China running uphill as it prepares for Games

BEIJING — For a nation that desperately wants to get the Olympics right, many things are going wrong.

With a month to go before the Aug. 8 opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, tens of thousands of Chinese are battling a plague of locusts and a spreading bloom of bright green algae covering the Olympic sailing course.

In Beijing, hoteliers are worried that tight visa restrictions have discouraged tourism, and profits during the Games could be far below an expected windfall.

The problems — some seemingly Biblical, some clearly man-made — have distracted from gargantuan efforts by Beijing to host a spectacular Games. China has spent a record $37 billion to prepare for the Olympics, an amount four times more than Athens spent on the 2004 Summer Olympics. The money has gone for new subway lines, an airport terminal and more than three dozen new and refurbished sports venues.

Hundreds of laborers are scrambling to finish work at the Olympic Green, a mile-long strip that will be the Games’ epicenter.

The only major structure still under construction — a 525-foot-tall broadcasting tower wedged between China’s National Stadium and National Aquatics Center — will be finished by July 15, said Wang Guanghai, a security manager at the site.

Speakers mounted on palm tree-shaped light poles play recorded announcements, including one that says in English, “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to your hometown arena.”

Nearby, laborers are planting flowers around a square built to resemble traditional Beijing architecture and working on buildings that will house Olympic sponsors including Coca-Cola, Kodak and Adidas.

Just how big are the Games here? Goodbye, Mao.

China’s central bank is introducing a new banknote today that will replace the image of the country’s founding communist leader, Mao Zedong, with an illustration of the National Stadium, known as the “bird’s nest.” The back of the new 10-yuan note (worth about $1.45) features the picture of a statue of a Greek discus-thrower.

Qi Dan, a university student visiting Beijing from central China, peered through a security fence at the major venues and said “every Chinese person is excited that we are hosting the Olympics.”

“It means we have really become part of the world,” she said.

Acts of God, and man

But if the Games will highlight China’s growing global prominence, they will also throw a harsh spotlight on problems caused by the nation’s rapid development and slow political opening.

The 154-square-mile algae bloom off the coast of Qingdao, a city on the Yellow Sea southeast of Beijing, and a plague of millions of locusts in northern China have underscored how the country’s environment has suffered from pollution and overuse.

While at least one Chinese official has called the algae outbreak a “natural disaster,” scientists said it was almost certainly caused by pollution, which can trigger sudden ecological shifts.

A biologist at Shanghai Fisheries University said the algae had multiplied because pollution from nearby factories and many fish farms along the coast had “destroyed the natural balance.” He asked to remain anonymous because he could be punished for contradicting Chinese officials.

Long swaths of the algae, which sailors have taken to calling fairways and blobs, have been thick enough that sailboats have become stuck in them, according to a blog by U.S. sailor Andrew Campbell.

“Sometimes hundreds of yards long and up to a hundred yards wide, the blobs creep the water in massive waves of weed spoiling any racecourse in their path,” Campbell, who is training in Qingdao, wrote.

Wu Jichuan, a retired entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said that the locust infestation — which Beijing is battling with 33,000 exterminators and 200 tons of pesticide, according to state media — is linked to China’s deteriorating environment because locusts breed more rapidly in dry areas with little natural vegetation. Grasslands in Inner Mongolia, the center of the outbreak, have been heavily damaged in recent years by farmers overgrazing their livestock.

Government restrictions

The Games have also highlighted Beijing’s strict social controls.

China has tightened visa restrictions, including limiting multiple-entry visas and requiring applicants to show hotel bookings and return plane tickets. And an unknown number of foreigners have been forced to leave Beijing and other cities hosting Olympic events. Some people working for activist groups have been denied visas for the Games, said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, the international monitoring organization.

The stricter laws have deterred some tourists from traveling to Beijing. Chinese officials have said they expect 1.5 million visitors to the city during the Games. But Beijing’s Tourism Bureau said in May that only 77 percent of five-star hotel rooms and less than half of four-star hotel rooms had been booked for the Games, which end on Aug. 24.

Wang Rui, a saleswoman at the five-star Yuyang Hotel in downtown Beijing, said on Friday that between 40 and 50 percent of the hotel’s rooms had been booked for the Olympics, a rate that was significantly below expectations.

Visitors who do travel to Beijing can expect increased scrutiny.

A guide the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee posted on its Web site last month warns visitors against bringing printed materials “critical of China,” displaying “religious, political or racial banners at sports venues” or holding “a public gathering, parade or protest” without prior police approval, the China Daily, the mouthpiece newspaper of the Chinese government, reported.

“Those doing so otherwise face administrative punishments and/or criminal prosecution,” the English-language paper added.

Beijing will deploy 80,000 police, soldiers and guards to enforce security during the Games and has mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens to monitor people considered security risks, including Chinese dissidents, former prisoners, mental health patients, petitioners and beggars, Bequelin said.

“There is a very, very large surveillance network (in Beijing),” Bequelin said. “If there is a protest it will be stopped within minutes if not seconds.”

Tight restrictions

Some Beijing residents have chafed under other government restrictions. The city will force many factories to close during the Olympics. And to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, half of all private cars will be banned from July 20 until Sept. 20, three days after the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games, which will follow the Olympic Games from Sept. 6-17..

“The government wants to make things easier for visitors, but their restrictions are too severe,” a taxi driver surnamed Wang said as he drove through a street packed with pedestrians, cars and cyclists this week.

Like most Chinese, however, Wang welcomed the Olympics as an opportunity for Beijing to engage with the world.

“Everyone will be able to learn more about China,” he said.