Beijing starts countdown to '08
Posted: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 3:20 PM
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Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
"Aiya," the Beijing cab driver turned to me. "Does it get this dirty in America?"
He pointed out the window to air so thick that calling it a haze was an understatement.
Before I could get a word in, the driver barreled on with his monologue, "But it's OK! It's the Green Olympics, right?"
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| Tiananmen Square goes through a final dress rehearsal on Tuesday evening for the official countdown ceremony. |
He paused to chortle. "It'll be clean next year!"
It doesn't seem soon enough.
Tiananmen Square kicks-off countdown
Tomorrow marks the start of China's official countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games – an event to be celebrated with a vast musical performance on Tiananmen Square.
For the occasion, the square has been overrun by lights, booms, giant TV screens, huge metal scaffolding, and by a potent mixture of smog and humidity that has plagued Beijing all summer, especially the last two days.
Here on Tiananmen Square, NBC has a ringside seat as the only western broadcaster to cover the events live, direct from the square. Between rehearsal sets and setting up, we – with NBC Sports and NBC Olympics colleagues – talk a lot about the weather and the rain.
Across town, foreign correspondents are parked outside the Bird's Nest (aka: the National Stadium – the main Olympic venue). Seeing them on camera, you can barely make out the stadium's distinct metal twigs in the background.
Progress Ho!
But Beijing Olympic officials continue to march to the steady drumbeat of optimism.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| A glimpse of some of the recent smog in Beijing. |
In remarks on Monday that both applauded and criticized their own efforts, they noted that parallel measures to control the climate and reduce pollution resulted in 241 "blue sky days" last year, a far cry from the 100 "blue sky days" in 1998 – "this is the progress we have made. However, we are not satisfied with that."
Officials for the Beijing Games also announced that preparations were ahead of schedule; construction for all the Olympic venues apart from the Bird's Nest would be completed by the end of this year.
The Chinese government also took the opportunity to remind everyone the great strides it's made for the nation's 1.3 billion people in barely two decades.
So it should be a time for celebration.
Instead, the one-year countdown has triggered a growing chorus of voices, which argue that China has yet to earn its rightful place among the developed superpowers because of its poor human rights record.
Poor track record
In addition to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, non-governmental organizations have stepped up their criticisms of the Chinese government in the past week.
Beijing's makeover into an Olympic set piece has resulted in the displacement of 1.25 million people, according to the Centre on Human Rights and Evictions in Geneva.
Echoing the findings of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, two western NGOs the past two days have faulted Chinese authorities for failing to live up to their promises for greater press freedom in the run-up to the Olympic Games.
In neighboring India, Tibetan exiles said they're planning large-scale rallies around the world to demand that China leave Tibet.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Dancers rehearse for the big countdown to '08 event. |
And then there is the Darfur factor.
Last week, during a whirlwind three-day trip to Beijing, Colorado State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff presented to the Chinese Foreign Ministry a petition on behalf of three groups: Save Darfur, Dream for Darfur, and STAND (Student Anti-Genocide Coalition).
The letter, which included the signatures of more than 40,000 Americans, asked Beijing "to press Sudan to build a lasting peace and ease the humanitarian crisis" in Darfur.
Romanoff, when asked why he felt compelled to comment on Beijing's human rights record, said China was remarkable for "not just the scale but the pace of the scale of economic development. It's breathtaking. But what sometimes seems like glacial progress when it comes to political reform is equally striking."
For Romanoff and others, Beijing's role as host of the 2008 Games would be easier to applaud if China were to concentrate on making the same kind of progress in civil liberties as it has for the economic well-being of its people.
Click here to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Today Show's trip to Beijing.
