• English Site
• >World
• >China
• >

  China's Pollution Problem: Beijing Scrambles to Host 'Green Games'

China's Pollution Problem Beijing Scrambles to Host 'Green Games'

By Andreas Lorenz in Beijing

Part 2: A 'Disinformation Campaign'

A propaganda battle is being fought over pollution measurements. Reporters stand in front of the Olympic Stadium with measuring instruments and tell the world that every breath drawn here will make you sick. Wang and his people are doing everything they can to counteract this impression.

A total of 27 monitoring stations were set up to supply air quality data for the Olympic Games host city. And recently the message has mostly been that everything is just fine. However, an American scientist, Steven Andrews, noticed that two monitoring stations were removed from locations where there is a high volume of traffic and three new ones were set up at locations where pollution levels are lower.

Andrews also found out that the pollution standards were secretly lowered, that changes were made with regard to substances being measured, and that some substances, such as ozone, were simply not measured at all. Andrews spoke of a disinformation campaign. He says there is every reason to believe that Beijing's effort to ensure that the Olympic Games will be "green" is headed for failure. In his view, all that China has succeeded in doing thus far is to find clever ways of covering up its inability to reduce pollution levels.

The athletes, whose performances will hopefully make the Beijing Olympics a sports fest of superlatives, are perturbed by the situation. Many of them, including the German, British, and Swedish track-and-field teams, have chosen not to come to Beijing to prepare for the games and have gone to Japan or South Korea instead. "We want to wait as long as possible before exposing ourselves to the pollution there," says German high jumper Eike Onnen. The Olympic teams from the Netherlands and Switzerland have gone to the coastal city of Dalian for precompetition training. Most teams plan to fly to Beijing shortly before the games begin.

According to David Martin, exercise physiologist and respiratory expert for the US marathon team, breathing the air in Beijing could be compared to "feeding an athlete poison." Ethiopian world record holder Haile Gebrselassie decided to withdraw from the marathon and will only be competing in the 10,000 meters. He suffers from asthma and was afraid that running the longer distance in the conditions that currently exist in Beijing could be harmful to his health. American boxing team physician Frank Filiberto accompanied 11 boxers to Beijing for a competition last November. On their first morning in the city his charges returned from a 20-minute run complaining of burning eyes and breathing problems: "In my opinion boxers are probably the finest athletes in the world," Filiberto said. "But they didn't think they could make it three rounds in Beijing."

The IOC has tried to play down the importance of the problem. After all, even Greenpeace finds China's environmental legislation "progressive." IOC officials say that the marathon and triathlon could be postponed if air pollution levels are particularly high on the days the events are scheduled for.

But then pictures suddenly emerged that couldn't be denied. A gigantic carpet of algae appeared in front of the city of Qingdao, right in the bay where the Olympic sailing events are scheduled to take place.

Where the algae came from remains unknown. A random natural phenomenon? Or the result of the poor water quality in the region caused by pollutant discharges and excessive use of fertilizers over a period of decades?

Thousands of soldiers and volunteers spent several days fishing tons of green algae out of the water and then built protective fences around the regatta course. Disaster seems to have been averted for the time being, but no one is certain a renewed algae bloom can be prevented.

The problems facing Beijing's water supply have so far failed to attract much attention. Yet the city is drying out. More than two hundred rivers, streams, and canals are marked in blue on official maps. But when you go look for them what you often find is nothing but a dried-up bed where water used to be. This loss of natural waterways has affected the Shunyi District where the Olympic rowing and canoeing events are due to take place. The Chaobei River has been gone for many years now, with nothing but weeds and bushes growing in the dry riverbed.

Nevertheless the regatta course is now filled with three and half meters of water. "It's fresh and clean. We're pumping it up out of the ground," says an employee of a company the local waterworks has commissioned to do the job.

The same method will ensure that a number of rivers and canals will be filled with water during the games. Environmentalists estimate that more than 200 million cubic meters of water will have to be pumped up out of ground to be able to stage these sports events. Chinese farmers who are having to pump water up out of deep wells to irrigate their fields are the ones who will have to pay the price for this extravagance. "The games will inevitably exacerbate the water crisis," says environmentalist and regime critic Dai Qing.

However, it would seem that the need to keep up appearances is more important to the government. A new set of weather statistics appeared several days ago, stating that there is a high probability that the weather is going to be drizzly on August 8, the day of the opening ceremony.

Drizzly weather? That's unacceptable. The national weather service has made contingency plans to send up rockets filled with chemicals designed to dissipate rain clouds in the worst-case scenario. However, the ability of science to control the weather is limited. Meteorologist Chen Zhenlin concedes: "When it starts to come down real hard there's just not a whole lot we can do about it."