BEIJING — Wang Hao knows that the air in Beijing still needs to get a lot cleaner before the Olympics start in fewer than two weeks. Yet he won't apologize for paying $12,000 for a second car. The purchase allows him to avoid the city's tough anti-smog restrictions, which ban half of the city's vehicles from the roads on alternate days until the Games are over. Of course taking the subway is more environmentally friendly," says Wang, a car salesman. "But it's not convenient."
With the Aug. 8 opening ceremony looming, such stories help explain why a thick gray cloud of pollution stubbornly sits over Beijing. Uncooperative weather, lingering factory smoke and an undetermined number of rule-benders such as Wang threaten to embarrass the government and cause health problems for Olympic athletes.
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Jiang Hai's Ford and Volkswagen both had license plates that ended in even numbers. To ensure he had wheels, he got a new, odd-numbered license plate for the Ford. "I understand the car restriction, and I support it, but I need to drive every day for my business," the telecom equipment salesman said.
Zhang Jianyu, a local representative of the Environmental Defense Fund, remains hopeful the public is steadily buying into the anti-smog measures. "The government can only provide the infrastructure: buses and subways and the regulations. But without public cooperation, these things are not going to work," he said. C.S. Kiang, an environmental expert at Peking University, said given China's non-stop economic development "there's not enough time to solve" the pollution problem before the Games.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/environment/2008-07-28-china_N.htm
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