Beijing on track for 2008 Olympics

BEIJING With 500 days to go from Tuesday before the curtain rises on the 2008 Olympic Games, China is busy ironing out every potential blemish to the perfect staging of the world's biggest sporting event.

Construction of venues, training facilities and accommodation for more than 16,000 athletes and delegation officials remains on schedule to be completed more than six months ahead of the August 8-24 Games.

Before then, the venues will host more than 40 test events in the most comprehensive preparations for a sports event the world has ever seen.

The National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, stands at the centre of a vast Olympic complex that symbolises China's new face as Asia's superpower and the world's fourth largest economy.

"The architecture of the stadium is fantastic and to see it grow you really feel you want to be inside and feel the Olympic spirit," said Gunilla Lindberg, vice president of the International Olympic Committee.

She has watched the National Stadium emerge from a large hole in the ground during her 15 visits to the Chinese capital over several years.

"All the venues are coming on very well," she told AFP here last week. "Everything is going according to plan."

Close to the Bird's Nest stands the National Aquatics Centre, the squat blue box known as the Water Cube with its energy-saving outer membrane that mimics bubbling water.

These symbols of the new China stand astride an ancient axis that cuts the city in two, running north-south through the centre of the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City and the heart of Beijing's famous Tiananmen Square.

IOC president Jacques Rogge has praised Beijing's preparations, saying they will have a positive effect on China's relationship with the outside world.

But Rogge added a word of caution during his last visit here in October when he said that shiny new venues would not add up to a successful Games.

China had to look out for "less tangible elements that will ultimately shape the world's image of China and the Beijing Games," he warned.

For China's leadership, the Olympics presents the country with the chance to showcase a new image to the world.

"We want to show that China is a country rich in history and civilisation," organising committee president Liu Qi told AFP last week.

He recalled that some travel restrictions on foreign reporters operating in China had been lifted for the Olympics.

"We want the whole world to see the economic and social progress of China," he said.

Those "less tangible elements" mentioned by Rogge may include the kind of problems it was hard for the IOC to gauge six years ago when it voted for Beijing to host the 2008 Games.

Economic growth of more than 10 percent a year has triggered a massive construction boom and 9,000 building sites with more construction cranes than in the whole of Europe dot the Beijing skyline.

Newly affluent Beijingers buy more than 1,000 new cars a day, adding to gridlock on Beijing's streets and pouring out exhaust fumes that mix with construction dust and factory smoke to turn Beijing into one of the world's most polluted cities.

Organising committee president Liu told AFP he had no magic wand to eliminate pollution but promised clean air at least for the two weeks of the Olympics -- by invoking emergency powers to shut all factories if necessary.

Liu, also a member of the politburo, the Communist Party inner sanctum that holds the reins of power in China, stressed the importance of Beijing residents to the success of the Games.

"One of our slogans is 'I participate, I contribute, I enjoy'," he said. "The Beijing government hopes to involve the people in the preparatory work for the Olympics and make them happy to do so."

Campaigns, that hark back to mass movements of China's revolutionary past, include a drive to clean up Beijing's image by persuading residents to smile, and to stop spitting, littering, and queue-jumping.

"We want to be on our best behaviour for the Olympics," said Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethic Development Office, which is running the campaign.