2008 Olympic Games.

The overwhelming Chinese demand for tickets for next year’s Olympic Games is but the latest manifestation of immense pride at capturing the world’s greatest sporting event.

Beijing 2008 will be to China what Tokyo 1964 was to Japan and Seoul 1988 to South Korea, the chance for a phenomenally successful East Asian economy to show that it has arrived.

In Beijing’s case, that nearly became possible in 2000 (it lost to Sydney by only two votes), since when the dragon’s impact has become global, whether through its scouring of developing countries for raw materials or through its undercutting of businesses in the advanced economies.

In terms of expenditure and medals won, the Chinese are set to make a much bigger splash than their two East Asian forerunners. For a country still sensitive to its humiliation by Western powers and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries, that is an understandable source of pride.

However, as London is finding, the path to Olympic glory is strewn with obstacles. First, there is the huge cost. When it won the bid in 2001, Beijing promised to spend $20 billion on sporting complexes and infrastructure. That figure has since doubled.

Then there is the problem of environmental pollution. The city has promised to shut down the culprits for the duration but they are showing no enthusiasm for such curtailing of their income.

Finally, there is the danger of awkward protests, under the eyes of the world’s press, against Han colonisation of Tibet and Xinjiang; thus the courting of the Prince of Wales, one of China’s highest-profile critics, by Beijing’s new ambassador in London.

Publicly, Politburo members will continue to trumpet the 2008 Olympics as an overdue opportunity to demonstrate China’s global pre-eminence.

Privately, they are probably keeping their fingers crossed that they can carry off an event inherited from a previous set of leaders without major embarrassment.

  UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) — The UN General Assembly adopted unanimously on Wednesday a resolution which calls for truce during the Beijing Olympic Games next year.    The resolution, submitted by China and cosponsored by 186 nations, urges member states to observe the Olympic Truce individually and collectively during the Games of the 29th Olympiad in Beijing and the following Paralympic Games.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee addresses the General Assembly debate about Sport for Peace and Development at U.N. Headquarters Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

    The resolution, entitled “Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal,” was approved by the 192-member body unanimously.    It urges member states to observe the truce during the Beijing Olympic Games which will take place from 8 to 24 August 2008, and the subsequent Paralympic Games in Beijing which will take place from 6 to 17 September 2008.

    It welcomes the decision of the International Olympic Committee(IOC) to mobilize international sports organizations and the National Olympic Committees of the member states to undertake concrete actions at the local, national, regional and world levels to promote and strengthen a culture of peace and harmony based on the spirit of the Olympic Truce.

    It also calls on all member states to cooperate with the IOC in its efforts to use sport as an instrument to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation in areas of conflict during and beyond the Olympic Games.

Liu Qi, President of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games speaks during the debate about Sport for Peace and Development at UN Headquarters, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

    The Olympic Truce originated from the Olympic truce treaty passed by Greek city-states participating in the ancient Olympic Games.    The concept of the Olympic Truce was revived by the IOC in 1992 which relayed it to the United Nations. Since 1993, the UN General Assembly has appealed for the truce by adopting a resolution one year before each edition of the Olympic Games.

    ”With a history of over 1,000 years, the treaty is a peace accord that has been observed for the longest time in history,” said Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Beijing Olympiad, to the assembly.

    The resolution not only captures the “quintessential elements of the previous resolutions but also features the three main concepts that are at the core of the Beijing Olympic Games, namely, ‘Green Olympics, High-Tech Olympics and People’s Olympics,’ and their vision to achieve harmonious development of society,” Liu said.

    ”Sport unites the principles that the Olympic Movement holds dear — education, sustainability, nondiscrimination, universality, humanism and solidarity,” IOC President Jacques Rogge told the General Assembly.

    ”These are also the principles at the core of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These are the principles that drive far-reaching social change,” Rogge said.

    The 2008 Beijing Summer Games will reach one-fifth of the world’s population in China alone, Rogge said.

    ”It is predicted that four billion people — the most ever — will watch the Beijing Games,” Rogge said. “This is a wonderful opportunity for China and the world to witness the Olympic values in action — to see first-hand the excellence, friendship and respect that sport brings to life, to witness the harmony, understanding and peace that sport can engender.” 

Oct 31 (Reuters) - China’s capital has already spent 120 billion yuan ($16.1 billion) to combat its chronic pollution and create a clean, green Beijing ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

Here are some of the main ways the city, home to 15 million people and 3 million cars and with an annual coal consumption of 26 million tonnes, is greening up:

SWITCHING FROM COAL TO GAS:

– Already the top consumer of natural gas among Chinese cities, Beijing’s usage grew to an estimated 4.7 billion cubic metres in 2007. By the end of 2006, it had fired up 14,900 coal-fired boilers with a capacity of less than 20 tonnes.

– Cutting back coal use in some 110,000 courtyard homes in central Beijing is another key means of achieving 245 “blue-sky days” for 2007 (four more than 2006), the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau says.

CLOSING OR RELOCATING HEAVY POLLUTERS:

– Steel-maker Capital Steel, long Beijing’s worst polluter, has doused some of its blast furnaces and is being relocated out of the city to coastal Hebei Province.

– In July 2006, production ceased at another major polluter, the Beijing Coking and Chemical Factory, which had been responsible for 7,300 tonnes of dust and 7,500 tonnes of sulphur dioxide in annual emissions.

GREENING THE TRANSPORT SYSTEM:

– Car exhausts pump out 80 percent of the carbon monoxide in Beijing’s skies. To cut private cars’ contributions to pollution, new emission standards were implemented in 2005, to be updated in 2008.

– Beijing has also retired 47,000 old and inefficient taxis and more than 7,000 buses out of a total operating fleet of 60,000 taxis and 19,000 buses.

– Spectators with Olympics tickets will travel free on public transport during the Games. A new fleet of 3,795 buses powered by natural gas are already running in Beijing.

COVERING DUST FROM CONSTRUCTION:

– Beijing’s 100 million square metres of construction sites have been asked to cover their dirt and dust. Sites found to be causing dust pollution will be hit with fines.

RECYCLING WATER:

– The dry northern capital has suffered eight successive years of drought. As part of its drive to conserve scarce water resources, it obtained 10 percent of its water, some 360 million cubic metres, from recycled and reclaimed sources in 2006.

CONTROLLING SANDSTORMS:

– Green belts of trees and grass have been planted in neighbouring inner Mongolia to combat creeping desert sands that are the source of the sandstorms that whip through Beijing in spring. Forest coverage in the city reached 42.5 percent by 2006.

Sources: Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau; Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG); United Nations Environment Programme report “Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, an Environmental Review”; Beijing Drainage Group