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Chapter Five: Critical Juncture I: 2008 Beijing Olympics
Introduction
In this thesis, “2008 Summer Olympic Games” and “2014 Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit” are chosen to be the critical juncture for the
path dependent analysis. In chapter three, the discussion of why 2008 Olympics suit
the definition of critical juncture had already be given. Furthermore, statistics and
policy turns will be offered to show the changing of China’s attitude toward
environmental concerns. In chapter six, same structure will be applied on the second
chosen critical juncture: the 2014 APEC Summit in Beijing to illustrate the event.
Critical Juncture (I): The Hosting of 2008 Summer Olympic Games
2008 Beijing Olympics was not the first time China try to bid for the host. China
lost the hosting of 2000 Summer Olympics to Sydney at year 1993. After 7 years,
Beijing finally beat Istanbul, Osaka, Paris and Toronto and became the host of 2008
Summer Olympics. Beijing Olympics was the 29th Olympic Games, it was the third
time being held in Asia and also the third time in socialist country. Exact date was
from August 8th to 24th.
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The human rights controversies stroke the image of China when this Olympics
gave opportunities to both domestic and foreign activists to engage in an “Olympic
boycott movement” to protest China’s human rights record.71 Besides the
controversies on human rights, environmental issue was severely questioned by
foreign media.72 Beijing’s air pollution has troubled the city for many decades. It’s
socioeconomic structure, meteorological conditions, and some non-Beijing sources
(NBS)73 interwove to create the troublesome and laborious problem of air pollution
in Beijing. Since 1978, China has put its pivot on economic development since it was
a developing country. For Beijing, heavy industries and coal-fired power plants are
building up the economy in this city. Thus, the heavy use of coal created one of the
reason for its bad air pollution problem. The air quality in Beijing soon became a
great concern to both the Chinese government and researchers.74 One side of the
story for China was to be cheerful that they would have the chance to show its
71 Richard Baum, “Beijing Recoils Under the Global Spotlight,” Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2008).
72 Shai Oster, “Will Beijing’s Air Cast Pall Over Olympics?” The Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2007. Last accessed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117148719982908969
73 Sarath Guttikunda, “A Review of Air Pollution from Transport Sector in China,” SIM-air Working Paper Series, 2009. Available on: http://www.urbanemissions.info/wp-content/uploads/docs/SIM-19-2009.pdf
74 T. Wang, W.Nie, J.Gao, L.K.Xue, X.M.Gao, X.F.Wang, J.Qiu. C.N. Poon, S. Meinardi, D. Blake, S.L. Wang, A.J. Ding, F.H. Chai, Q.Z. Zhang, and W.X. Wang, “Air Quality during the 2008 Olympics:
Secondary Pollutants and Regional Impact,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 10, (2010): 7603-7615.
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national power for hosting this mega-sport event; on the other side of the story,
athletes and media were concerned about the air pollution problem in Beijing because
the smog might harm the athletes who came to Beijing and thus affected their
performance during the time they fought over national pride. Thus, Beijing
Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG)75 were
created to develop and supervise the stage of Beijing’s air cleansing.
Many policies were implemented to better the air pollution in Beijing before
2008 Olympics, including traffic control over odd and even car plate, moving
coal-fired plants out of Beijing and limit governmental usage of electricity and etc. All
these measures were unprecedented and proven to be the important sources of air
cleansing in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics.
Statistics of Air Pollution Data Before, During and After the 2008 Olympics
Some major indexs could tell the story of the air pollution prevention results for
2008 Olympics. Those index includes Air Pollution Index76 (API) and Aerosol
75 Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG): established in 2001 December 31, the organization was responsible for preparing the Games, including infrastructure development, environment improvement, public relation, and logistics. The slogan for 2008 Olympics was “Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People’s Olympics.”
76 Air Pollution Index (API): issued by State Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) with the
monitoring data of suspended particulate matter (PM10), sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. In overall API, if API is below 50, it si defines as excellent, 50-100 as good, 100-200 as slightly pollutes,
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Optical Depth (AOD).77 Data for API came from Ministry of Environmental
Protection (MEP) in China, and the other AOD data could be found from Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectra-radiometer (MODIS) in NASA. Since China didn’t
allowed individual researchers to access in situ pollutant measurements, some
scholars even doubt the authenticity of the API data from Chinese government. On the
other hand, AOD is an objective measure retrieving from satellite data which could
never be wrong.78 Thus, from the upcoming statistics of API and AOD, both of the
figures indicated the identical decreasing phenomenon. Hence, the numbers offered
by MEP should be considered as useful rather than only showing the extreme-best
situation of air condition in Beijing. For both API and AOD index introduced in this
paper, the information comes from Yuyu Chen at el.’s paper and other paper’s data
will serve as prover and supportive information. Different numbers of API have their
own interpretation of air pollution degree, table one will indicate the different
300 as moderately polluted and 300+ as heavily pollution. Below 100 is also called “Blue sky days.”
The API index also have strong seasonal variation which is higher in winter and lower in summer because of meteorological conditions in Northern part of China. Hence, summer Games would have better API index. Part of the reason could be driven by season.
77 Aerosol optical depth (AOD): aerosols are tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere. The satellite measurements of aerosols are called aerosol optical thickness (or depth).
They based on the fact that the particles change the way the atmosphere reflects and absorbs visible and infrared light. An optical thickness of less than 0.1 indicates a crystal sky with maximum visibility, whereas a value of 1 indicates very hazy conditions. More information on:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MODAL2_M_AER_OD
78 Yuyu Chen, Ginger Zhe Jin, Naresh Kumar, and Guang Shi, “The Promise of Beijing: Evaluating the Impact of the 2008 Olympic Games on Air Quality,” National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), (March) 2011.
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standards of API and their meaning.In this analysis, API data is divided into four time categories: before the game,
during the game, after one month of the game, and after ten month of the game. First
category was set at the time one year before the setup of BOCOG in 2001; the second
category was determined as the seven-years preparation period from 2001 to 2008;
the third category was then set one month during the Olympics in August and
September 2008; the last category shows the data 13 months after the Games which is
around November 2009.
Exercise endurance of the healthy people drops down; some will have strong symptoms. Some diseases will appear 400 875 2100 750
300 625 1600 565 IV
Moderate Pollution
The symptoms of the patients with cardiac and lung diseases will be aggravated remarkably. Healthy people will experience a drop in endurance and increased symptoms.
200 500 250 150 III
Slightly Polluted
The symptoms of the susceptible is slightly aggravated, while the healthy people will have stimulated symptoms.
100 300 150 100 II Good Daily activity will not be affected.
50 120 50 50 I Excellent Daily activity will not be affected.
Table 1: Different API Index and its Corresponding Conditions
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The data covered from 2000 to 2009 for the whole discussion of the air pollution
situation for Beijing Olympics. The data not only collected Beijing city, but also five
cities that co-hosted the Games in other parts of China and three cities surrounding
Beijing that adopted measures to improve air quality in and around Beijing. Figure
one shows the overall flow of API index.
Figure 1 : Time Series of API Index for Beijing and Co-‐host Cities
Beijing (Green), Co-‐host Cities (Red-‐dotted), Neighbor Cities (Blue), Control Cities (Black)
After understanding the overall flow, let’s specifically look into the data for the
four categories during 2008. The number for first session is 109.01 then we can
observe a major declined in the second session with the number of only 77. The
attenuated trend was most attributable to plant closure and traffic control. During and
short time period after the Games, the figure slightly came back to 82.5. After a year,
numbers bounced back to nearly 100 compared to the Games. To sum up the overall
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reduction progress for the Games, 41% of SO2 was cut down; 47% for NOx and 55%
cut of PM10 were also suggested in a more recent study.79 On one aspect, we could
clearly observe the annual fluctuation during 2001 to 2008. Most of the high figure
happened during winter time, indicating that meteorological conditions were essential
determinants for API index in Beijing. In the winter, coal-burning facilities were
doing its job to keep the city warm, hence higher API index could be expected. The
index suggested the lowest record during the Olympics, saying that the measures
implemented to fight air pollution in Beijing actually worked.
Analogous results happened in AOD measurements. Figure two indicated that the
AOD index began to decline before the Games, continued to decline during the
Games and reached the lowest level months after the Games. What’s worth a look is
the figure also revert during spring 2009. For Chen at el., the air quality improvement
for Beijing was certainly real but also temporary.
79 S.X. Wang, M. Zhao, J. Xing, Y. Wu, Y. Zhou, Y. Lei, K.B. He, L. X. Fu, J.M. Hao, “Quantifying the Air Pollutants Emission Reduction during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing,” Environment Science Technology 44, (2010): 2490-2496.
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Figure 2: Time Series of AOD Index for Beijing and Co-‐host Cities
Beijing (Green), Co-‐host Cities (Red-‐dotted), Neighbor Cities (Blue), Control Cities (Black)
Policies Implemented
As mentioned before, several new policies were implemented to clean Beijing’s
air in order to successfully run the 2008 Olympics. These measures included power
plant restrictions, traffic control, furnace renovation and new automobile emission
standard. Some control measures taken and planned before 2008 in Beijing’s power
plant including fuel substitution, flue gas desulfurization, dust control improvement
and flue gas denitration. These will greatly mitigate the pollution at the same time as
energy supply expansion.80 Move on, the effectiveness of the control measures on
reducing vehicle emissions could be observed through the statistics of the decline of
NOx and other 20-45% decreases for typical compounds81 for vehicular emissions.82
Even stricter restrictions were implemented at year 2008 to boost the effect in short
80 Jiming Hao, Litao Wang, Minjia Shen, Lin Li, Jingnan Hu, “Air Quality Impacts of Power Plant Emissions In Beijing,” Environmental Pollution 147, (2007): 401-408.
81 These compounds are ethane, ethyne, benzene, toluene, ethybenzene and xylenes.
82 Ibid., 78.
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time.83 For control of vehicle emission, China adopted new emission standards on
March 1, 2008 and restricting on-road vehicles to half based on even or odd vehicle
registration number since 2007. All the transportation control measures together
formed so called Olympic Traffic Demand Management (TDM), it is concluded that
the TDM policy was inextricable with the reduction effect on the hourly traffic flow,
with an average reducing rate of 32.3%.84 Even after the game, a weaker form of
traffic control continued as each registered vehicle was required to be off the road one
weekday per week.85 Beijing was not the only city to implement the traffic control,
co-host and neighbor cities also adopted the similar measures to improve air quality.
Plant closure and traffic control effectively reduced the API by almost 30% during the
Games as compared to one year before any Olympic-motivated actions were carried
out. The number of days of meeting Air Pollution Standard II or better increased from
56 days in 1998 to 254 days in 2005.86
83 Ting Wang, Shaodong Xie, “Assessment of Traffic-Related Air Pollution in the Urban Streets Before and During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Traffic Control Period,” Atmospheric Environment 43, (2009): 5682-5690.
84 Ibid.
85 Mao Baohua, “Analysis on Transport Policies of Post-Olympic Times of Beijing,” Journal of Transportation Systems Engineering and Information Technology 8 (2008): 138-145.
86 X. An, T. Zhu, Z. Wang, C. Li, Y. Wang, “A Modeling Analysis of a Heavy Air Pollution Episode Occurred in Beijing,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion 6 (2006): 8215-8240.
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From this chapter, we could conclude that international mega event such as 2008
Olympics which was not originally meant for cleaning the air in Beijing, could
actually ease Beijing’s air pollution problem. The sharp reduction in total CO, SO2
and reactive aromatics suggest the success of the government’s efforts in reducing
emissions in Beijing.87
After the 2008 Olympics, Achim Steiner, the executive director from United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said during the global environment forum in
2009, “I believe that Beijing will become more sustainable in many aspects and build
its green economy using its Olympics’ environmental blueprint.”88 China itself also
reported that using Beijing as a turning point, a series of pollution control measures
were implemented to realize the improvements of air quality.89 From the view of past
dependent, the critical juncture did happen, and also the policy did change. But the
figures indicating that the improvement bounced back after a year as the event end.
Hence, short term goals for Beijing can obviously be achieved according to the
87 Ibid., 77.
88 “Lianheguohuanjingshugoadupingjiabeijing ‘luseaoyun.’” (UNEP held high evaluation on Beijing’s Green Olympics), Beijingshhuanjingbaohuju (Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau).
89 “2008 nianwoushidabiaotianshubiqunianduo 28tian kongqizhilianglianxu10niangaishan,” (Good Air Quality Days in Beijing Increased 28 Days in 2008 The Air Quality Has Been Gradually Improving for Consecutive 10 Years) Beijingshhuanjingbaohuju (Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau).
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Olympics experience. However, for a much longer period such as ten years or even
the overall average air quality improvement in Beijing, much more efforts still need to
be put into the future policies.
Before the next critical juncture in 2014, events happened domestically in
Beijing stirred the enormous public backslash. The PM2.5 statistics provided by
American Embassy in Beijing triggered the chain reaction of discussion in the two
very different PM statistics from China and the US. Ambassador Lou Jiahui’s decision
of publicizing the information led to the self-reinforcing effect for the mass public to
question and declare the rights to know about the difference between the two
indicators. Also ambassador Lou didn’t think of the event as US’s action toward
China but the rising environmental awareness of citizens and even the governmental
newspaper.90 Hence, when 2014, the next critical juncture hit again in Beijing, stricter
restrictions were being placed for fulfilling the mission of short term air cleaning
during the juncture.
90 “Lou Jiahui’s Chinese Time.” Nan Fang People (NFPeople). November 21, 2013. Last accessed:
http://media.sohu.com/20131121/n390543487.shtml
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