Olympic Times – Sports Daily

China’s Minister of Health Chen Zhu said on Monday the government will ensure public health safety during the Beijing Olympic Games by strengthening disease monitoring, emergency response and medical treatment.
“The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provides a great opportunity for the country’s public health development. Beijing will join hands with co-host cities and its neighboring provinces to strengthen disease-related information monitoring and make risk evaluations on the possible public health accidents.”
He said rehearsals would be held and exercises in public health accidents would be improved. This was to prevent, reduce and eliminate risks in the public health sphere during the August Games to the maximum.
Liu Zejun, director of Beijing Municipal Disease Prevention and Control Center, said special attention would be paid to the following aspects when making public health risk evaluations: epidemic disease spread, group incidence of a certain disease, food-inflicted disease, vector organism and its control, hotel disinfection, drinking water safety, environment safety and heat stroke.
“Great efforts will be made in preventing rabies, bird flu, SARS and group poisonings,” Chen stressed.
Since the 2003 SARS outbreak, China has gradually improved its national disease prevention and control system. From 2002 to now, about 10.5 billion yuan (76.3 U.S. million dollars) had been spent on infrastructure construction of disease prevention and control centers nationwide.

from: xinhuanet.com 

The airport at Tianjin, a city neighboring Beijing, has completed its largest expansion project to cater to the needs of next year’s Olympic Games, airport sources said on Tuesday.
The new terminal building was five times larger than the old one and was able to accommodate 10 million passenger arrivals and departures annually, the sources said.
More than 300,000 officials, athletes and visitors for next August’s Games were expected to travel via the airport. The expanded parts were scheduled to be operational in May.
The expansion, with a total investment of nearly 3 billion yuan (409.5 million U.S. dollars), started in August 2005, three years before the Games opened. It included a new 116,000-square-meter terminal building, a 270,000-square-meter apron and a 62,000-square-meter parking lot.
The runway was also widened to 75 meters from the current 50 meters and lengthened 400 meters to 3,600 meters.
After expansion, the airport would have a mail-handling capacity of 500,000 tons and could accommodate 200,000 flights annually.
Tianjin is about 120 kilometers southeast of the capital.
Track laying was completed on the intercity high-speed railway between Beijing and Tianjin last week. It would be put into use before the Games and shortened the journey between the two cities from the current 70 minutes to around 30 minutes.

from: xinhuanet.com 

A set of six stamps portraying Beijing’s main Olympic venues were issued by China Post on Thursday.
With a total face value of 8.6 yuan (about 1.2 U.S. dollars), the stamps feature the National Gymnasium, the China Agricultural University Gymnasium, the Beijing University Gymnasium, the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center, the Laoshan Velodrome and the National Swimming Center, or the Water Cube.
A six-yuan commemorative cover sheet depicting the National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, was issued together with the stamps.
It is the fourth set of commemorative Olympic stamps China has issued since Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Games in July 2001.

Photo taken on Dec. 20, 2007 shows a commemorative cover sheet depicting the National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, in Beijing, China. A set of six stamps portraying Beijing’s main Olympic venues were issued by China Post on Thursday. The stamps feature the National Gymnasium, the China Agricultural University Gymnasium, the Beijing University Gymnasium, the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center, the Laoshan Velodrome and the National Swimming Center, or the Water Cube. A commemorative cover sheet was issued together with the stamps. (Xinhua Photo) -  foto from: xinhuanet.com

from: xinhuanet.com

Hosting the Olympic Games means doing a lot more than building a few stadiums and subway lines, as Beijing has found out.
Keen to present its best face to the world during the prestigious sporting event, the city is racing against time to improve the behavior of local residents.
Citywide campaigns are under way to curb Beijingers’ bad habits such as queue-jumping, littering, using foul language and spitting in public.
“Hosting the Olympics is not only about building grand stadiums,” said Zheng Mojie, deputy director of Beijing’s Capital Ethics Development Office, the official etiquette watchdog.
“As tens of thousands of foreign visitors are expected to flood into China next summer, both China’s positive and negative sides will be amplified. So we must change those bad local habits,” she added. Millions of brochures were sent out to individuals to introduce a new code of conduct, while polishing courses are being offered to all civil servants and the people working in the service sector, such as cab drivers, shopping assistants, waiters and waitresses, and bus conductors.
The 11th of each month has been instituted as “Queuing Day”, because the date symbolizes an orderly line, when residents are told to stand in line to catch public transportation. In addition, people caught spitting in public face fines of up to 50 yuan (6.60U.S. dollars) and rude manners when watching sports competitions may incur a detention.
“We are happy that much progress is being made and our work has begun to pay off,” Zheng told Xinhua.
A survey released by the Renmin University of China found that in 2006, 4.95 percent of people still spat, down by 3.5 percentage points from 2005.
From November 2005 to November 2006, the poll covered 10,000 local residents and 1,000 foreigners who had lived in Beijing for more than two years. The survey team also gathered observations from 230,000 people at 320 public venues and 180,000 automobiles.
The survey revealed that the occurrence of littering in public had dropped from 9.1 percent in 2005 to 5.3 percent in 2006 and queue-jumping dropped from 9 percent to 6 percent.
The “civic index” of Beijing residents scored 69.06 in 2006, 3.85 points higher than 2005. The index takes into account public compliance with rules in public health and public order, attitudes towards strangers, etiquette in watching sports events and willingness to contribute to the Olympic Games.
“We expect the index to further rise for this year when the 2007 report is released,” Zheng said. However, the “civic index” still fails to meet the standard required for the 2008 Olympics, according to Sha Lianxiang, a professor at the Department of Sociology, Renmin University.
Zheng admitted that it’s an arduous mission to raise the level of civility of the whole society.
“There’s a saying that it takes three generations’ time to bring up a noble, so I cannot guarantee that impolite behavior will not be spotted in the city when the Olympics take place next August,” she said. “Our goal is to rebuild the majority people to be civilized.”

from: xinhuanet.com

Hosting the Olympic Games means doing a lot more than building a few stadiums and subway lines, as Beijing has found out.
Keen to present its best face to the world during the prestigious sporting event, the city is racing against time to improve the behavior of local residents. Citywide campaigns are under way to curb Beijingers’ bad habits such as queue-jumping, littering, using foul language and spitting in public.
“Hosting the Olympics is not only about building grand stadiums,” said Zheng Mojie, deputy director of Beijing’s Capital Ethics Development Office, the official etiquette watchdog.
“As tens of thousands of foreign visitors are expected to flood into China next summer, both China’s positive and negative sides will be amplified. So we must change those bad local habits,” she added. Millions of brochures were sent out to individuals to introduce a new code of conduct, while polishing courses are being offered to all civil servants and the people working in the service sector, such as cab drivers, shopping assistants, waiters and waitresses, and bus conductors.
The 11th of each month has been instituted as “Queuing Day”, because the date symbolizes an orderly line, when residents are told to stand in line to catch public transportation. In addition, people caught spitting in public face fines of up to 50 yuan (6.60U.S. dollars) and rude manners when watching sports competitions may incur a detention.
“We are happy that much progress is being made and our work has begun to pay off,” Zheng told Xinhua.
A survey released by the Renmin University of China found that in 2006, 4.95 percent of people still spat, down by 3.5 percentage points from 2005.
From November 2005 to November 2006, the poll covered 10,000 local residents and 1,000 foreigners who had lived in Beijing for more than two years. The survey team also gathered observations from 230,000 people at 320 public venues and 180,000 automobiles. The survey revealed that the occurrence of littering in public had dropped from 9.1 percent in 2005 to 5.3 percent in 2006 and queue-jumping dropped from 9 percent to 6 percent.
The “civic index” of Beijing residents scored 69.06 in 2006, 3.85 points higher than 2005. The index takes into account public compliance with rules in public health and public order, attitudes towards strangers, etiquette in watching sports events and willingness to contribute to the Olympic Games.
“We expect the index to further rise for this year when the 2007 report is released,” Zheng said.
However, the “civic index” still fails to meet the standard required for the 2008 Olympics, according to Sha Lianxiang, a professor at the Department of Sociology, Renmin University.
Zheng admitted that it’s an arduous mission to raise the level of civility of the whole society.
“There’s a saying that it takes three generations’ time to bring up a noble, so I cannot guarantee that impolite behavior will not be spotted in the city when the Olympics take place next August,” she said.
“Our goal is to rebuild the majority people to be civilized.”

from: xinhuanet.com

A set of six stamps portraying Beijing’s main Olympic venues were issued by China Post on Thursday.
With a total face value of 8.6 yuan (about 1.2 U.S. dollars), the stamps feature the National Gymnasium, the China Agricultural University Gymnasium, the Beijing University Gymnasium, the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center, the Laoshan Velodrome and the National Swimming Center, or the Water Cube.
A six-yuan commemorative cover sheet depicting the National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, was issued together with the stamps.
It is the fourth set of commemorative Olympic stamps China has issued since Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Games in July 2001.

from: xinhuanet.com 

More than 50 varieties of new Olympic licensed products are to go on sale, with half of them priced at around 100 yuan each, according a New Year promotional activity by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) in Beijing on Wednesday.
Most of the products are affordable Olympic badges. Among the higher-end articles, gold badges and “Yubi” jade products will attract buyers because of their combination of Olympic elements with gold and Hetian jade to highlight Chinese traditional characteristics.
Items with a limited circulation include badges featuring Olympic mascots; sets of badges with famous Chinese buildings as the theme; auspiciousness-themed and fan-type badges; silver badges promoting ancient China’s “Four Great Inventions” and many other badges with themes of Olympic sports and venues.
The high-end products also include gold and silver bars, ancient wine vessel-typed gold products, Olympic coxswain-figured gold products, and other precious metal articles.
The product named “Gold Badge and Jade Yubi” integrates precious metals with the Olympic emblem and mascots and is priced at 71,800 yuan apiece. It contains 50 grams of pure gold with a circulation of 2008.
Yubi is a round flat piece of jade with a hole in its center, usually used for ceremonial purposes in ancient China.

Gold or silver badges priced at 118 yuan each

The most expensive jade product

 from: beijing2008.cn

With a workforce of 135,000 and a tax revenue of 4.51 billion yuan in the first ten months of 2007, the central business district (CBD) in Beijing’s Chaoyang District has gained momentum, an official said.
Through October 2007, 4,799 enterprises settled in the 3.99 sq km CBD — 521 more businesses than the same period the previous year. This adds up to more than one enterprise per day, Sang Xiaowei, vice director of Beijing CBD Administrative Commission told journalists attending a press conference at the Beijing Olympic Media Center on Wednesday.
Among them, 60.33 percent or 2,895 enterprises are service industry-oriented, including 151 financial institutions and 1,460 cultural creative enterprises. In the first ten months of 2007, foreign investment amounted to 319 million U.S. dollars.
Tax revenue from businesses in the CBD amounted to 4.15 billion yuan in the first ten months of 2007, a growth of 28.73 percent or 1.01 billion yuan over the same period in 2006. As the dominant tax revenue contributor, the service industry’s share was 84.9 percent, or 3.83 billion yuan.
Sang promised to improve transport and other infrastructure facilities and upgrade services for customers in an effort to boost development in the CBD.

from: beijing2008.cn

Workers have completed laying the tracks for intercity high-speed railway between Beijing and Tianjin on Sunday morning, the first of its kind in China.
The 200-km rail, starts from the Beijing South Railway Station in the downtown area and ends at Tianjin Railway Station, passing through the districts of Yizhuang Industrial Park, Yongle New Town and and Tianjin’s Yangcun, said a spokesman of the railway project.
Designed for a full speed of 350 kilometers per hour, the railway will shorten the journey between the two cities from the current 70 minutes to around 30 minutes.
A maximum of 20 pairs of trains will run on the new rail route per hour. Starting at an interval of 3 minutes, the trains are expected to carry up to 18,000 passengers per hour. At a cost of more than 13.3 billion yuan (about 1.8 billion U.S. dollars), the project started in July 4, 2005 and will be operational before the Beijing Olympic Games in next August.
According to the blueprint of the Ministry of Railway, intercity high-speed railway network will be set up in the economic developed areas, including the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Sea Ring area and the Pearl River Delta, by 2020.

Photo taken on Dec. 15, 2007 shows a segment of the Beijing-Tianjin intercity high-speed railway in downtown Tianjin, north China. Workers completed the laying of track for the intercity high-speed railway between Beijing, China’s capital, and the neighboring coastal city of Tianjin, the first of its kind in China, on Dec. 16, 2007. (Xinhua Photo)

 from: beijing2008.cn

Several provinces near Beijing are going all out to help ensure blue skies for the host city of next summer’s Olympic Games.
The local governments of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi provinces, Tianjin Municipality and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have worked out measures to improve air quality for the high-profile international event.
The program, also involving the Beijing municipal government and State Environmental Protection Administration, requires the six jurisdictions to cut pollutants that might darken the Olympic skies and set up an air-quality monitoring network focused on heavily-polluting businesses.
The provincial government of coal-rich Shanxi published its measures last week, ordering that all desulfurization projects at major coal-fired power plants be completed before July 1 next year.
Businesses in heavily-polluting industries — power, iron and steel, chemical and concrete — will have to cut production or even close if they fail to meet the emission standards during the games.
In addition, all vehicles traveling to Beijing from Shanxi must comply with Europe II emission standards from July 25 to Sept. 20,2008.
Similar moves will also be taken in Shandong, which discharged 1.96 million tons of sulfur dioxide last year, the most among the mainland’s 31 provincial-level regions.
The Laicheng Power Plant of the Huadian Power International Corp. Ltd. in Shandong’s Laiwu City began a desulfurization project on two 300,000-kw generation units in late October with an investment of 140 million yuan (18.9 million U.S. dollars). Originally, the project was scheduled for completion in 2009.
“We decided to advance its completion by about one year and a half, answering the call of the government,” said Liu Canqi, an engineer in the Environmental Section of Huadian’s Production Department.
“The project will help boost the plant’s desulfurization capacity by 41,000 tons annually,” he said.
Environmental authorities in Hebei, which surrounds Beijing and Tianjin, have pledged to spend about 21 billion yuan on anti-pollution projects and environmental monitoring stations.
Efforts to keep pollutants out of the capital include the installation of 34 desulphurization systems in power plants, construction of 23 central heating facilities that would help cut coal use, and 56 anti-pollution projects in the province’s chemical industries, said Ji Zhenhai, director of the provincial environment protection bureau.
The projects could reduce Hebei’s annual emissions of about 550,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, he said.
Meanwhile, Hebei has started to build air-quality monitoring stations in six major cities near Beijing — Langfang, Baoding, Tangshan, Zhangjiakou, Shijiazhuang and Chengde — to collect data on emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, carbon monoxide and other chemicals.
“Under certain weather conditions, pollutants from Beijing’s neighboring regions will spread to the capital, and vice versa,” said Li Xin, a research fellow with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“In summer and autumn, pollutants mainly come from south of Beijing, especially from southwest and southeast,” she said.
Shanxi, Hebei, Tianjin and Shandong are located south, southwest and southeast of Beijing.
This past June, smoke from burning waste straw in agricultural areas south of Beijing was blown north, polluting the capital’s skies for days.
“Hebei enjoys such a special geographical position that it cannot develop its economy at the cost of the environment,” said Zhang Yunchuan, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Although the other regions involved in the clean-air plan have yet to release their measures, sources said that local governments had pledged to punish officials or business leaders with demotion or dismissal if they failed to meet the targets.
“If you cannot fulfil your task, then go away [from your position]. For those making false statements, they will be punished without leniency,” Jiang Daming, acting governor of Shandong, warned at a conference of local pollution-control officials and business leaders.
Last year, the central government decided to cut energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan (1,351 U.S. dollars) of GDP by 20 percent and pollutants by 10 percent for the 2006-2010 period.
“We must take this opportunity of ensuring good air quality for the Beijing Olympics as another golden chance for boosting emissions reduction and strengthening controls on atmospheric pollution,” Jiang said.

Relying on a first-class drug testing laboratory, equipment, personnel, and strict procedures, BOCOG intends to provide a fair and clean competition platform for the athletes, a BOCOG official told the press on Tuesday.

Dai Jianping, vice-director of BOCOG’s Games Services Department, said a 6,000-sq-m drug testing center for the Beijing Olympic Games has been built, and elite experts from China and other countries are employed for the mission.
The specialists “have abundant anti-doping experience at large-scale international sport events,” he added.
To ensure the speedy delivery of samples from the test stations to the laboratory, BOCOG will entrust a professional security company to escort the samples all the way. Test stations will be set up at all Olympic venues to gather either urine or blood samples. The clinic of the Olympic Village will also dedicate a floor to doping tests, Dai said.
According to Dai, every doping control officer must undergo strict professional training and examination, and the trained officers are now taking part in the Good Luck Beijing sport events to enhance their anti-doping experience.
Doping control and testing cover all Olympic venues in the co-host cities, including the venues for football, sailing, and equestrian, said Dai.
Meanwhile, BOCOG has attached great importance to anti-doping communication, stressing the work to persuade youths to stay away from stimulants, to pursue a healthy lifestyle, and to keep sports and the Olympic Movement clean.

click image to enlage

Penny Xiang, another BOCOG official, talked about the menu for the Olympic Village in 2008. She said the menu would be set according to the requests of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the practice of the previous Olympic Games, with western food as its major component, combined with a certain portion of Asian food. Positive reactions to the initial menu and suggestions have come from related specialists after taste testing. The catering service providers are modifying the menu and will submit it for approval in January.
“We have taken into consideration the catering needs of different clients from various countries with different beliefs,” said Xiang.
Regarding hotel prices, she said the rates of standard rooms are within the limits of the bid promise, and the average price falls below the bid promise. For instance, a standard room at a five-star hotel was pledged to be 370 US dollars, roughly 2,960 yuan with the exchange rate at that time, and now, the price of a contracted five-star hotel room is only 2,800 yuan, on average.
She said Beijing has sufficient hotel and guesthouse rooms to meet the Games-time needs, and the room rates will become reasonable as the demand and supply set a clearer market scenario.

from: beijing2008.cn

Hotel room rates for tourists during next year’s Olympics will not be as high as previously reported by Chinese media, officials from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) said Tuesday.
Local media reports earlier this year said hotels in the capital were planning to charge non-official visitors eight to 10 times their usual rates. Xiang Ping, deputy director of the BOCOG’s Games services department, said some hotel owners had announced high rates to see how the market would respond. She said prices would likely drop, however, once the supply of rooms increases.
“It is just a game between hotel owners and the market,” Xiang said. “Hotel owners have been getting a lot of room inquiries, signaling that demand is extremely high, so they released high rates.
“The exorbitant rates are mainly a sales strategy, and reasonable deals are still available if buyers haggle,” she said. Xiang said very few hotels have actually signed contracts with clients, and those that have are not that expensive.
The BOCOG has signed contracts with 120 hotels to accommodate the “Olympic Family”, which includes visiting Olympic officials, media professionals and sponsors. The prices of 30,000 contracted rooms are lower than those previously quoted by the BOCOG.
“The average price per night at a five-star contracted hotel is just over 2,800 yuan (380 U.S. dollars). We had previously said 2,960 yuan,” Xiang said.
“About 80 percent of those rooms have been booked.” She said that although the government will not intervene to stop owners of tourist hotels hiking prices, she was confident the market will lead to reasonable prices as the Games approached.
Some 500,000 foreign visitors and 1 million domestic tourists are expected to pour into Beijing for the Games.

from: xinhuanet.com 

BEIJING, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — Beijing is confident to stage an Olympic Games in a comfortable environment, said the Games organizers here on Tuesday.
During a video meeting with the International Olympic Committee, Liu Qi, president of the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games (BOCOG), said the environment kept improving, which filled the organizers with confidence of holding a Games with good air quality.
“Until Nov. 22, Beijing had 226 days of good air quality (air quality level II or better) this year, nine days more than the same period last year,” said Liu.
“Take August as example, we had 28 days of good air quality, including two days of level I air quality and 26 days of level II,” he said, adding that the level of sulfur dioxide and inhalant particulate matter in the air also dropped to a new low.
“These statistics gave us confidence to ensure a good environment for next year’s Olympic Games,” he said.
Beijing has spent 120 billion yuan between 1998 and 2006, more than three percent of its GDP, on environmental protection.
The Chinese capital urged citizens to take public transportation instead of private cars by reducing ticket price and building subway lines as vehicle exhaust emissions became a major source of the city’s pollution.
The city also limited the use of small coal-burning stoves and natural gas became the clean energy alternative.
The Beijing Olympics will open on Aug. 8 next year.

from: xinhuanet.com 

Several provinces near Beijing are going all out to help ensure blue skies for the host city of next summer’s Olympic Games.
The local governments of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi provinces, Tianjin Municipality and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have worked out measures to improve air quality for the high-profile international event.
The program, also involving the Beijing municipal government and State Environmental Protection Administration, requires the six jurisdictions to cut pollutants that might darken the Olympic skies and set up an air-quality monitoring network focused on heavily-polluting businesses.
The provincial government of coal-rich Shanxi published its measures last week, ordering that all desulfurization projects at major coal-fired power plants be completed before July 1 next year.
Businesses in heavily-polluting industries — power, iron and steel, chemical and concrete — will have to cut production or even close if they fail to meet the emission standards during the games.
In addition, all vehicles traveling to Beijing from Shanxi must comply with Europe II emission standards from July 25 to Sept. 20,2008.
Similar moves will also be taken in Shandong, which discharged 1.96 million tons of sulfur dioxide last year, the most among the mainland’s 31 provincial-level regions.
The Laicheng Power Plant of the Huadian Power International Corp. Ltd. in Shandong’s Laiwu City began a desulfurization project on two 300,000-kw generation units in late October with an investment of 140 million yuan (18.9 million U.S. dollars). Originally, the project was scheduled for completion in 2009.
“We decided to advance its completion by about one year and a half, answering the call of the government,” said Liu Canqi, an engineer in the Environmental Section of Huadian’s Production Department.
“The project will help boost the plant’s desulfurization capacity by 41,000 tons annually,” he said.
Environmental authorities in Hebei, which surrounds Beijing and Tianjin, have pledged to spend about 21 billion yuan on anti-pollution projects and environmental monitoring stations.
Efforts to keep pollutants out of the capital include the installation of 34 desulphurization systems in power plants, construction of 23 central heating facilities that would help cut coal use, and 56 anti-pollution projects in the province’s chemical industries, said Ji Zhenhai, director of the provincial environment protection bureau.
The projects could reduce Hebei’s annual emissions of about 550,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, he said.
Meanwhile, Hebei has started to build air-quality monitoring stations in six major cities near Beijing — Langfang, Baoding, Tangshan, Zhangjiakou, Shijiazhuang and Chengde — to collect data on emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, carbon monoxide and other chemicals.
“Under certain weather conditions, pollutants from Beijing’s neighboring regions will spread to the capital, and vice versa,” said Li Xin, a research fellow with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“In summer and autumn, pollutants mainly come from south of Beijing, especially from southwest and southeast,” she said.
Shanxi, Hebei, Tianjin and Shandong are located south, southwest and southeast of Beijing.
This past June, smoke from burning waste straw in agricultural areas south of Beijing was blown north, polluting the capital’s skies for days.
“Hebei enjoys such a special geographical position that it cannot develop its economy at the cost of the environment,” said Zhang Yunchuan, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Although the other regions involved in the clean-air plan have yet to release their measures, sources said that local governments had pledged to punish officials or business leaders with demotion or dismissal if they failed to meet the targets.
“If you cannot fulfil your task, then go away [from your position]. For those making false statements, they will be punished without leniency,” Jiang Daming, acting governor of Shandong, warned at a conference of local pollution-control officials and business leaders.
Last year, the central government decided to cut energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan (1,351 U.S. dollars) of GDP by 20 percent and pollutants by 10 percent for the 2006-2010 period.
“We must take this opportunity of ensuring good air quality for the Beijing Olympics as another golden chance for boosting emissions reduction and strengthening controls on atmospheric pollution,” Jiang said.

from: xinhuanet.com

BEIJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) — “Forever Friends,” a song written by famed musicians Giorgio Moroder, Kong Xiangdong and Michael Kunze, is bidding to become the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games theme, sources said. An English version of the song’s music video finished shooting last month in Beijing and was expected to be on television and the Internet by the beginning of next year.

“The song meets the requirements of the Beijing Olympic Games,” said Zhao Dongming, the culture department director of the Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games (BOCOG). “It is heartwarming and has broad appeal.”
“We hope to impress people the world over who come to the Olympic Games with this beautiful song at the opening ceremony.”
The lyrics go “You’ve tasted bitter defeat and the sweet success/ You want it all and you settle for nothing less/ You’ve tried harder than the rest/ You’ve become one of the best/ This is the time you’ll remember for all your life”.
However, BOCOG officials said it was still too early to say if the tune had become the Olympic theme song as the solicitation campaign ends in March.
Moroder wrote the official theme songs “Reach out” for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and “Hand in Hand” for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The Italian, who produced Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love to Love You Baby” and many other pop hits, said he wanted to show “determination to act hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart” in “Forever Friends”.
The father of Euro disco said he had used some rhythms of the folk song “Liuyanghe” and traditional Chinese musical instruments in “Forever Friends” to bring Chinese features into it.
Kong, the famed Chinese pianist, said listeners would feel harmony, enthusiasm, devotion and joy in the song and he hoped it would become the Games theme.
The lyrics were written by Germany’s Kunze, while popular singers Coco Lee and Sun Nan performed the song in the music video.

The worldwide solicitation for a Games theme song will conclude on March 10. A prize of 20,000 yuan (about 2,700 U.S. dollars) is being offered to each of the 25 winners selected by a panel of professional musicians.
The theme will be unveiled 100 days before the Games opening ceremony, the BOCOG said.
The Beijing Olympics take place from August 8 to 24.

from: xinhuanet.com