Olympics can spearhead environment change

?  ?

Opinion / You Nuo

Olympics can spearhead environment change

By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-03 07:09

People like to spot trends. I had some visitors from New York last week -
people from the investment field.

They were curious to learn how the Olympics would affect China's economy
- would it, as some say, be the peak of an unprecedented growth, to be
followed by a slowdown, if not recession? Or would it start a new process
and take the economy to a higher level?

To be sure, no sports event can directly give rise to a change in an
economy. But if the Olympics, to be held in Beijing and a number of other
Chinese cities in August next year, is an indicator, change is already
taking place.

Even before the Olympics have come to town, there is widespread awakening
to the fact that the rules of the game of development are changing, and
the changes are becoming more specific.

At the time when residents of Beijing were celebrating the city's victory
on being named the Olympic hosting city, whether sports fans or not, they
could only vaguely tell that a major international event would most
likely bring some benefit to their overall living standards.

At least, as they could tell, better roads would be built. Dirty smoke
stacks would be knocked down. And the factories under the smoke stacks
would be shut down or moved away.

The largest industrial relocation program China has so far accomplished
was that of the Capital Iron and Steel Corp, which involved thousands of
workers and their families.

Then there was the issue of air quality - as seen in the Beijing
municipal government's recent experiment of cutting emissions by
regulating the number of automobiles on the city roads.

This was done in a city where, if people can still remember, most
households simply used coal stoves for heating and streets were filled by
choking yellow smoke in the winter a little more than a decade ago.

There are things that still need to be done. Food security and quality
for instance. In the last few years, China has had more than one food
poisoning scare, reflecting the inadequacies in the supplying industries
and rising concerns among health workers and consumers at large.

Something has been done to monitor the quality of food supplies to the
future Olympic center. But that is too limited an effort. Not only
athletes, but all consumers need the guarantee of decent food supplies,
which the industry has yet to provide.

A campaign is needed across the business - from effectively regulating
the quality of cooking oil used by roadside food stands to banning
farmers from feeding their pigs with unhealthy restaurant waste.

People are becoming aware what all these changes add up to. They all have
an environmental aspect. With the Olympics as a starting point, China's
new urban middle classes will begin to measure their cities' development
by a different environmental standard.

For industrialists, if they want to be successful, they will have to lead
the change rather than just follow it.

The Olympics is helping the Chinese redefine their urban lives, and this
will lead to new investment in environmental infrastructure.

With the central government's support, Beijing and Shanghai are doing
better than most other cities. But they will be facing competition.

E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/03/2007 page4)

Hot Talks

* What's your take of this piece of opinion about China?
* Should Beida recruit more recommended students?
* Nude women and Peking Opera: pornography or art?
* War in Iraq lost?
* Costa Rica cut ties with Taiwan: Who's next?

Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours

20071122 Extracted From http://www.hellomandarin.net