No spit, just polish for China
Olympics By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - When the capital of the Middle
Kingdom hosts the Summer Olympics next year,
nothing will be left to chance or spontaneity.
Image-conscious and averse to public relations
gaffes, Chinese leaders are staging a grand
rehearsal to fine-tune a coming-out party into the
world.
While the auspicious moment will
arrive at eight minutes past 8 on August 8, 2008,
the date of this Wednesday's rehearsal was short
by only one digit against the "lucky 8" numbers on
D-day. A
televised gala, featuring
speeches by Chinese leaders and International
Olympic Committee officials, was to mark the
opening of a "mini-Olympics", consisting of 10
international sporting events.
The Beijing
Olympics is estimated to be the costliest in the
long history of the Games - the city has already
spent 10 times the US$4 billion that Athens did on
infrastructure for the 2004 Games. Officials speak
of a "once in a lifetime opportunity'' for China
to showcase its modernized capital and its
cultural and economic advances.
In
Beijing, the ascent of modern China is
symbolically reflected in the seemingly overnight
rise of brand-new and thoroughly futuristic
buildings, such as the "bird's nest" national
stadium and the "water cube" indoor swimming
center, that aim to place the city in the ranks of
the world's avant-garde architectural capitals.
When the big Olympics arrive next August,
Beijing will boast a stunning new airport terminal
and a high-speed airport rail, new subway system
and 11 new world-class sporting venues. An
ultra-modern opera house and a new television
tower designed by the famous Dutch architect Rem
Koolhaas are just a few of the architectural
wonders the Chinese capital is adding to its new
skyline.
But groundbreaking architecture
and infrastructure are only part of the total
image makeover that city officials have been
anxiously putting in place in the run-up to the
Olympics. Beijing is also trying to transform its
polluted environment and tackle its worsening
traffic congestion. Having pledged to hold a
"green Olympics", the city has spent $13 billion
on its environment, increasing "green" energy
consumption and planting 28 million trees.
Worried about the capital's infamous hazy
skies, city officials have ordered a million cars
off the roads this month, in a dry run for next
year's even more rigorous traffic and smog control
measures.
Nearly all power plants are
banned from the downtown area and all coal-burning
furnaces shut down. The city's biggest polluter -
Shougang Corp, China's third-biggest steelmaker -
has been forced out of the capital to an offshore
island in the neighboring province of Hebei.
"Good air and blue skies are important not
only for the opening ceremony of the Games but
also for athletes and local residents," Wang Wei,
executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing
Committee for the Olympic Games, remarked at a
press briefing this week. "What matters more to us
is not the image but the health of the athletes
and the people, including visitors, during Games
time."
Beijing has declared the 2008 Games
to be the "People's Olympics". But there are those
who question the sincerity of the government's
professed concerns about the people's well being.
The Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights
and Evictions says at least 10% of Beijing's
population of 15 million has been displaced to
make way for the city's redevelopment. Independent
observers insist as many as 3 million people, many
of them forcibly, have been evicted in the process
of Beijing's modernization.
"The Olympics
is just a cover-up for greedy developers," fumed
Zeng Xiaoyan, whose home in the capital's
Dongcheng district was demolished last year. "Even
if Beijing was not hosting the Olympic Games, many
of the old houses would be still razed. Once they
[developers] realized how much money they could
make from the land, there was no stopping them."
Expressions of dissent about Beijing's
giant project of social engineering have been
glaringly absent in the media. The
state-sanctioned press has preferred to focus
instead on the capital's efforts to modernize its
notoriously filthy public toilets and reform its
citizens' ingrained habits of public spitting and
littering.
Citywide campaigns are under
way to stamp out queue-jumping, smoking, and using
foul language in public - all described by the
China Daily newspaper as "stubborn diseases that
tarnish the image of the capital city". In
addition, Beijing has announced fines of up to 50
yuan ($6.60) for people caught spitting in public
and has threatened to police its service industry
for rude manners.
Even elderly Beijingers
who witnessed various patriotic and moral
campaigns in the earlier years of the Chinese
Communist Party's rule are impressed by this
seemingly relentless drive toward perfection.
"I wonder if they can make everything from
buildings to people seem perfect," quipped retired
university professor Dong Yaohui. "Does it have to
be?"
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