Beijing is on course to stage an outstanding Olympic Games amid rising concerns over the city's air pollution and setbacks in ticket sales in 2007.

 

From the venue construction to torch relay to volunteer recruitment, the Chinese organizers are exerting utmost efforts to make everything ready before the world's largest sporting event starts next August.

 

"Everything is being implemented according to schedule and deadline," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said in Beijing during the one-year countdown celebrations to the Games in August.

 

Yet the IOC chief also voiced concerns about the city's air pollution, noting twice publicly in the past several months that some endurance events might be rescheduled if the air is too dirty during next August.

 

Despite billions of dollars spent to improve its environment, Beijing is often blanketed by smog and a report released in October by the United Nations Environment Program said Beijing was on course to hold a Green Olympics but air quality remained a problem.

 

However, Chinese officials insist that this issue could be adequately addressed.

 

"The air quality has been improving dramatically - as the records show since the worst time in the late 1990s - as a result of astronomical investment pumped into the municipal government's clean-up campaign," said BOCOG's executive vice president Jiang Xiaoyu.

 

"An array of contingency measures will be taken during the Games period and we are confident that the athletes' health will not be at risk," he added.

 

Contingency plans were put on trial in Beijing in August, packed with simultaneous Olympic test events operating in conditions similar to those during next year's Olympic Games. The most publicized measure was a ban that temporarily took off one third of Beijing's 3 million plus cars from the streets through license plate restrictions.

 

According to the BOCOG, other plans for next year include shutting down construction sites and reducing the operations of polluting industries in and around Beijing.

 

One thing that does not command worry is the construction of Olympic venues.

 

Work on 37 competition venues has been well on schedule with 36 already inaugurated and the showpiece National Stadium, known as the "Bird's Nest" for its giant latticework structure of metal girders, is expected to be put into operation next March.

 

The public are obsessed with a massive hunt for a chance to be part of the greatest show on Earth.

 

More than 760,000 people have applied for a volunteer's post, while hundreds of thousands of candidates chased the 19,400 domestic torchbearer berths available, all keen to join in a historical relay that will see the flame travel an unprecedented 137,000 kilometers around the world, culminating in an awe-inspiring ascent over Mt. Qomolangma.

 

The ball is also rolling in an even bigger hunt for Olympics tickets, with roughly 5.18 million subscriptions received by BOCOG after the first phase of ordering closed in June.

 

Demand was so high in some events, like the opening ceremony which was oversubscribed on a 30-1 ratio, that lotteries were used to decide the allocation.

 

The organizers were forced to suspend the second round of ticket sales following a booking system meltdown resulting from the overwhelming demand.

 

"We underestimated the public's enthusiasm for the Games," said Rong Jun, the then director of the Olympic ticketing center who was replaced early this month by a municipal IT official.

 

Last, but not least, various campaigns aimed at improving the behavior of local citizens finally bore fruits. More and more people are getting to abandon old habits like spitting in public, jumping ahead in line and littering.

 

A survey released by Renmin University of China at the end of January found that in 2006, 4.95 percent of people still spat, down by 3.5 percentage points from 2005, and the occurrence of littering in public dropped from 9.1 percent in 2005 to 5.3 percent in 2006 and queue-jumping from 9 percent to 6 percent.

 

"Hosting the Games means a lot more than building grand stadiums," said Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethics Development Office, the etiquette watchdog.

 

Changing bad habits ahead of the Games is "crucial to providing a cultural and historical legacy to China and the world as a whole," said Zhang.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2007)