China On A Cleaning Up Spree…
evawhite on August 2nd, 2008
The Olympics, the pinnacle of all sporting events, the much awaited athletic extravaganza that comes once every four years is starting in about a week and China is in full show off mode. After all you just can’t afford to ‘lose face’. All kinds of measures are being adopted to clean up Beijing’s lamentably polluted air and high incidence of smog. And a daunting task this is, seeing that China has 16 of the world’s 20 cities with the worst air quality (according to a World Bank report). However spending 40 billion dollars on infrastructure has not made as much of a difference as it should have.
Well it becomes very clear that this is not a democracy when you read that “half of Beijing’s 3.3 million vehicles are to be peremptorily pulled off the roads and many polluting factories will be shuttered. Chemical plants, power stations and foundries left open have to cut emissions by 30 percent and dust-spewing construction in the capital will be halted.” Public transport is being drastically expanded and people have to stagger their work hours so that the authoritarian regime can make a good impression. And yes millions of trees are also being planted, apart from all these band aid solutions.
Another cleanup measure that is attracting a lot of attention is the cat clean up drive. Animal activists are calling this the ‘cat death camp’. Pet owners are dumping their cats on the street which are then being rounded up and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around. Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The authorities have also pulled out all the stops to create some stunning and arresting pieces of architecture in preparation for the Olympics, such as this China Central Television headquarters building which consists of two angled towers connected at the top to form a continuous loop of horizontal and vertical sections.
Then there is the birds’ nest national stadium seen here in its fully lit glory.
This is the water cube or the national aquatic center, not far from the bird’s nest stadium.
And this is the ‘Egg’ or the national grand theater. For more photos of Beijing architecture look here; this is where these photos are sourced from. There are many more Olympics related photos if you want to see them.
