More Anti-Pollution Measures Readied For Beijing And Beyond

Contingency plans have been announced in the event that Beijing stays as hazy and humid once the Olympics start as it has been the past week.
More cars will be taken off the roads (those whose license plate’s last digit matches the last number of the date) and the alternate day system of car bans will [...]

China Restricts Web Access For Journalists Covering Olympics

China, it turns out, cut a deal with the International Olympic Committee when negotiating for the Games due to start next month that would prevent the more than 20,000 foreign journalists covering the Games having access to what the authorities consider sensitive web sites.
This conflicts with promises subsequently given to foreign journalists by IOC officials [...]

Doha Trade Talks Collapse

An update to our earlier post: Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, has declared the Doha round of world trade talks dead. There is a link to an audio feed of his statement here.
The finger will continue to be pointed at China, which U.S. trade officials, say at the last moment reversed its [...]

Doha Trade Round In China’s Hands

The choice for Beijing is this: scupper the Doha round of world trade talks on behalf of the poorer countries who feel they are being asked to bear the brunt of the lowering of trade barriers necessary to strike a deal, but incur the wrath of the Americans and Europeans for doing so; or help [...]

Beijing’s Air Worsens Again, New Restrictions Coming?

The first days after authorities took half the cars off the roads of Beijing to improve air quality for the Olympics that we noted in Cleaning Up Beijing’s Air may have been a false dawn.
Between 24th and 28th July pollution levels shot back up above World Health Organization standards having been well below since the [...]

China Probes Beijing Olympics Terror Threat

China says it is investigating a claim by a Uighur separatist group, the Turkestan Islamic Party — better known as the Islamic Party of East Turkestan (ETIM) –  that it was behind several recent attacks, the BBC reports.
The include the May 5 Shanghai bus bombing that killed three, another unspecified Shanghai attack, a tractor-bombing of [...]

Union Strikes Pay Deal With Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart, the superstore group that is the world’s largest retailer and famously anti-union in its home country of the U.S., has struck pay deals with the officially-sanctioned All China Federation of Trade Unions’ locals in Shenyang and Quanzhou, the FT reports.
A similar deal has been struck in Shenzhen, the Economic Times reports. Such collective [...]

China To Allow Designated Olympic Protests

There is something faintly comical about centrally-planned protests, not that China treats dissent with anything but deadly earnest.
Nonetheless, demonstrations will be permitted in three parks in Beijing during the Olympic games, says Liu Shaowu, director of the organizing committee’s security department.
The Guardian calls the designated spots in Shijie, Zizhuyuan and Ritan parks “protest pens”. Would-be [...]

Cleaning Up Beijing’s Dirty Air

Beijing’s pre-Olympic anti-pollution controls went into effect on Sunday and a couple of days on, this Bystander is told, they are having some beneficial effect in making the city less smoggy.
Car drivers may now use their vehicles only on alternate days, new building work has stopped, and, perhaps most importantly, smoke-belching factories around the capital [...]

China’s Olympic Medals Ambitions

China hopes to top the 32 gold medals it won at the the Athens Olympics four years ago.
That, at least, is its public position. Sports ministry spokesman Zhang Haifeng says: “We do have a target, that is to rank among the top nations in the medals table…We managed that by winning 32 gold medals in [...]