The Olympic Games will start in exactly one year’s time, on the 8th of August, 2008.
This being China where eights are lucky and help you get rich, there are special ceremonies in the capital tonight at 8:08 pm. State and privately-owned media are full of Olympic-related content and there are special activities in Beijing all week.
The Wall Street Journal has published an article by By Mei Fong, Geoffrey A. Fowler and Shai Oster titled A Year Out, Beijing Games Test China’s Rising Power. The piece lists all the potential problems Beijing may face during the Olympics, ranging from pollution to media freedom issues.
For most of today, your correspondent has seen blue sky outside my office window, after a week in which the weather manipulation department was working overtime. Rain has fallen every day for the last week; there were even reports of snow on the East Third Ring Road last week.
I also remember how the traffic jams disappeared and the smog faded — revealing blue skies — during the African Summit in Beijing in November last year.
Come 2008, if the Chinese government has to install 90-meter-tall fans on the mountains around Beijing to blow away the pollution, they will.
I am confident that the air quality will be better than it was in the Athens games in 2004.
Of course, all of us who live in Beijing may expire of silver iodide poisoning or some such before the games start, but at least the visitors will have a good time.