With a population of a little over 1.3 billion, China is the world’s most populous country. And since the announcement that the 2008 Olympics was being brought to Beijing, more plans are being drafted to try and fix the air pollution problem that hangs over this city.

The Problems

There is more than one problem that contributes to the air pollution in Beijing. Of course, the mere size of the population has most of the blame for its smog. The segment picture used in this article shows what the sun looks like on a polluted day in Beijing.

With an economic boom in China, and a population rising in wealth, the status of owning a vehicle is very much the desire of successful citizens. It represents the money being made. But with more cars, comes more traffic and pollution. One million drivers were on the road nine years ago. Since then, the traffic has tripled to three million, and more are being added every day. An estimated twelve hundred cars are being registered daily in Beijing!

As a result of such a surge in automobiles, the surge in traffic has followed. All of these vehicles sit in traffic, emitting exhaust, everyday, because highways have not kept up with the growing market of motorized transportation.

Factories that pollute is another problem that Beijing faces in the coming year. Functioning at lower pollution standards than other countries has been another contributing factor to the poor air quality in this city.

Clean-up Strategies

The Chinese government has come up with several solutions to fight this problem and bring better air quality to Beijing by the Olympics. In the last three years, China has put 12 billion dollars into different plans to clean up, such as improving fuel standards and adding more public transportation. They have also updated current public transportation methods and are still looking for more ways to improve.

Another strategy is to lessen the number of cars on the road at the time of the Olympics. Millions of drivers are being encouraged at the time of the Olympics to use public transportation and bicycles instead. Or to simply stay at home. The government is conducting tests right now to see how this idea works by not allowing one million cars on the road.

And what of the factories that continuously spew waste into the air? They are moving them. At a possible cost of half a billion dollars per factory, they are being relocated away from the city.

And a more creative idea is being put into place to make the city more appealing to the eye. The secretary-general of the China Environment Protection Foundation is running a project to make the plain roof tops of the city become green by planting grass and trees on them. Their goal is to turn the tops of sky scrapers into fields of grass and nature.

Concerns

China is concerned the most about pride in their country and showing the world how far they have come in recent years. They want to show the world that they are worthy of being a major world power.

The International Olympic Committee is also concerned. But it is about their athletes and their health and performance in such poor air quality.

The president of this committee, Jacques Rogge, said, “definitely the endurance sports like the cycling race where you have to compete for six hours, these are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed to another day.”

Short duration sports are not as much of a concern as these longer competitions are. Many athletes are already planning to leave as soon as they are done competing, to reduce their time in the harmful and polluted air.

2008

Olympics viewers will see for themselves in the summer of 2008 if the clean-up of Beijing was successful. For the sake of the money spent and the time given by that of Beijing’s people and the athletes who will compete there, air quality will hopefully be much improved.