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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 44 are also some involving outlying areas and others to prevent and control sandstorms and to halt desert growth. Moving polluting factories and businesses to outlying areas is not a sound measure. Western industrial countries took such measures in the 1960s and 1970s to solve the problem of big-city pollution. It was later realized that this just meant shifting the pollution elsewhere. Further, the outlying areas have populations less sensitized to environmental concerns than those of big cities. Outlying populations are also smaller, meaning that they can apply less political pressure and have fewer means to press for sound pollution management. So, Western industrialized countries no longer take such measures (but they don’t hesitate to transfer such polluting enterprises to developing countries). The second category of measures includes a ban on large numbers of vehicles entering the capital before and during the Games, while Beijing-based vehicles would be allowed to circulate only every other day on a system of alternating authorizations for odd- and evennumbered license plates. There are also to be measures halting or limiting the activities of enterprises in outlying areas. The provinces of Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong are also to apply pollution limits on coal burning, depending on the air quality in Beijing. Such measures will only be short-term and will improve air quality just during the Games, and they will have small effects. Measures of that kind are like military surveillance. They are drastic. As we all know, when there is military surveillance, there is really no societal self-regulation. Actually, a major reason why it is hard to improve air quality radically in Beijing is the capital’s wild, uncontrolled growth, which explains why the sky is there is always so dark. The measures called for do not address that problem. If nothing is done about it, even investing even more than yet another 120 billion yuan would not suffice. Still, Beijing’s general plan formed a basis for an air quality improvement model. It provided for decentralization, making the old city the core and transforming the 10 outlying areas into urban districts, including Beiyuan Park (Northern Park), Nanyuan Park (Southern Park), the Shijingshan (Stone Mountain) amusement park, and the Dingfuzhuang suburb. Each district is to be separated by a green belt, and the plan would be extended to the city’s new areas. In fact, Beijing’s development has been chaotic. Its actual development has outstripped the general plan. Initially, there was only a single peripheral zone, then a second, followed by construction of a third, fourth, and fifth. A sixth is being built. At the start of the People’s Republic in 1949, Beijing had 2 million inhabitants. Now, it has 16 million. In 1949, there was about 20 million square meters of buildings. Today, there is on average more than 10 million square meters of construction completed annually - half the equivalent of the original Beijing every year. The original plan projected that by 2010, the overall built-up surface would be 360 million square meters, but that seems already to have been overtaken. More than 100 million square meters are currently under construction. In 1990, more than 600 square kilometers were filled with buildings. In
Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 45 2000, there was a growth of 750 square kilometers, while in 2010, development should reach 900 kilometers. Since the policy of economic reform and openness, development has been presented as a positive principle and underdevelopment as the greatest evil. And so the drawbacks of Beijing’s uncontrolled growth were ignored. If one goes to the Google Earth site on the Internet, one can see on the satellite photos of Beijing that the city is covered with an enormous cloud. It is what is commonly known as the urban climate effect or the effect of urban heat pockets. The clearest sign of such heat pockets is that downtown temperatures are higher than suburban ones, with differences of as much as 6 degrees Centigrade. Buildings are concentrated, and the unbuilt surfaces are made up mostly of tarred and cemented streets. At night, cities release accumulated heat more slowly than suburbs. According to German research, urban heat pockets result in 5 to 15 per cent less sunshine, temperatures can rise as much as 10 degrees Centigrade, the number of foggy days rises by 30 to 100 per cent, etc. Urban fog covers are formed, made up of water vapor and particles. Those fog covers impede the exchange of air between the cities and their surroundings. Motor vehicles, industrial production and human activity produce great quantities of gasses, cinders and dust. When they reach the fog covers, they can no longer dissipate, and they stagnate in the polluted air. So in Beijing the sky is dark and the sun is unclear. Of course, there are city planning measures that could counteract or even avert such effects. Beijing’s growth has taken place chaotically and in concentric rings. If the Chinese government does not deal with Beijing’s uncontrolled growth, it will not be able to counter the emergence of urban heat pockets, and improvement of the capital’s air quality will become an impossible goal. Can the effects of urban heat pockets be countered during the Olympics? If the weather is favorable, there will be heavy rains that would dissipate Biejing’s fog cover before the Games. That would renew air circulation; noxious gasses and particles would diminish; the air would clear; and the sky would brighten. If rains continue at regular intervals during the Games, they would prevent urban heat pockets from reforming. But the government does not want abundant rain before or during the Games. It has planned on system of radars, cannons and planes to try to disperse rain clouds. Rains would be seen as bad omens. Yet, if there is no rain, heat accumulations would become critical and could prevent improvements in air quality. It could even produce unexpected consequences. Beijing’s water supply crisis In addition to Beijing’s air quality problem, there is its water supply problem. The Chinese government has urgently brought in 1.6 billion cubic meters of water from provinces like Hebei that are even more arid than Beijing. The basic cause of Beijing’s drought is the uncontrolled exploitation of its water supply. If it continues unchecked, the need to move the capital city could become inevitable. All the investments for the 2008 Olympic Games would then have gone to waste.
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