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CHINA
The Empty-Nest Syndrome
Melinda Liu 3/21/2009 12:00:00 AM
During the 2008 Olympics, international audiences oohed and aahed over Beijing's stunning new structures: the world-renowned Bird's Nest national stadium, the surreal China Central TV headquarters designed by Rem Koolhaas and the futuristic National Center for the Performing Arts. But now the city's architectural icons are plagued with problems.
ENVIRONMENT
Keeping It Green
Melinda Liu 10/11/2008 12:00:00 AM
One of the big questions hanging over this summer's Games was whether the measures China took to clean up its polluted capital would work. After a few hazy days, the sun came out and banished the doubters. Now many are wondering if China will stick to its greener ways.
CHINA
Not Yet On the Medal Stand
Manuela Zoninsein 9/6/2008 12:00:00 AM
There are some 83 million disabled people in China, but the country has never been particularly hospitable to them. Why bother building subway ramps and bus lifts, the attitude has long been, for people who aren't expected to leave home? But when Beijing was awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Paralympic Games, an event featuring 4,000 disabled athletes, came along with it. So in the spirit of the 12-day competition, which opened on Saturday, China's government raced to bring Beijing up to international standards, creating 16 special bus lines for the athletes, installing street-crossing signals for the blind and adding wheelchair-friendly subway exits. It even outfitted a section of the Great Wall with a ramp and an elevator.
BLOGGING
'Excessive Response'
Brian Braiker 8/28/2008 12:00:00 AM
The 2008 Olympic Games, which wrapped last weekend, have been heralded as a success and China's coming out party as a superpower. But the face Beijing presented to the world—organized, efficient, well-governed—masked a few troubling truths. The Chinese government set aside zones where people would be allowed to demonstrate during the Olympics, but then refused to approve any protest applications. (Two Chinese women in their late 70s were even sentenced to a year of "reeducation through labor" for applying too many times.) Also detained last month were 37 Americans involved in protests organized by Students for a Free Tibet. One of them, Brian Conley, was arrested on Aug. 13. Conley—a popular video blogger and co-founder of Small World News, which produces two Web sites devoted to independent journalism—says he was on hand to film the protests and that he was arrested simply for recording the event. (Calls to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., were not immediately returned.)
China's Winning Ways
Daniel Gross 8/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
Before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, I wrote about economic models that aimed to pre-empt thousands of hours of television coverage, sappy features, and tape-delayed tension. John Hawksworth of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Andrew Bernard of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business both aimed to predict national medal hauls based on factors like home-field advantage, the size and growth of national economies, and past political affiliations. (You can check out the PriceWaterhouseCoopers projection here and the 2008 Bernard projection here.)
LETTERS
More Than Just Games for China
8/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
"What Drives China": Readers for the most part didn't subscribe to Orville Schell's thesis that because China suffers from a history of humiliation the Olympics should not be marred by political protests. One said, "The Chinese government's serious human-rights violations, against its own people and Tibetans, need to be addressed vigorously without moral cowardice." Another considered China's driven athletes and posited, "No nation suffering from an 'inferiority complex' can succeed in firing up its athletes with that kind of self-confidence."