Beijing Olympics: China to celebrate week of 'fresh air'

Beijing Olympics: China to celebrate week of 'fresh air'

Under intense pressure after days of dense, acrid smog, both Chinese and international Olympic officials now hope to prove that the gargantuan efforts by the Beijing authorities to clean up the city are paying off.

Today the air quality was pronounced adequate for the sixth day in a row and forecasters predicted good visibility for tomorrow, a sign that the pollution limit is unlikely to be breached.

Thousands of athletes from around the world have already arrived, ahead of Friday's opening ceremony, and the Chinese authorities have invested 120 billion Yuan (£8.6 billion) in a frantic effort to clean up the air which they will breathe - causing severe disruption to daily life.

Millions of residents have been driven off the roads because of a partial ban on cars, while tens of thousands of workers have been forced to move away because their factories were relocated.

But few of the city's 17 million people were complaining today, as the air quality was pronounced adequate for the sixth day in a row and forecasters predicted more good weather. Although around one third of Beijing's residents plan to go on holiday during the games, according to a survey last week by the Ogilvy Group, those staying put were happy to see the blue skies.

"We'd feel ashamed if the air quality was really bad and had a negative effect on the Olympics," said businessman Zhuang Huaming. "This might be the only time in 100 years we get to host the Olympics, so we want to give the world a wonderful Beijing Olympics."

This morning the air pollution index, the measure by which Beijing's environment protection bureau assesses the state of the air, fell to 32, the lowest reading for more than a week. By contrast, the figure last weekend far exceeded 100, the upper limit deemed acceptable by the Chinese authorities.

The bureau has called days when they consider the air quality to be safe "blue sky" days and says there have been 150 of them so far this year.

But although Beijing's air rating system has been approved by Olympic officials, some foreign pollution experts say it is less rigorous than those used by other countries. The environment bureau has also been accused of fiddling the figures by drawing information from monitoring stations on the outskirts of the city, where pollution is less severe than in the congested centre.

There are also continuing concerns over the level of dangerous "PM10" particles in the air - fine specks of dust and debris caused by burning fossil fuels, each weighing no more than 10 micrograms. The particles are small enough to be inhaled, causing damage to lungs and other organs, and are a particular threat to the athletes assembling for the Games.

The World Health Organisation regards a reading of more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre of such particles as unsafe. According to readings taken independently by the BBC, Beijing's air has exceeded that level on four days out of seven over the past week. "Beijing's PM10 is still far from the WHO's guidelines," said Lo Sze Ping, Greenpeace China's campaign director.

Many Chinese environmentalists, though, have hailed the way that staging the Olympics has forced Beijing to focus on the environment. "Some of the measures that have been taken, like the new subway lines and moving some of the big polluters out of the city, are going to leave a real legacy for the city," said Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, an independent Chinese organisation. "Beijing could provide an example for other Chinese cities. Hopefully, they'll look at Beijing and realise that we have to build our cities in more sustainable ways. They can't just be car-based."

But some city residents feel that the focus from abroad on Beijing's pollution is unfair. "China has done its best to host this Olympics," said Guan Feng, 28, a customer services representative for an IT company. "As a developing country it's normal that we have a few weaknesses."

Like many locals, he is more concerned about the effect the driving ban is having on his work and life. Since July 20, Mr Guan has been reduced to using his car only every other day. "It's very inconvenient for me, because it's hard to visit all my customers without a car," he said.

The restrictions were designed to take almost half of Beijing's 3.3 million cars off the road by limiting car owners to driving on alternate days depending on the last number of their license plates.

But there is resentment that companies with large fleets of cars can still carry on most of their business by using different vehicles each day, while individual businessmen and ordinary car owners face fines of 100 Yuan (£7.37) if they drive on the wrong day.

It's not just environmental and Olympic officials who are hoping that the skies stay clear. The biggest fear for the organisers of the opening ceremony is that it rains on Friday night, when China's leaders and foreign dignitaries including President George W.Bush will be among the 91,000 capacity audience at the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium. The ceremony is nearly always the most watched part of the Games and China is laying on a spectacle appropriate to its rising status as a superpower, as well as celebrating 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation.

With forecasters are already warning of a 41 per cent chance of rain that day, the Beijing weather office has mobilised some 32,000 people to man monitoring stations on the outskirts of Beijing, as well as fielding a battery of planes and artillery to try to manipulate the weather. Rain-bearing clouds that come within 30 miles of Beijing will be "seeded" by firing rockets and shells containing rain-inducing silver iodide particles, so they deposit the rain far from the stadium.