There are now only 10 days until the Olympics officially kick off and despite Beijing's slogan, "we're ready", many are questioning the capital's state of readiness as blue sky days have been non-existent for over a week. Its interesting to see how this story is dealt with differently in the Chinese and English press.
Du Shaozhong, one of the deputy director's of Beijing's environmental bureau, went before the media to talk about the environmental conditions in Beijing and the Chinese and English media focused on two totally different issues. A few days ago, he was saying that more emergency measures may need to be put into place to clean things up before the Olympics. Yesterday, Du was telling the media "We are very confident about the effectiveness," Du Shaozhong, a deputy director of Beijing's environmental bureau, said of the traffic and industrial restrictions during a news conference on Sunday at the new Olympic media center. "We are going to ensure a good air quality during the Games."
The Chinese media focused on other things from that press conference, speaking far more defensively, Du made statements to the extent that photographs and reporter's feelings are relatively pointless because they tell you nothing about the actual air quality, and instead they believe in science and the data they have received. This is to go along with his guarantee (one that we believe, having regularly ran, biked, and participated in other athletic endeavors around the city) that the polluted skies will not serve as a health risk to any of the athletes competing in Beijing.
How are things today? The sky is legitimately overcast today with high visibility and none of the smog/fog of the past few days.
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1 comment:
You should believe the government statistics, and not your red, teary eyes. Put some eye drops on it to take out the irritation from the air, and you will see how clean the air is.
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