the hot sun, witnessing so much pollution and dealing with various unforeseen difficulties.

“It’s absolutely imperative for China to solve its environmental problems,” he said.

Travails on the trail to Tianjin

July 13 Leaving Linyi we came across a canal so polluted it looks like thinned-down black enamel paint. It gave off an extremely foul, chemical odour … A young man of about 20 came over. “Five or six years ago I used to swim in this river,” he said. “And we ate crayfish and fish from it.” I commented that it looked like oil. “It is oil. It’s coming from a nearby petroleum company.”

July 16, on Shandong-Hebei border We encountered the foulest air of our trip through China, and that’s saying something.

July 17 A worker at the visa department of the Cangzhou Public Security Bureau says: “`We cannot give you a visa here. You must go to Dezhou , in Shandong .” That’s 120km back.

July 18 Dezhou Public Security Bureau official says the only person who can put a visa in my passport is away till the end of next week.

July 21, Jinan Finally, I got the visa; a special one, they said. It would only last 10 days, but it would be enough to last until our arrival in Tianjin .

July 22 We can restart our walk, but first we have to take a taxi back to Cangzhou, which is on our walking route … A few kilometres down the road a motor bike appears out of nowhere. The driver slams on the brakes … Bang! The guy disappears. We get out. He’s lying jammed between the car and a guard rail … His leg is broken. Eventually a police car comes along. He looks, but does not stop. “Why is he not stopping?” I ask. “He’s not traffic police,” is the reply.

As told to Dan Kadison

Rising pollution belies assurances on Games

Shi Jiangtao in Beijing – SCMP – Updated on Jul 26, 2008

Beijing insists the steps it has taken to reduce air pollution are showing results, even though persistent smog still hovered over the Olympic host city yesterday.

A top environmental official said traffic restrictions, a construction ban and factory closures imposed on Sunday had cut air pollution by a fifth.

Still, Du Shaozhong admitted: “Given the geographical location of Beijing, it is rather difficult to improve air quality and cut emissions.”

Mr Du, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, insisted the city’s air quality was safe for Olympic athletes.

Asked to comment on reports that some athletes were considering wearing face masks in Beijing, Mr Du said that was totally unnecessary.

But, as residents and visitors can attest, this week’s restrictions, which have caused a lot of inconvenience to the public, have yet to do much to lessen the smog.

Pollution readings from Mr Du’s office show air quality has worsened rather than showing any improvement over the past six days.

The past two days’ readings for particulate matter, a major pollutant in vehicle exhausts, were among the worst this month. On Thursday, the level reached 113 micrograms per cubic metre; yesterday the reading was 110.

A reading between 100 and 200 is defined as having the potential to severely affect people with respiratory problems and make breathing difficult for most other people.

Many people complained that pollution had got worse yesterday, with the humidity higher and the smog more dense than on Thursday.

Forecasts said pollution would not improve much today because of “unfavourable weather conditions”, meaning no wind or rain is expected.

Mr Du said pollution had been slight in the past two days, and he rejected criticism that the restriction on cars – drivers may use their vehicles only on alternate days – had not had the effect officials had promised.

“Our statistics have fully demonstrated that air quality this month has improved markedly compared to the same period last year. It is wrong to say air quality has worsened since the traffic restrictions,” he said.

“If you look at the figures since the beginning of July, you can observe a trend of improvement in air quality.”

Even though Beijing has spent 148 billion yuan (HK$168.6 billion) on pollution controls since 1998, air quality remains a top concern for the International Olympic Committee and the athletes competing in the Games, especially those in endurance events such as the marathon. Authorities in the capital have prepared a more drastic plan to take up to 90 per cent of cars off the roads.

The authorities claim sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide levels have dropped more than 20 per cent this year, but levels of airborne particles – the biggest headache – have fallen only 7 per cent.

A spokesman for Beijing’s municipal government, Li Wei , said: “We are confident of fulfilling the commitments we have made to the international community to ensure sound air quality during the Games.”

Capital may resort to more extreme traffic measure as air worsens

Al Guo – Updated on Jul 25, 2008 – SCMP

Beijing’s pollution pledge took another hit yesterday as its air went from bad to worse because of unfavourable weather, prompting environmental officials to consider more extreme traffic rules.

Yesterday was the fifth day of odd-even restrictions, which took half of the city’s 3.3 million private vehicles off the road. Drivers may use their cars on alternate days, depending on the last digit of their number plates.

But the measure’s inability to improve air quality has become a source of frustration. Residents only had to look out their windows to realise air quality had worsened, with visibility in many urban areas down to about 200 metres.

Beijing’s composite air pollution index rose to 113, following readings of 50 to 70 on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and 89 on Wednesday. A reading between 100 and 200 is defined as having the potential to severely affect people with respiratory problems and make breathing difficult for most other people.

Environmental official Li Xin attributed the problem to the weather. “The air just does not move … There is nothing we can do to change weather conditions.”

The municipal environmental protection bureau has the power to take more cars off the road, and a bureau source said it was considering that option. The source said an extreme plan, which allowed cars to be driven only when the last digit of their number plate corresponded with the date (such as 5 on the 25th), could be used today.

“They may implement it whenever they consider the air quality has become too bad,” the source said.

The move would take 90 per cent of private vehicles off the road and greatly reduce exhaust fumes. Taxis, buses and government vehicles are covered by different restrictions.

Environmental analyst Zhu Tong said the extreme traffic ban was very close to becoming a reality. “There are still traffic jams on city roads despite the odd-even restriction, and I think it’s legitimate to take more cars off the road if we give the highest priority to air quality.”

Air quality has been a constant thorn in the side for the host city, and International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge had said some endurance events would have to be rescheduled if air quality threatened the health of athletes.

There is no universally agreed standard on how much air pollution can harm an athlete in competition.

Environment bureau deputy director Du Shaozhong said the pledge was in line with World Health Organisation standards – that developing countries contain their airborne particulates under 150 micrograms per cubic metre. The standard is low compared with Japanese or European Union requirements but on a par with the US. When the pollution index reached 113, the particulates were only between 90 to 110 per cubic metre.