China needs wind of change

WITH just 12 days to go before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese capital was shrouded in a thick haze of smog yesterday. The pollution was reported to be among the worst seen in Beijing during the past month, with growing worries that drastic measures to cut vehicle and factory emissions will not guarantee clear skies.

What a Chinese puzzle this represents. It is one thing to be hailed as the world's fastest-growing economy, with rates of growth that European countries can only dream of. But it is quite another to have a clean, smog-free capital in which to stage the world's leading athletics contest. It is the country's astonishing rate of growth over the past 20 years – and in particular the transformation of its major city – that has made China's hosting of the Olympic Games possible. But the price of that growth has been a level and intensity of pollution that western society has found increasingly unacceptable. Now athletes are faced with a smogathon.

Ironically, the Beijing Olympics could mark the peak of this current growth phase and a slowdown may set in almost immediately afterwards. In this case, Beijing in 2009 might offer a surer promise of a pollution-free Olympics. But sporting and business cycles just do not coincide that easily. The world's last hope is that the wind changes for the duration.