A Year Before the Games: Beijing Builds, Problems Loom?

BEIJING — In a country awash in political propaganda, one slogan posted around this city looks unusually convincing: "New Beijing, Great Olympics."

On Wednesday [Aug. 8] when the countdown clock marks one year until the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, 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.

Officials also have launched a drive to "civilize" the city by standardizing English and stamping out potentially off-putting habits including spitting and line cutting.

But growing pollution problems in China and Beijing's increasingly crowded streets have raised concerns. 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.

Beijing is often blanketed in smog from coal-burning power plants and millions of cars and trucks, many of which have poor environmental controls.

Pollutants, including ozone — which can harm athletic performance by lowering oxygen absorption — have become more concentrated in recent years.

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 meter. That was five times New York City's average and more than seven times above the World Health Organization's target for large cities.

The U.S. Olympic Committee is monitoring Beijing's air quality "because it has the potential to have a direct impact on (athletic) performance," said spokesman Darryl Siebel. The national sports organization has not issued any recommendations to U.S. athletes and coaches.

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, said Sun Weide, deputy director for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. He added that 28 million trees were planted in and around Beijing last year.

"Preparations for the Beijing Olympic Games are going very well and are on schedule," Sun said.

Chinese government reports estimate that the price tag for hosting the Games will reach $34 billion, more than twice the cost of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Unlike Athens, where delays and cost overruns raised concerns that venues might not be ready on time, Beijing's authoritarian government has kept construction on schedule. The 91,000-seat National Stadium and all other venues will be completed by March, Sun said.

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.

Siebel said U.S. Olympic officials are "very comfortable with where things stand in venue construction and other infrastructure and logistics."

Partly because China and Russia have improved their national sports programs since the Athens Games, the Beijing Olympics "will likely be the most competitive environment ever for an Olympic Games," he said.

"We think it will be a terrific opportunity and challenge."

To make China more accessible to foreigners, Beijing will offer free multilingual help lines and is working to correct English snafus on road signs and menus, where misspellings and direct translations often mystify diners.

"For a foreigner, eating in a Chinese restaurant can be daunting, especially when you have a choice of dishes on the English menu ranging from 'Swallowing the Clouds' to 'Hot Crap'," a misspelling of carp, the China Daily reported when it announced the English clean-up campaign earlier this year.

Last year, Beijing hired thousands of people to force residents to form orderly lines when waiting for public transportation and to spit in bags rather than on the ground.

"The Olympic Games will provide lots of opportunity for education," Sun said. "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."

But in a city where businesses routinely bend and ignore laws to cut costs, some experts have voiced concerns about public health during the Olympics.

In May, Chinese national broadcaster CCTV investigated indoor air quality and found that managers routinely ignore regulations requiring maintenance of air-conditioning systems.

In one case, dozens of Chinese athletes and coaches caught influenza from a rarely cleaned air-conditioning system in China's chief sports ministry and at least one was forced to drop out of an international competition.

A slew of food safety problems have raised further concerns.

Tainted Chinese exports made headlines in the United States this year, with scares involving pet food, seafood and other products.

In 2003 and 2004 at least a dozen Chinese infants died after eating fake baby formula with little or no nutritional value. Last November, officials in China's northern Hebei province seized carcinogenic duck eggs after farmers fed dye to the animals, one in a string of similar cases.

To improve food safety for athletes, Beijing will contract with exclusive vendors and will test food samples on mice, the China Daily reported last month.

Traffic will be another problem. To reduce congestion on Beijing's overly crowded streets — which carry 1,100 new cars daily — the government will limit traffic on some roads to buses carrying athletes and Olympic ticket holders and will ground many state-owned vehicles, Sun said.

The sudden world attention during the Olympics will be a "catalyst" for positive change, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said on Friday.

"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," Rogge said.