Peter Wilson

Olympic preparations gear up

Beijing is into the final strait as it gears up for the Olympics.  The most visible change is in the traffic: half the cars have been taken off the road. If your plate ended in an even number on Sunday, you got to drive. Today, Monday, it is the turn of the odd numbers. But what's left is more tightly squeezed: the Olympic lanes on key thoroughfares are being kept clear for cars with special passes, so they are almost completely empty. Skies are a bit bluer, too, as rules kick in to end big construction projects and halt production in the most polluting industries for the period of the Olympics and Paralympics in September.

There are other big changes too. The metro system when I worked in Beijing ten years ago had only two lines, which rarely went where you wanted to go, so most people biked. The lines occupied tunnels built by Mao to withstand a Soviet atom bomb. Today Beijing has a network of metro and light rail that is 220km long (only London and New York are longer). Three new lines have been built in time for the Olympics. A metro line opened up on the weekend from the airport to a downtown transport hub (that happens to be right outside our house). You can fly into Beijing and reach the centre of the city in 30 minutes, for under £2 - and then go anywhere else on the metro system for under 20p. Line 10 also opened on the weekend - it links the Capital Business District on the East side of town (where almost all foreign Embassies are, and where many foreigners live) with the high tech zone near the universities in the West. Line 8 - the Olympic line - is ready too. But it will not open until 8 August, the first day of the Games.

I took a ride on Line 10 on the weekend, to try it out.  So did a lot of other cheerful people, who went to see the Bird's Nest Stadium from the southern bit of the Olympic park. Some of the big Olympic hotels next to the stadium have large TV screens on the front, which seem to broadcast only sport. A small army of young volunteers has already started to help people out, at the airport, in the subway, and across the city. They have ready smiles, and good English. They are a good face for Beijing.

Thanks for more comments. Mark said that Tian's message meant maybe more things can now be read in China. This blog can be. I checked over the weekend. Hope it stays up.

Posted at 12:10 21 July 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[3]

China - where change is a constant theme

Today is my first day blogging. I am the British Embassy's Political Counsellor in China . That means I run a team that covers China's internal politics, its relationship with the rest of the world, our press and public affairs operation here, and our bilateral relationship with China. I am also responsible for the Olympic attache at the Embassy (one of the more unusual Foreign Office jobs) and his team.   

I am just back from two weeks away in Europe. It was just under a month to go at the Olympics.  Even with only two weeks to go, there's been change. I just got off at Beijing's new terminal three that opened in March - a Norman Foster design, that is bigger than the whole of Heathrow, tho' nowhere near as full. The airport is gearing up: young Olympic volunteers, friendly airport staff, and luggage out five minutes after I was. Not many using the Olympic channel yet, said one of the border control officials, but better to be prepared. A lot of smiles and friendliness.

Now coming back into town.  Coming in on a new road, that was not open when I left two weeks ago - not unusual for Beijing!. A second airport express way, just opened for the Olympics. It is good, tho' I am getting a bit lost now coming in a new way, past buildings that were not here a year and a half ago. The one thing I already miss, tho', is the blue skies I have been enjoying on holiday. Most Chinese still live in the countryside. But the cities, which are growing as rapidly as the economy, are polluted. Beijing's skies are grey (and it is double the size it was a decade ago).  Climate change is a big issue for this Embassy. Domestic environmental pollution, and energy conservation, are key issues for China's top politicians, because the public cares about it now, and because it makes economic sense.

Change is a constant  theme here. It is hard to get perspective on a place moving as fast as China is . I've now been back in China a year and a half, after almost ten years working on other things. I first came to Beijing in 1981, briefly, when I was 13. I came back in March 1989 as a student on vacation. And then not again until 1994, when I was studying  Mandarin in the Foreign Office (I had two years training, full time, one in London and one in Beijing) . My first posting was here , in our Commercial Section , helping British companies enter the China market . I left in 1998.  Even if blogs had existed then, the political climate here would have made it impossible to write one. That is not so true any more - although I am not sure this will be easy to access from a Chinese terminal.  But I thought it would be worth having a go, to see. 
 
There is plenty of material out there now in English to help form an impression of this country that now matters so much for all of us. And there are some really excellent British perpectives. James Kynge's China Shakes the World, published three years ago now, is still my favourite book about modern China.  Rana Mitter's Short Introduction to Modern China, which came out earlier this year, is really imaginative.  More and more British people are coming to see China for themselves: 600,000 visited last year. That exchange is two way - Chinese students are the largest foreign student community in the UK, with more than 60,000 students. I do not know who might read this, but I hope that perhaps some of those students will, and will comment.

Posted at 15:13 10 July 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[4]