The asthma Olympics, as Beijing cloaked in smog

The Chinese government has spent untold billions preparing to show the world just how far they have come with their capitalist, sorry communist, revolution over the last couple of decades. But with their astounding progress they have also heralded in a new era of problems that are causing serious environmental troubles for the Olympics.

There are just 11 days to go to the opening ceremony of the 2008 sporting extravaganza, and to underline the point the Olympic village that will house 16,000 thousand of the worlds best athletes for the next month has been officially opened.

The problem is that yesterday, from the Olympic village’s skyscrapers, it was not possible to see the “birds nest” the gigantic ultra-modern purpose built stadium waiting to host their world challenging efforts, its not that the village is too far away, the problem is that the entire city was cloaked in a blanket of choking smog.

Just a few days ago nearly half of the city’s 3.3 million cars were pushed off the road to ease the pressure on the air quality of the city. Massive polluting factories were cut back to shorter hours and the worst offenders closed completely for the duration of the games. These closures even reach far away from the city with factories in other provinces closed. China has spent $17 billion on anti pollution measures just for the games.

But still the stifling smog is enveloping the city, this is said to be the worst pollution the city has ever encountered with visibility down to a few hundred yards. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau says that adverse weather conditions have obliterated the gains made by closing factories and keeping vehicles off the roads.

They say that the measures to control pollution will work but will take time to be effective. They say that the air quality will see “improvement during the games” the city is said to have a range of back plans in case the smog persists up to the opening ceremony. But some world athletic authorities including Australia are not convinced that these unrevealed plans will be effective enough to ensure quality performances from athletes.