我译CWI奥运会，大生意和独裁(工人国际委员会）

奥运会，大生意和独裁

这次奥林匹克运动会并不是它自称的'国际主义'和'公平竞赛'，初看起来，举办该奥运会伴随着两个矛盾的力量：民族主义式的狂热“爱国主义”和资本主义经济全球化。

2001年7月中国刚刚被授予2008年奥运会时， BBC打出“北京之赢是个大买卖”的标题。奥运会不仅是世界最负盛名的体育盛事，它也是资本主义历史上最成功的营销帝国之一。奥林匹克标志——五环代表五个大洲——是世界上最广泛认同的及严加保护的企业标志。一个规模小的秘密的而且未经选举产生的集团控制着奥运会， 110名成员组成的国际奥林匹克委员会（ IOC ）掌控着庞大的财政资源，各国政府和世界各地的商界领袖给予它巨大的荣誉。前国际奥委会主席萨马兰奇坚决要求人称他为'阁下' 。他的妄自尊大令他赢得了'指环王'的绰号。

预期北京奥运会仅从电视广播方面就赚得25亿美元。直至并包括2012年伦敦奥运会的期间，这将上升到30亿美元。上一次1948年的奥运会在伦敦举行，据报道，英国广播公司仅同意支付3000美元以直播其奥运赛事。但鉴于BBC的拮据的财政状况！英国奥林匹克委员会一直没有兑现支票。

这一切发生在奥运会和其他重大体育赛事成为大买卖之前。在自1980年开始到2001年担任国际奥委会主席的萨马兰奇领导下，奥运会开始完成商业化进程。萨马兰奇的超商业体制下的第一次奥林匹克运动会是1984年的美国洛杉矶奥运会，从这时开始，电视转播权的价格的飙升可以用官方奥运的座右铭“更快、更强、更高”来形容。北京从电视转播权得到的收入几乎是美国洛杉矶二亿八千七百万美元的10倍。

很正常，在数十亿美元面前，国际奥委会腐败的名声日彰。1999年，盐湖城冬季奥运会到来之季，一个重大的丑闻震动了奥林匹克运动。根据纽约时报，几项调查，其中包括由美国司法部开展的一项调查导致10名受贿的国际奥委会委员被驱逐。他们已经接受了贿赂，包括房地产分配，有薪假期，整形外科和为他们的子女支付大学学费。丑闻导致盐湖城市长丢职，但国际奥委会的老板萨马兰奇勉强幸免于难。

这项丑闻促动了人们对奥运会未来以及其完全缺乏透明度和民主问责制的理事机构及其不可告人的与大企业的联系的更深的思索。争论集中在国际奥委会是否可以'改革本身' ——回应着的讨论是关于作为执政党的中国'共产党（CCP）的未来。萨马兰奇离开后很久，腐败和贿选的丑闻继续笼罩着奥林匹克运动。在2006年，日本长野市被揭露向国际奥委会委员提供数百万美元的“不合理的和超水平的招待费” 。长野市在申办过程中使用超过440万美元来招待国际奥委会委员，相当于每人46500美元。

中国的政府，国际奥委会，及其大商业伙伴有很多共通之处。他们都是不民主的并基本上是腐败的机构。国际奥委会，绰号'俱乐部' ，不是一个民选机构——在中国共产党的执政机构所用的那套相同的制度下，由现有的国际奥委会委员选出新成员。因此认为独裁体制的奥运会可以催生中国的民主化是可笑的。国际奥委会不容任何异议。到1936年纳粹政权举办柏林奥运会时，美国国际奥委会代表Ernest Lee Jahncke公开呼吁抵制。这导致他在1935年被驱逐出国际奥委会，这是直到半世纪后盐湖城腐败丑闻之前历史上唯一被开除的一例。

'入世'——重新加入世界

2001年7月国际奥委会决定把2008年奥运会的主办权给北京的背后是冷静的商业算计和地缘政治的考虑。赞助奥运会的企业——包括可口可乐，阿迪达斯，麦当劳——热中于一个13亿人的潜在的大市场带给产品销售的机会。北京背后得到了一个强大的跨国企业游说团和美国的公司的支持，据报，美国公司贡献了三分之二的资金用于中国申办奥运会，共计4000万美元。八年前，中国政权未能成功申办2000年奥运会。因为相对记忆犹新的1989年的北京大屠杀对中国申办奥运的影响还很大，结果是悉尼得到了2000年奥运会的举办权。

然而， 2001年，萨马兰奇被指控幕后操纵以确保北京获得奥运会 。无可否认，这是加拿大的国际奥委会委员抛出的说法而且他当时支持的是其他主要候选城市，即多伦多。萨马兰奇说：奥运会将为中国打开“新的时代” 虽然他作为一个辅助（无表决权的）的国际奥委会成员，但也是美国的资本家和中国领导人之间一个关键的联系，他声称奥林匹克的决定在推进中国和世界的关系上“是非常重要的一步”，他说：“我认为它在中国和整个世界将有重大影响 “ 。国际奥委会作出这样的决定时正值中国加入世界贸易组织（ WTO ）的最后的谈判进行中，条件是苛刻的，其付出的代价——开放市场上的让步——比其他发展中国家成员承担的要高。在中国境内，这些谈判和由中方作出的让步的详情仍是'国家秘密'——记者深挖这方面信息的工作有被监禁的风险。卫报的中国资深记者约翰贾廷思评论道：“加入世贸组织意味着取消中国与全球经济一体化的力量之间的最后屏障”。这两个具有里程碑意义的决定包含着一个类似的战略目的——使得中国作为一个'利益相关者'更加牢固地融入全球的资本主义制度中去。

对中国的领导人来说，这两项决定被视为其继续推进愈加新自由主义化的'改革开放'政策的重要的支柱。这项政策包括私有化和缩编前国有企业以及把公共服务如教育和医疗服务'市场化'，到这个时候，这些政策引起了越来越大的工人阶级的反抗。北京将举办奥运会的消息给这个政权提供了一个受欢迎的吸引公众注意力的事物，有利于美化那令人厌恶的进一步的新自由主义全球化的政策。随着国际奥委会的决定公开出来，有大约20万人——大多是中产阶级——聚集在天安门广场上举办了盛大的庆祝活动。混合着期待的民族主义自豪感的浪潮就这样在中国'重新投入世界'——入世——和要恢复其作为一个经济超级大国应有的地位的主题下被政府掀起来了。北京奥运官员王伟称之为“中国国际地位上升的另一个里程碑和中华民族伟大复兴的历史事件” 。

与中共政权所做的所有之事一样，其主要焦点是国内形势。正如经济学家解释说的，“比起企图影响遥远的国家来说，它更加关注其自身的内部问题” 。为了让一个独裁的执政党挣扎着继续控制一个复杂的并且日益怨声载道的社会，还有就是为了把自己的力量聚集起来，奥运会是一个有力的武器，相当于'民族主义兴奋剂' 。

奥运会——跨国公司的战场

名义上的“共产党”政权得到了世界上层的商界领袖的极力追捧，这在这次奥运会中集中地体现出来了，可见这是一个悖论。一组精选的12大跨国公司，其中包括阿迪达斯，可口可乐，三星和通用电气公司，付给国际奥委会平均7200万美元而成为了所谓的北京奥运会'一流的'赞助者。
对于这类公司，奥运赞助和广告可以发挥决定性作用。正如人民日报评论的，“奥运会不仅仅是一个体育竞技场，而已也是一个跨国公司的战场” 。美国的柯达公司利用其赞助的1998年长野冬季奥运会打开了以前由富士垄断的日本胶卷市场。维萨信用卡（Visa）利用其自1986年以来的每一届奥运会国际赞助者的地位使其取代美国运通（American Express）成为美国的主要的信用卡公司。根据奥运规则，每个行业部门只有一家公司可以成为'顶级'赞助商。这解释了为何百事可乐公司一直被摒弃在外——自1928年以来，可口可乐公司一直与每一届奥运会联系在一起。这个独占的安排延伸到所有奥运设施里的广告和销售上，可口可乐享有这样的垄断。维萨信用卡（Visa）在卡尔加里运动会期间的广告活动的内容如下： “在1988年冬季奥运会，他们将以速度，耐力和技巧为荣，但不是美国运通（American Express）” 。

这一仗已转移到中国之境，它完全令运动会本身黯然失色。

香港的广告业主管说：“全球奥运赞助商有庞大的预算用在中国的市场营销上。”他还说： “当火炬接力在中国进行时，火炬经过的每个城市都充满着赞助标志”。这是中国计划者为什么安排了奥运会历史上距离最长——达13.7万公里或地球周长的三倍半——的火炬接力活动的一个重要原因。中国政权称之为'和谐之旅'，可它变成了一个戒备森严的闹剧，导致一些奥委会官员得出结论认为火炬接力也许已过其最迟销售日期。从历史上看，在其成为广告金矿之前，火炬接力于1936年作为纳粹胜利的一个象征发端。无论如何说，这个仪式和国际主义没有任何关系，相反这是一个展现出奥林匹克运动和法西斯及独裁政权之间浓厚的历史性的联系的线索。

“在希腊的古代奥运遗址点燃火炬，然后传递火炬通过不同的国家有其黑暗的渊源，这是在柏林举行1936年奥运会时候获得其现代形式的。纳粹领导精心计划之使其能展现出如下形象：第三帝国是一个现代的，国际影响力日益增长的经济富有活力的国家“ 。 [英国广播公司， 2008年4月5日]

在中国，政府试图通过掀起'奥运热'来横超对其统治构成严重威胁的日益上升的不满。此外，该政权希望奥运会将有助于引发消费热潮以便能给由于全球经济增长减速而导致的外部需求和出口的下降提供“缓冲”。中国遭受着过低的消费水平的损害——甚至印度人的消耗占其国内生产总值（ GDP ）更高 。这是因为中国的工资水平已远跟不上其整体经济的增长。就其占经济的比重而言，工资从1998年的53 ％下降到2007年的41 ％，这个下降是世界上一个最大的跌幅（这发生在为北京奥运会准备期间）。除了由跨国奥运赞助商大规模的销售活动外，超过5000种带有北京奥运会标志的产品已被投入市场，这包括服装，吉祥物玩偶，钥匙链，甚至纪念筷子。许多这种官方奥运产品是在工厂使用童工或违反其他法律的情况下生产出来的。

反工会巨头的联合

每一个'顶级' （奥运合作伙伴）公司在中国拥有巨大的利益，并期望他们在北京奥运上的投资能通过获得更多的市场份额而得到回报。可口可乐占领着中国的软饮料市场，并且是早在1979年当邓小平重新对外国企业开放下在中国设立的第一家美国公司。可口可乐公司在作为其最有利可图的第四大市场的中国有30000名员工。另一个'顶级'公司通用电气公司为北京奥运会提供电力和照明系统。它还拥有在美国拥有独家奥运广播电视权NBC Universal公司的股份，为此它付出了近9亿美元。在2001-06间，通用电气公司在中国的销售额增长了四倍。

另一个长期的'顶级'赞助商阿迪达斯2007年在中国的销售增长了45 ％ ，与此相比，它在欧洲的增长只有 5 ％。阿迪达斯的目的是到2010年在中国的销售的营业额达10亿欧元。德国的体育用品公司也从中国得到其产品的大部分的合同，但在这里我们所讨论的是中国人口的完全不同的部分。在非人的条件下制造阿迪达斯运动鞋的低工资的民工和那阿迪达斯视其为目标市场的好象居住在另一个星球上的很小的一个具有品牌意识的中产购物者阶层。

阿迪达斯采购的全球产品的一半以上来自禁止工会的国家，主要是来自中国。星期日时报（英国）的一篇文章中突出描述了该公司的中国分包商之可怕的劳动条件，该报告涉及到阿迪达斯在中国南部福州的三个“确立已久的合作伙伴工厂” 。工人对强迫加班和工资低于法定最低工资标准有抱怨。在2007年，他们每月仅赚取570元（ 83美元）——只能勉强买双阿迪达斯运动鞋。这份报告还表明中国国家控制的工会中华全国总工会（ACFTU）“被广泛指责什么都不做” 。当工人在2006年举行罢工，他们都被立即开除。

在这方面阿迪达斯不是特例。仔细看看其他'顶级'奥运赞助商就象在回顾反工会流氓陈列会。电子巨头三星是一个臭名昭著的反工会的雇主。该公司在韩国因为一系列非法活动，涉及勒索和行贿以使工会活动家放弃活动。这个国家的最强大的'财阀'在相当长的时间里是南韩的前军政权的重要支柱。hyankoreh的社论中说到三星： “在一个民主共和国里存在着的一个拥有先进技术的世界领袖，它采用着从独裁岁月里发展出来的原始的反工会的策略” 。

同样，可口可乐公司一直被指责破坏在哥伦比亚，巴基斯坦，土耳其，危地马拉和尼加拉瓜的工会活动。2001年，哥伦比亚工会起诉了该公司，因为该可口可乐公司“雇佣或以其他方式指示准军事安全部队对工会领导人使用极端的暴力和谋杀，酷刑，非法拘禁或以其他方式使工会领导人保持沉默” 。可口可乐公司对奥运官员的影响力在它的总部所在地亚特兰大获得1996年奥运会主办权中表露无遗。这只不过是在另一美国城市洛杉矶举行奥运会的十二年后。又一顶级奥运赞助商麦当劳，它是典型的破坏工会的公司。2002年国际自由工会联合会(ICFTU)组织的一个关于麦当劳用工做法方面的国际研讨会上，得出的结论是： “麦当劳在确定工资，健康和安全的标准上往往使用最低的标准或最低的法定要求，倾向于使用反工会的措施，包括隔离，骚扰和辞退那些作为工会的成员或支持者的雇员。

在中国，麦当劳也在一项重大丑闻中处在风头浪尖上，揭露它付给青年工人的工资低于最低工资40 ％。几个省级政府被大量的不利的宣传所迫而对该快餐巨头进行调查。不过，虽然他们证实在几个方面麦当劳已侵犯了中国的劳动法，但是他们拒绝寻找它犯了违反最低工资规定的罪。这件事（中国劳工论坛报道，麦当劳丑闻表明需要真正的工会， 2007年5月22日）导致傀儡中华全国总工会和麦当劳谈判达成第一次史无前例的对工会的承认的交易，当然中华全国总工会指派了管理代表来领导该工会的分支机构。这是中华全国总工会的通常做法。这是所谓的“具有中国特色的工会” ！这些奥运赞助商的反工会，反工人阶级的倾向是和支持反工人阶级的动机和支持反动的政权的国际奥委会悠久传统相符合的。

“是体育，不是政治”

国际奥委会、赞助商和中国政权声称奥运会只是体育运动，而不是政治，这完全是错误的。中国政权让火炬接力的路线通过躁动不安的地区西藏和新疆的决定就不能说是'非政治性'的 。6月当火炬通过西藏首府拉萨时，大多数西藏人由于实施的宵禁而看不到它，西藏的共产党领导人张庆黎（音译）发表了讲话，讲话中他呼吁粉碎奥运会以及中共的反对者。尴尬不堪的国际奥委会不得不向中国政府给予了难得的指责，重声必须“把体育和政治分开” 。

事实上，大部分奥林匹克竞赛都萦绕着政治性争议： 1936年的柏林，1972年的慕尼黑，1968年的墨西哥城，1980年的莫斯科，1984年的洛杉矶;名单很长。奥运会在墨西哥城开幕的十天之前，军队开枪打死了数百名示威的学生，这被称为'特拉特洛尔科大屠杀' 。墨西哥也是一党专政，美帝国主义和其他西方资本主义势力与之有着重要的经济和战略联系。无疑，国际奥委会与墨西哥的总统古斯塔沃（Gustavo Díaz Ordaz）密切合作以保证大屠杀不会危及运动会。然而，当非洲裔美国黑人运动员托密史密斯（Tommie Smith）和约翰卡洛斯（John Carlos）在墨西哥城的金牌领奖台做出闻名的象征着'黑人权利'的举手礼后，他们在国际奥委会主席艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）命令下被驱逐出运动会。

国际奥委会及其支持者希望两者兼得。当他们和独裁者打交道时，他们以下面的理由，既奥运会可以有利于推动民主和人权来使之正当化。换句话说，他们言及了一个明确的政治理念。但是，这被证明不过是一场笑剧，看它今天在中国的答复便知，它答复说奥林匹克只是一项体育活动，而不是一个政治组织。

作为目前国际奥委会主席的罗格（Jacques Rogge）荒谬的说1988年奥运会帮助韩国由当时的另一独裁向“充满活力的民主”转变。据罗格的说法， “运动会通过媒体人的存在再次发挥了关键作用” 。 [金融时报， 2008年4月26日]

在现实生活中，韩国的军事政权迫于在1987年6月（汉城奥运会整整一年前）大规模罢工和示威浪潮的爆发的压力，这种爆发持续了三年。这对中国来说是一个重要的经验教训，显示了在与独裁斗争中能起到决定性作用的是大规模的工人斗争。

当谈到为民主权利而斗争时，奥运会是问题的一部分，而非解决问题的方法。在最近的一份报告中，国际特赦组织警告说， “申办奥运已成为打击言论和集会自由的一个含蓄的借口” 。 [北京奥运会带来了什么人权遗产？国际特赦组织， 2008年4月1日]

随着在藏族地区估计有150人死于安全部队， 2008年已是中国自1989年以来最严重的国家镇压之一年。使国际奥委会和其辩护士的观点不攻自破，国际特赦组织的报告“大部分新一轮的对活动家和新闻工作者的镇压实际上就是由于奥运会” 。

中国不是单枪匹马地利用奥运会严厉打击潜在的反对者。国际刑警组织已同意与中国当局合作，开放其数据库以“帮助中国确保制造麻烦者不能进入中国” 。表面上这些措施针对的是来自新疆，西藏的'恐怖分子'（尽管没有证据证明这种恐怖威胁的存在）。正如卓越的持不同政见者胡佳评论说的： “最大的威胁不一定是恐怖分子或罪犯，最大的威胁是那些揭露中国的社会问题以及抗议政府的人士” 。

独裁传统

回溯国际奥委会的起源，它有一个种族主义，反共产主义和支持独裁政权的传统。1896年现代奥林匹克运动的创始人是法国贵族皮埃尔•德•顾拜旦（Pierre de Coubertin）。他想的不是一个群众性的全民的体育运动而是一个几乎完全是为'游手好闲的富人'和军官阶层而创设了现代奥林匹克运动。在如皮埃尔•德•顾拜旦（Pierre de Coubertin）贵族的眼里，下层阶级的人无法掌握'公平竞赛'的概念。与此同时，妇女也被视为完全不适合于体育世界——直到第二次世界大战后这种观点一直没有太大变化。在1948年的伦敦奥运会上，女运动员和男运动员之比是1比10。实际上比起4年前美国洛杉矶奥运会，在1936年的柏林运动会上有更多的非洲裔美国黑人运动员参加比赛，因为美国制度化的种族主义，使得体育成为白人的专利，直到20世纪50年代才有所改变。

皮埃尔•德•顾拜旦（Pierre de Coubertin）男爵是一个'伟大的法国爱国者'，不过他是德国纳粹政权的坚定的拥护者。1937年他逝世时，他把他一生的文学收藏遗赠给了希特勒的政府。在一个奇怪的注脚中可以知道，皮埃尔•德•顾拜旦（Pierre de Coubertin）逝世六个月后，他的尸体在瑞士洛桑被挖出，他的心也被挖出，并运到希腊的奥林匹亚。在有他的老朋友，一个纳粹官员并主办了1936年的奥运会的Carl Diem参加的葬礼中重新安葬在希腊。

希特勒1933年1月上台前二年，国际奥委会授予1936年的奥运会的主办权给柏林。不过，他们没有显示出任何遗憾，随后国际奥委会领导人——激烈的——为纳粹举办奥运会的权利辩护。由于新闻中出现了纳粹恐怖对待工会、共产党人、社会主义者和犹太人的报道，呼吁抵制柏林运动会增长着，尤其是在美国、英国、法国、瑞典、捷克斯洛伐克和荷兰。1934年的一项民意调查显示42 ％的美国人支持对该奥运会的抵制。面对危机，美国奥林匹克委员会派出其主席艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）到德国以评估按照'奥林匹克原则'该运动会能否举行。在现实中，艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）的任务是有意识地操纵破坏抵制运动，其间艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）就指责“犹太人和共产党人” 。在他1934年9月访问德国期间，他在三名纳粹党高级领导人在场情况下会见了犹太运动员，其中之一穿着整套SS制服并佩带着手枪。犹太运动员担心他们的生命安全而在这次采访中不敢说出任何批评纳粹政权的言论。艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）回到美国并强烈支持柏林奥运会。

后来成为国际奥委会主席（ 1952年至1972年）的艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage），也是一个希特勒仰慕者并且是一个公开的反犹份子 ，他把Main Kampf作为他的“偶像” 。他的朋友，瑞典主要的资本家Sigfrid Edström从1946年至1952年担任国际奥委会主席之职，他是另一个法西斯支持者 。1933年11月，由于抵制的问题很盛， edström曾写信给艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）说： “纳粹反对犹太人的影响只能这样理解，即如果你住在德国，在一些较重要的生意中，犹太人控制着大多数生意而且制止他人的进入…, 这些犹太人中许多出生身波兰或俄罗斯并且具有完全不同于西方人观念的思想。如果德国仍然想保持为一个'雅利安'的国家和话，改变这些条件是绝对必要的“ 。 [1934年2月8日edström给艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）的信，瑞典国家档案馆]

柏林奥运会后，那时作为国际奥委会副主席的edström 参加了纳粹党在纽伦堡的集会并且稍后宣布：“这是我所见过的一次最伟大的‘秀’，他[希特勒]可能是世界上有史以来人们所知的最强有力的并得到强烈支持的个人。我肯定有六千万人都愿意为他死或为他做任何事。 ” 表示柏林没有失常，一年后，国际奥委会决定授予1940年奥运会给日本。由于战争，这届奥运会没有举行。国际奥委会的决定又一次为军国主义的极端反共的政权作伥，这从1931年军事占领中国的日本在中国犯下的暴行中可以得到充分的认识。国际上，工厂主和资本家政客中有一个庞大的阶层看好德国、日本和其它独裁的法西斯政权并把它们视为'共产主义'蔓延的壁垒。只有当希特勒和日本天皇的帝国主义的野心与他们自己发生冲突，资本家的'民主政治'才会诉诸'反纳粹'的花言巧语直至战争。与今天的中国并行不悖，国际上很大一部分资本家把当前的“仅仅名义上的共产主义”政权看作自己的希望所在，即保持中国对全球资本主义的'开放' 并且让它控制住其庞大的越来越难以控制的工人阶级。这就是为什么他们积极支持中国独裁政府主办奥运会的原因。

二战后，edström和艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）利用他们的国际奥委会的职位设法争取释放被定罪的纳粹战犯。最著名的是，他们为释放俄罗斯监狱里的Karl Ritter von Halt而从事活动，这个人直到战争结束前是德国的国际奥委会委员而且是希特勒政权中的一个领导人物。1951年Karl Ritter von Halt从监狱里释放出来以此作为让苏联首次承认奥林匹克运动会的交易的一部分。艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）在整个国际奥委会主席的任期内继续捍卫右翼的事业。他是参议员麦卡锡在20世纪50年代反共产主义政治迫害的一位热衷的支持者并且批评艾森豪威尔总统在朝鲜的停战决定，艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）称之为“对在亚洲的所有的白人而言，这是一个可耻的行为” 。呼吁艾佛利•布伦戴奇（Avery Brundage）辞去奥林匹克运动领导人的职位是汤姆•史密斯和约翰•卡洛斯在1968年的'沉默抗议'中提出的一项要求（他们还要求恢复穆罕默德阿里的世界重量级拳击冠军）。

1980年，胡安•安东尼奥•萨马兰奇，可以说是掌舵的最强有力的国际奥委会主席。他形容自己是“百分之百佛朗哥主义者 ” ——提及到了西班牙的前法西斯独裁者。由国际奥委会所发行的萨马兰奇的官方的传记对他长期的政治生涯一字不提——他其实是一个佛朗哥的独裁统治下的西班牙议会的法西斯副主席和体育部长。正是在这一时期，萨马兰奇发展了与阿迪达斯帝国的继承人霍斯特‧达斯勒（Horst Dassler）的紧密联系，霍斯特‧达斯勒（Horst Dassler）是那个时候奥林匹克运动的一个关键的幕后人物。在20世纪60年代，阿迪达斯鲜明的黑白足球是在萨马兰奇的帮助下谈判达成的合同下由西班牙监狱中的囚犯生产的。这种法西斯政权下强迫使用监狱劳动是——在一个较小的规模上——今天全球化的血汗工厂的生产链的一个原型。

The Olympics, big business and dictatorship

Rather than the Olympic movement's self-professed ideals of 'internationalism' and 'fair play', hosting the Games is about two at first sight contradictory forces: nationalistic flag-waving and capitalist globalisation.

"Beijing win is big business," ran a BBC headline in July 2001. China had just been awarded the 2008 Olympic Games. The Olympics is not just the world's most prestigious sporting event; it is also one of the most successful marketing empires in the history of capitalism. The Olympic symbol – five connected rings representing the five continents – is one of world's most recognisable and closely guarded corporate logos. The small, secretive, unelected group that controls the Olympics, the 110-member International Olympic Committee (IOC), commands huge financial resources and is feted by governments and business leaders the world over. Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch insisted on being addressed as 'Your Excellency'. His megalomania earned him the nickname 'Lord of the Rings'.
The Beijing Olympics is expected to bring in $2.5 billion from television broadcasting alone. This is set to rise to $3 billion for the period up to and including the London Olympics in 2012. The last time the Games were held in London, in 1948, the BBC reportedly agreed to pay just $3,000 to televise the event. But the British Olympic Committee never cashed the cheque, out of consideration for the BBC's delicate financial situation!
All this was before the Olympics and other major sporting events became big business. The corporate makeover of the Olympics took place under Samaranch, who was IOC president from 1980-2001. The first Olympiad to be staged under Samaranch's ultra-commercial regime were the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, and from this point onwards the pricetag for television broadcasting rights soared "faster, stronger, higher," in the words of the official Olympic motto. The revenue from television rights in Beijing is almost ten times the $287 million paid in Los Angeles.
Unsurprisingly, with billions of dollars at stake, the IOC has acquired a reputation for corruption. A major scandal shook the Olympic movement in 1999 over the coming Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Several investigations, including one by the US Department of Justice, led to the expulsion of ten IOC members who had been "caught elbow-deep in the goody bag" according to The New York Times. They had accepted bribes ranging from real estate deals, paid holidays, plastic surgery and college tuition payments for their children. The scandal cost the mayor of Salt Lake City her job, but IOC boss Samaranch survived. Narrowly.
This scandal prompted intense speculation about the future of the Olympics, the total lack of transparency and democratic accountability of its governing body, and its shady connections with big business. A debate raged over whether the IOC could 'reform itself' – echoing discussions over the future of China's ruling 'communist' party (CCP). Corruption and vote-buying scandals however continue to shroud the Olympic movement long after the departure of Samaranch. In 2006, the Japanese city of Nagano was found to have provided millions of dollars in an "illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality" to IOC members. Nagano spent more than $4.4 million to entertain IOC members during the bidding process, which works out at $46,500 per head.
China's government, the IOC, and its big business partners have a lot in common. They are all undemocratic and mostly corrupt organisations. The IOC, nicknamed 'The Club', is not an elected body – existing IOC members select new members, under a system not unlike that of the CCP's ruling bodies. Hence, the notion that the Olympics, controlled by a dictatorial regime, could be an agent for democratic change in China is ludicrous. The IOC brooks no dissent. In the run up to the 1936 Berlin Games, hosted by the Nazi regime, Ernest Lee Jahncke, an American IOC representative, spoke out publicly for a boycott. This led to his expulsion from the IOC in 1935, the only expulsion in its history until the Salt Lake City corruption scandal half a century later.

'Rushi' – 'rejoining the world'

Hard-headed business calculations but also geo-political considerations lay behind the IOC's decision in July 2001 to award the 2008 Games to Beijing. The corporate sponsors of the Olympics – including Coca Cola, Adidas and McDonald's – were delirious over the opportunities this presented for 'product positioning' in a potential market of 1.3 billion people. A powerful multinational business lobby had thrown its weight behind Beijing, with US companies reportedly contributing two-thirds of the funds for the Chinese bid, which totalled $40 million. The Chinese regime had failed eight years earlier in its bid for the 2000 Olympics. That decision went to Sydney, with the relatively fresh memory of the 1989 Beijing massacre weighing against the Chinese bid.
In 2001, however, Samaranch was accused of "pulling strings behind the scenes to ensure that Beijing won the Games". Admittedly, it was Canada's IOC member who made this claim and he backed the other main candidate, Toronto. The Olympics would open"a new era for China," said Samaranch. Henry Kissinger, who is an auxiliary (non-voting) member of the IOC, but also a key link between US capitalism and the Chinese leaders, called the Olympic decision"a very important step in the evolution of China's relation with the world. I think it will have a major impact in China, and on the whole, a positive impact, in the sense of giving them a high incentive for moderate conduct both internationally and domestically in the years ahead." The IOC decision coincided with the final negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), on tough terms that cost it more – in market-opening concessions – than any other 'developing country' member. The details of these negotiations and the concessions made by the Chinese side are still a 'state secret' inside China – journalists risk imprisonment for digging too deeply in this area. Joining the WTO meant the removal of "the last barriers between China and the forces of globalisation," commented The Guardian's veteran China correspondent, John Gittings. These two landmark decisions shared a similar strategic purpose – to tie China as a 'stakeholder' more firmly into the global capitalist system.
For China's leaders, both decisions were seen as important pillars for the continuation of their increasingly neo-liberal 'reform and opening' policy. This policy, including the privatisation and downsizing of former state-owned companies, and 'marketisation' of public services such as education and healthcare, was by this time running into increasing working class resistance. The news that Beijing would host the Olympics provided a welcome public distraction for the regime, helping to 'sugar the pill' of further neo-liberal globalisation. Huge celebrations were organised once the IOC's decision became public, with possibly 200,000 – mostly from the middle classes – thronging Beijing's Tiananmen Square. A wave of nationalistic pride mixed with expectation was thus engineered by the government on the theme that China was 'rejoining the world' – 'rushi' – and reclaiming its rightful place as an economic superpower. Beijing Olympic official, Wang Wei, called this "another milestone in China's rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation."
As with almost everything the CCP regime does, its main focus is on the situation at home. As The Economist explained it is "more concerned with its own internal problems than with trying to influence faraway countries". For an authoritarian ruling party struggling to keep control of a complex and fractious society, and to hold its own forces together, the Olympic Games are a powerful weapon, the equivalent of 'nationalism on steroids'.

Olympics – "a battlefield for multinationals"

The paradox of a nominally 'communist' regime that enjoys huge, almost sycophantic support from the world's top business leaders is epitomised in these Olympics. A select group of twelve giant multinationals, which include Adidas, Coca Cola, Samsung and General Electric, have paid an average of $72 million each to the IOC to become so-called 'top-tier' sponsors of the Beijing Games.
For such companies Olympic sponsorship and advertising can play a decisive role. As the People's Daily commented, "The Olympic Games is more than a sports arena, but also a battlefield for multinationals." Kodak of the US used its sponsorship of the 1998 Nagano Winter Games as a lever to prize open the Japanese photographic film market, previously monopolised by Fuji. Visa International's sponsorship of every Olympics since 1986 has helped it to displace American Express as the leading credit card company in the United States. Under Olympic rules, only one company from each corporate sector is accepted as a 'top-tier' sponsor. This explains why Pepsi Co. has always been shut out – Coca Cola has been associated with every Olympic Games since 1928. This exclusive arrangement extends to advertising and sales at all Olympic facilities, where Coke has a monopoly. Visa's advertising campaign at the time of the Calgary Games read:"At the 1988 Winter Olympics, they will honour speed, stamina and skill. But not American Express."
This battle has shifted to Chinese soil, where it completely overshadows the Games themselves.
"The global Olympic sponsors have huge budgets for marketing in China," said a Hong Kong advertising chief. "When the torch relay is in China, every city which the torch passes through will be full of sponsorship logos," he said. This is one important reason why the Chinese planners opted for the longest torch-relay in the history of the Olympics, covering 137,000 kilometres, or three and a half times the earth's circumference. This 'Journey of Harmony', as the Chinese regime called it, turned into a heavily guarded farce, leading some Olympic officials to conclude that the torch-relay may have passed its 'sell-by' date. Historically, before it became an advertising bonanza, the torch-relay began life in 1936 as a symbol of Nazi triumphalism. This ritual has nothing whatsoever to do with internationalism, on the contrary it is one of the clues betraying a strong historical connection between the Olympic movement and fascist and authoritarian regimes.
"The idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins. It was invented in its modern form by the organisers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And it was planned with immense care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence." [BBC, 5 April 2008]

In China, the government has been whipping up 'Olympic fever' in an attempt to cut across rising discontent that poses an increasingly serious threat to its rule. Additionally, the regime hopes the Olympics will help trigger a consumer boom, to act as a 'shock absorber' for declining external demand and falling exports as the global economy slows. China suffers from an abnormally low level of consumption – even Indians consume more as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). This is because wage levels have nowhere near kept pace with the overall growth of the economy. As a share of GDP, wages have fallen from 53 percent in 1998 to 41 percent in 2007, one of the sharpest declines in the world (and this during the period of preparation for the Beijing Games). In addition to massive sales campaigns by the multinational Olympic sponsors, more than 5,000 products have been dumped on the market with the Beijing Olympics logo. This includes apparel, mascot dolls, key-chains and even commemorative chopsticks. A number of these official Olympic products have been made at factories using child labour or violating other laws.

Union-busters united

Every one of the 'TOP' (The Olympic Partner) companies has a huge stake in China, and expects their Beijing Olympic investments to be rewarded with increased market share. Coca Cola dominates the Chinese soft drinks market and was the first American company to set up in China back in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping reopened the country to foreign business. Coca Cola has 30,000 employees in China, which is its fourth largest – and most profitable – market. General Electric, another 'TOP' company, is providing power and lighting systems for the Beijing Games. It also has an ownership stake in NBC Universal, which holds exclusive Olympic TV broadcasting rights in the United States, for which it paid nearly $900 million. GE's sales in China grew fourfold in 2001-06.
Adidas, another long-term 'TOP' sponsor, saw its China sales grow by 45 percent in 2007, compared to five percent growth in Europe. Adidas aims for a sale turnover of one billion euros in China by 2010. The German sportswear giant also contracts most of its production from China, but here we are discussing an entirely different segment of the Chinese population. The low-paid migrant factory workers that make Adidas sneakers under inhuman conditions, might as well inhabit another planet to that thin layer of brand conscious middle-class Chinese shoppers that Adidas pitches its marketing towards.
Adidas sources more than half its global production from countries where trade unions are banned, principally China. The terrible conditions at the company's Chinese subcontractors were highlighted in an article in the Sunday Times (UK), which reported from three "long-established partner factories" of Adidas in Fuzhou, southern China. Workers complained of forced overtime and wages below the legal minimum. They earned just 570 yuan ($83) per month in 2007 – barely enough to buy a pair of Adidas sneakers. This report also showed that China's state-controlled trade union, the ACFTU, "was widely accused of doing nothing". When workers staged a strike in 2006 they were all summarily dismissed.
Adidas is not exceptional in this regard. A closer look at other 'top-tier' Olympic sponsors is like reviewing a rogues gallery of union-busters. Electronics giant Samsung is an infamous anti-union employer. The company has been fined in South Korea for a range of illegal activities involving blackmail and bribes to get trade union activists to quit. This most powerful of the country's 'chaebol' conglomerates was for a long time a pillar of South Korea's former military regime. An editorial in Hyankoreh said of Samsung: "In a democratic republic you have a world leader in advanced technology using primitive anti-union tactics from the development dictatorship years".
Likewise, Coca Cola has been accused of union-busting activities in Colombia, Pakistan, Turkey, Guatemala and Nicaragua. A law suit was filed against the company by Colombian trade unions in 2001 on the grounds that Coke bottlers had "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilised extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." Coca Cola's clout with Olympic officials was demonstrated when Atlanta, where the company is headquartered, got to hold the 1996 Olympics. This was just twelve years after another US city, Los Angeles, held the Games. Yet another top-tier Olympic sponsor, McDonald's, is the archetypal union-busting company. An international seminar on labour practises at McDonald's, organised by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in 2002, concluded that: "McDonald's tends to use minimum standards or minimum legal requirements in setting wages, health and safety practices, has a propensity to use anti-union measures including isolating, harassing and dismissing employees who are union members or supporters."
In China too, McDonald's was at the centre of a major scandal, when it was found to be paying young workers 40 percent below already low minimum wage rates. Several provincial governments were compelled by massive adverse publicity to investigate the fast-food giant. But while they confirmed that McDonald's had violated China's labour code in several areas, they refused to find it guilty of violating minimum wage rules. This affair (reported on chinaworker.info – China's 'McScandal' shows the need for real trade unions, 22 May 2007) resulted in the puppet ACFTU negotiating its first ever union recognition deals with McDonald's, but of course with management representatives appointed to lead its union branches. This is normal ACFTU practise. It is called, "trade unionism with Chinese characteristics"! The anti-union, anti-working class bias of these Olympic sponsors conforms to a long tradition at the IOC of support for reactionary and anti-working class causes and regimes.

"Sport, not politics"

To claim, as do the IOC, the sponsors and the Chinese regime, that the Olympics is only about sport, not politics, is utterly false. The Chinese regime's decision to route the torch-relay through the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang cannot be described as 'non-political'. As the torch was whizzed through the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in June, with most Tibetans under curfew and unable to see it, Tibet's Communist Party chief Zhang Qingli delivered a speech in which he called for opponents of the Olympic Games – and the CCP – to be "smashed". An embarrassed IOC was compelled to deliver a rare rebuke to the Chinese government, reiterating that it must "separate sport and politics."
In fact, most Olympiads have been surrounded by political controversy: Berlin 1936, Munich 1972, Mexico City 1968, Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984; the list is long. Ten days before the Olympic Games opened in Mexico City, the military shot and killed hundreds of student demonstrators in what has become known as the 'Tlatelolco Massacre'. Mexico too was a one-party dictatorship that US imperialism and other Western capitalist powers had important economic and strategic links with. True to form, the IOC worked closely with Mexico's president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz to insure that the massacre did not jeopardise the Games. Yet when the Afro-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously gave the 'black power' salute from the medals podium in Mexico City, they were expelled from the Games on the orders of the IOC president Avery Brundage.
The IOC and its supporters want it both ways. When they deal with dictators, they justify this with arguments that the Olympics can help to advance democracy and human rights. In other words, they claim an explicitly political rationale. But when this is shown to be a farce, as in China today, they reply that the Olympics is a sporting, not a political organisation.
Jacques Rogge, the current IOC president, has made the absurd claim that the Olympics in 1988 helped turn South Korea, then another dictatorship, into "a vibrant democracy". According to Rogge, "The Games played a key role, again by the presence of media people." [Financial Times, 26 April 2008]
In real life, the South Korean military regime was forced from power by a wave of mass strikes and demonstrations that erupted in June 1987 (a full year before the Seoul Olympic Games) and continued for three years. This is an important lesson for China, showing the decisive role of mass workers' struggle in the battle against dictatorship.
When it comes to the struggle for democratic rights, the Olympics is part of the problem rather than the solution. In a recent report, Amnesty International warns, "Hosting the Olympic Games has become a thinly veiled excuse to crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly." [What human rights legacy for the Beijing Olympics? Amnesty International, 1 April 2008]
With an estimated 150 people killed by security forces in Tibetan areas, 2008 is already one of the worst years for state repression in China since 1989. Annihilating the arguments of the IOC and its apologists, Amnesty's report states "much of the current wave of repression against activists and journalists is occurring not in spite of, but actually because of the Olympics."
Neither is the Chinese state acting alone as it uses the Olympics to crack down on potential opposition. Interpol has agreed to cooperate with Chinese authorities, opening its database to "help China ensure that mischief-makers do not enter". Ostensibly such measures are aimed at 'terrorists' from Xinjiang and Tibet (despite the lack of evidence that such terrorist threats exist). As prominent dissident Hu Jia commented: "The greatest threats aren't necessarily terrorists or crime, the greatest threats are those who reveal China's social problems and protest the government."

Authoritarian traditions

The IOC has a tradition of racism, anti-communism and support for authoritarian regimes stretching back to its origins. The founder of the modern Olympic movement in 1896 was the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin. His vision was not of a popular sporting movement, for the masses, but one almost exclusively for the 'idle rich' and military officer caste. In the view of noblemen like de Coubertin, the lower classes were unable to grasp the concept of 'fair play'. Women, meanwhile, were deemed completely unsuited to the world of sport – a view did not change much until after the Second World War. At the London Olympics of 1948, women athletes were outnumbered ten to one by men. More Afro-American athletes actually competed in the 1936 Berlin Games than in Los Angeles four years earlier, due to the institutionalised racism in the US which kept most sports as a white preserve until the 1950s.
Baron de Coubertin was a 'great French patriot' who nevertheless became a staunch admirer of the Nazi regime in Germany. On his death in 1937, he bequeathed his lifetime literary collection to Hitler's government. In a bizarre footnote, six months after his death, de Coubertin's corpse was dug up in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his heart was cut out and transported to Olympia in Greece. There it was reburied in a ceremony attended by his long-time friend, the Nazi official and organiser of the 1936 Berlin Games, Carl Diem.
The IOC awarded the 1936 Games to Berlin two years before Hitler came to power in January 1933. Rather than displaying regret, however, IOC leaders subsequently – and vehemently – defended the Nazi's rights to hold the Games. As news emerged of Nazi terror directed against trade unionists, communists, socialists and Jews, the call for a boycott of the Berlin Games grew, especially in the US, Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands. A 1934 opinion poll showed that 42 percent of Americans supported an Olympic boycott. Facing a crisis, the US Olympic Committee sent its president, Avery Brundage, to Germany to assess if the Games could be held in accordance with 'Olympic principles'. In reality, Brundage's mission was a conscious manoeuvre to derail the boycott campaign, which Brundage blamed on "the Jews and the communists". During his visit to Germany in September 1934, he met with Jewish athletes in the presence of three senior Nazi party leaders, one in full SS uniform with his pistol. The Jewish athletes feared for their lives and dared not utter any criticism of the Nazi regime at this interview. Brundage returned to the US giving the Berlin Games his strong endorsement.
Brundage, who later became IOC president (1952-72), was also an admirer of Hitler and an open anti-semite. He cited Main Kampf as his "spiritual inspiration". His friend, the leading Swedish capitalist Sigfrid Edström, who was IOC president from 1946-52, was yet another fascist sympathiser. In November 1933, as the boycott issue raged, Edström had written to Brundage: "The Nazi opposition to the influence of the Jews can only be understood if you live over in Germany. In some of the more important trades the Jews govern the majority and stop all others from coming in … Many of these Jews are of Polish or Russian origin with minds entirely different from the western mind. An alteration of these conditions is absolutely necessary if Germany should remain a 'white' nation." [Letter from Edström to Brundage, 8 February 1934, from The National Archives of Sweden]
After the Berlin Olympics, Edström, then vice-president of the IOC, attended a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg and later declared: "It was one of the greatest shows I have ever seen … He [Hitler] is probably one of the most powerful and strongly supported individuals that the world's history has ever known. 60 million people I am sure are willing to die for him and do whatever he requests."
Indicating that Berlin was no aberration, the IOC decided one year later to award the 1940 Olympics to Japan. That Olympiad never took place due to the war. The IOC's decision to promote yet another militaristic and rabidly anti-communist regime, had been taken in the full knowledge of Japan's atrocities in China, which its armies had occupied in 1931. There was a sizeable layer of industrialists and capitalist politicians internationally who looked favourably upon Germany, Japan and other authoritarian or fascist regimes seeing them as bulwarks against the spread of 'communism'. Only when the imperialist ambitions of Hitler and the Japanese Emperor clashed with their own, did the capitalists 'democracies' resort to 'anti-Nazi' rhetoric and eventually war. The parallel with China today, is that a large segment of the capitalists internationally see the current 'communist-in-name-only' regime as their best hope to keep China 'open' for global capitalism and hold down its huge, increasingly restive working class. This is why they enthusiastically support the Chinese dictatorship's hosting of the Olympics.
After the Second World War, both Edström and Brundage used their IOC positions to try to secure the release of convicted Nazi war criminals. Most famously, they campaigned for the release from a Russian prison of Karl Ritter von Halt, who was Germany's IOC member up until the end of the war, as well as a leading figure in Hitler's regime. Ritter von Halt was released from prison in 1951 as part of the deal that saw the Soviet Union admitted to the Olympic movement for the first time. Brundage continued to defend right-wing causes throughout his term as IOC president. He was a keen supporter of Senator McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the 1950s and criticised president Eisenhower for halting the war in Korea, which Brundage called "a shameful act for all the whites in Asia". The call for Brundage's resignation as head of the Olympic movement was one of the demands raised by Tommy Smith and John Carlos in their 1968 'silent protest' (they also demanded that Mohammed Ali's world heavyweight boxing title be restored).
In 1980, Juan Antonio Samaranch, arguably the most powerful of IOC presidents, took the helm. He described himself as "100 percent Francoist" – a reference to Spain's former fascist dictator. The official biography of Samaranch, published by the IOC, does not say a word about his long political career – that he was in fact a fascist deputy in the Cortes and minister of sport under Franco's dictatorship. It was during this period that Samaranch developed strong contacts with Horst Dassler, heir to the Adidas empire, and a key behind-the-scenes figure in the Olympic movement at that time. In the 1960s, Adidas' distinctive black and white footballs were made by prisoners in Spanish jails, under a contract negotiated with the help of Samaranch. This use of forced prison labour under a fascist regime was a prototype – on a much smaller scale – to today's globalised sweatshop production chain.

译自CWI的绿色奥运？

绿色奥运？

北京是世界上污染最严重的城市之一

Vincent Kolo和陈立志， 中国劳工论坛

北京奥运会作为'绿色奥运'进行宣传。在2001年，中国政权使用这个口号来成功地申办奥运会，通过雄心勃勃地承诺改善中国首都的空气质量和水质而得到支持。不过，这始终是一个难以完成的任务。北京是世界上污染最严重的城市之一。中国官员不是解决实际问题，而是选择了若干短期的和装饰性的措施，这些措施只为运动会期间的改善发挥作用。使用临时权宜之计——用博客的话说叫“雾里花和镜中月” ——是中国政权的品性。在世界上，中国面临着最可怕的生态危机。在和平时期，一个国家的自然资源，水和土地如此程度的退化是无前例的。

尽管为奥运几乎支出了170亿美元来改善环境，北京不断的建设浪潮和爆发式地汽车使用阻碍了政府改善空气质量的努力。在奥运会期间，政府下令停使150万辆汽车以减少空中的毒素。为了奥运会，种植了百万计的树木，尤其是在首都国际机场的附近，以便迎接新来者。鉴于它给北京本已稀缺的水资源带来了额外的压力，环保人士对此带来的好处有分歧。近200家钢铁，水泥，化工厂和其他工厂已被关闭或搬迁至城市边界以外。但正如网站有线评论说的， “周边城市愉快地为首都的污秽的工厂铺出了欢迎垫子，然后让它们喷出纪录级数量的煤烟到该地区的天空，让它们嗡嗡叫” 。高达70 ％ 的北京的大气污染来自周边省份——这只是城市奥运翻新门面被更广的经济活动所破坏的一个例子。联合国环境计划署一项报告称“广泛使用煤炭，城市的地理位置和日益增多的机动车辆意味着改善北京的空气质量的步子缓慢下来。” 这份报告发现，2006年北京的空气中作为一个主要的健康危害物质的小颗粒物的平均水平高于世界卫生组织（WHO）的指导标准的8倍。其他类型的空气污染——二氧化硫，二氧化氮及一氧化碳——上升或在3年的下降后于2006年开始不再改善。

为了健康，患有哮喘的男子马拉松世界纪录保持者格布雷西拉西耶放弃了北京奥运会期间的该项比赛，虽然他仍然打算参加在北京举行的10000米比赛。他说“中国的污染对我的健康是一个威胁，在我目前的状况下，我很难跑四十二公里”。美国奥运代表团宣布，它将携带1000只特别设计的空气污染口罩到北京。据一位美国运动员所说，他们穿上新的装束，整队看上去像“一次星球大战中的达斯•维德们的聚会” 。然而，北京的1700万居民不得不每天呼吸这样的空气，而不只是在一个为期三周的国际竞争中。而其他声明狼藉的污染大城市如墨西哥城和洛杉矶的平均空气污染指数分别为66和44，而北京记录中的数字，有时超过300 ，此时，空气成为'危险物' 。对于一个暴露在这种程度的空气毒素中的儿童，这相当于一天吸烟40支！北京大学环境科学教授的研究表明，2002年，微粒所造成的污染导致北京2.5万人死亡，导致该城市的国内生产总值损失7.2 ％ 。据2006年由国家环境保护总局（ SEPA ）实施的84个中国主要城市的统计调查结果， 北京达到国家空气质量标准的天数是最少的——而且2007年其空气质量更差了。

三分之一的城市尘埃微粒来自大约3000个建筑工地，这些工地在中国城市整日整夜开工。工作并且在许多情况下还生活在这些工地上的低工资的民工却没有被提供奥林匹克式防毒面具。空气质量的一个更大的威胁是北京日益增长的汽车量，到奥运会时，汽车数将达到330万辆，每天有一千多辆新的汽车开上城市的道路。在2007年，当汽车拥有者突破三百万时，北京的市长王岐山说，这象征着城市的“繁荣和快速发展” 。但在新浪网的一个调查中，受访者却有着另一种观点，55 ％的人说这是'坏消息'以及31 ％的人担心城市的污染问题将进一步恶化。

根据环境保护署（ EPA）的推算，在美国，汽车每年平均产生超过273千克的空气污染。然而，中国的汽车环保标准低于美国以及大大低于欧洲的相关标准。最近的测试发现中国汽车的排放水平相当于美国六十年代后期和七十年代初的水平，这些汽车排放比西方国家目前使用的汽车的排放严重10-20倍。根据一项中美联合研究，北京40 ％的汽车和70 ％的的士不符合西方废气排放的最基本的标准。使问题更糟的是，作为增长最快的行业的中国的汽车市场是真正的大污染制造者——大排量的运动型多功能车（休旅车）及豪华车型。2007年，这些车辆的销售量上升了50 ％ ，相比于整个市场，增长了20 ％ 。这一趋势告诉我们关于中国的国内市场的很多方面：这个市场是偏向于相对富裕的少数阶层，而绝大多数人因为太穷而享受不了西式的消费。

汽车文化

中国从'自行车王国'转型为世界上第二大和增长最快的汽车市场展现了资本主义的破坏性的力量及其盲目追逐利润的本性。从环保的角度来看，中国——13亿人——复制西方资本主义模式的汽车大众化的疯狂性对任何人来说都是不言而喻的。汽车是全球温室气体的最大单一来源而它们现在在中国城市产生70 ％至80 ％的空气污染，根据一项2007年由世界银行和中国政府联合制作的报告，污染导致一年75万人失去生命。然而，同一个政府却张开双臂欢迎全球汽车巨人并且尽最大努力以确保中国继续沿着这条道路走去。近年来，由于他们在其他市场滞销而把希望寄托在中国市场的扩大上，这些公司已投入了巨额的款项。作为汽车市场的领导者的通用汽车，现在每年在中国销售超过100万辆车。大众汽车公司在中国比在德国销售更多的车。

在市、省和国家级的层面，这些公司和其他公司，如与汽车业命运相系的石油公司，与中国官员和与他们有联系的国有企业建立起了一种强有力的利益网。正如一位汽车行业的分析师提出， “中国政府打算建立一种汽车文化和发展汽车工业已不是什么秘密了。所有的力量一并发挥作用。”政府欢迎汽车公司，并把它作为投资、就业岗位和技术之源并相应地制定其政策。中国日报的评论道：“公路在这个国家纵横交错，古老的城市中心已经用推土机推平以便为造适宜汽车的道路腾出空间。”用于铁路的投资-铁路是目前为止最环保的大规模运输手段——在狂热的公路建设项目面前相形见拙。官方统计显示，在过去的5年里，建成了6500公里新铁路。但与此相比，仅2006年，建成4400公里新的六车道高速公路，2007年进一步，建成8300公里的高速公路。片面侧重于公路建设的原因之一是几乎所有的中国的高速公路都是收费道路，主要是在省级政府的合同下的私营公司出资建造。最近，甚至铁路在较小的规模上也正在向私人资本开放。至于收费道路的兴旺，在该国许多地方，政府已对这一进程失去控制。国家审计局调查了18个省份中的100条公路，发现158个非法收费站，至2005年年底，它们通过非法的收费总共已收集了149亿元（ 21亿美元）。

无怪乎汽车业经理们都笑容满面。中国的汽车市场的增长一直很壮观：在短短的六年里增长了300 ％ 。私家车的数目由2000年的600万上升到2007年的3240万。2001年成为世贸成员，通过降低进口关税和更广泛地向全球汽车巨人开放中国市场对此发展一直是至关重要的。美国，欧洲，日本和韩国公司现在占70 ％的中国汽车国内销售。2003-08之间增加了5倍的中国的汽车使用量的飙升本身对全球的石油价格有着重要的影响。现在中国是世界上第二大石油进口国而且其汽车消耗的石油占其进口石油过半。2000年，他们消耗6560万吨石油，2010年将增加一倍，至13800万吨石油，到2020年，将上升到25600万吨[2004年10月6日中国日报]。正如华盛顿邮报指出的， “汽车无餍的胃口是北京派出工程师和交易人从西伯利亚到安哥拉再到印尼寻找新的石油的原因之一。”现在，中国比美国从沙特阿拉伯购买更多的石油，也是在石油生产国伊朗和苏丹的最大的外国投资者。因此就地缘政治以及生态条件而言，中国'汽车文化'的到来正在重塑世界和为未来老帝国主义列强和崛起的中国之间的冲突搭建舞台。

空气污染和交通挤塞的影响是很惊人的，当然不只是在北京很严重。作为中国最富有的南部大都市的深圳市的市长如今呼吁人们停止购买汽车。2007年公开会议中他说道：“我虽然没有法定的权力要求你们必须这样做，但我还是要求大家不要购买汽车. ”北京的城市规划者也表现出了失望，中国人民政治协商会议（CPPCC）北京委员会成员之一的郑湘辉惊呼“交通问题的核心是北京道路建设增长速度跟不上车辆增长速度。车辆的数目一天之内可以增加上千辆，但我们在同样时间内不能建起一条新的道路。 “城市仅有140万辆规模的停车位，却有300多万辆车。

不仅是北京人民受其毒害，其交通现在的前行速度不到20世纪80年代的速度的一半——高峰期间1小时仅有11公里。中国日报为此事实哀叹道： “在交通高峰时间，北京的道路就像是一个巨大的停车场，人们抱怨说，骑自行车往往比开车快。”当2008年4月世界高级汽车经理们来到北京市参加北京车展，他们尝到了他们的公司创造的危害。首都离奇的交通全面阻塞把前往展览中心半小时车程变为两小时的蠕动。一些经理，如三菱汽车的Osamu Masuko和雷诺汽车的卡洛斯戈恩，选择走出他们的豪华轿车而在大雨中步行最后一公里的路。

然而，没有什么地方可以看到针对带有弊端的汽车大众化的替代方案。目前这不仅在中国而且在国际上都是个迫切之事。在要求洗清他们的行为的沉重的压力下，汽车公司本身提出的计划是要建造更多的石油和电'混合动力'的发动机和纯电动发动机，以及更多地使用生物燃料。不过，所有这些的发展是用来延续今天汽车使用大众化的系统而不是提供一个真正的替代选择。假如全球电力输出的66 ％仍然依赖化石燃料的话，即使是一个假设性的全电动汽车的'新时代'的到来也不会改善多少。而且，正如在中国，增长最快的电力之源也是全球最严重的环境破坏物：煤！同时生物燃料如乙醇已经被证明在资本主义生产方式下追逐利润的基础上是灾难性的。粮食作物现正转移至更有利可图的生物燃料的生产上，结果是在部分新殖民主义世界出现饥饿。而且对环境也无甚益处——乙醇取自一些作物，如棕榈油，它其实比汽油或柴油产生更多的温室气体。社会主义替代涉及民主控制和经济发展计划以及资源重定向以从其破坏性转向社会需要和环境上可持续的生产，而不是浪费和今天120家在中国的汽车公司之间的重复建设性的竞争，其中许多随着市场变得更小将不可避免地倒闭，资源和积累起来的劳工的技能应该汇集和引导到一个大规模扩展的安全的，廉价的和有效率的公共交通建设上去。

中国私家车猛增的主要原因是在大多数城市里缺乏有效率的公共运输系统。近年来的投资项目中该部门往往被忽视，钱被投入到工业园区及资产的发展上。北京的情况在整个国家中是最严重的。
乘上拥挤的巴士在该市走一遭是一种折磨，尤其是当其出现普遍存在的交通拥堵的情况时，这种拥堵意味着像包装起来的沙丁鱼那样站立着，长久地一动也不动。毫不奇怪，在2006年关于城市生活质量报告中，在交通满意上，北京得分在287个中国城市中是最低的。首都的地铁网络也是长期不能满足要求的。它只有带有83个站口的5条地铁线（第五号地铁线于2007年作为奥运前改善城市面貌的一部分而开通）以服务 1700万居民。有着820万人口的纽约有着备有468个站口的26条地铁线。而且纽约地铁每天运送乘客640万人次，而北京每天只运送220万人次。

交通专家告诉中国日报（ 2007年5月28日）说：“在纽约市，公共交通占整个交通流量的76 ％。东京是91％. 伦敦和巴黎分别是40％和70 ％ ，但在北京，它仍然只占29 ％ 。 ”即使计划扩大地铁系统——到2012增加六条新地铁线路——其也只增加北京居民可用的公共交通到45 ％左右。

作为扭转这一局面的一个重大的策略，北京官员大多是出于政治方面权宜之计而诉诸于一系列的治标措施以不惜一切代价避免奥运的失败。因此，种植树木，无车日，和人工下雨（发射火箭以产生大雨来清除空气污染物）这样的作法应因而生了 。如果这些方法都失败，中国官员有一个久经考验的解决方法以解决难题：统计造假！北京环境保护局被指责把监测点从空气质量欠佳的地区移到别处而且为了提高所谓的“蓝天“数而改变空气中成份以便在检测其污染时得到好的结果。

中国和全球变暖

联合国气候变化专门委员会已发出警告说，除非地球大气层中的温室气体量在未来八年渐趋稳定，气温升高至'灾难性'的水平将是不可避免的。然而，基于对大量增加的矿物燃料消费来给其巨大的浪费的产业和拥堵的交通提供动力，中国已超越美国成为世界上最大的污染者'和气候变化的主要驱动力。

中国比其他任何国家遭受了更多的自然灾害并且由于人口增长，城市化，荒漠化和并非不重要的气候变化的影响，它们的发生频率正在上升。极地冰盖萎缩被公认为是对气候的一大威胁而导致较高的全球气温和海平面上升。被称为世界'第三极'的青藏高原的冰川也在以惊人的7 ％左右的速度萎缩着。新华社的一份报告警告说：“冰川融化最终会引发更多的干旱，荒漠化的扩大和沙尘暴的增加。”冰川收缩是导致中国西部山区数以千计的湖泊消失的原因，而现在沙漠占该国领土的27.6 ％，其中大部分在北部和西北地区。在这些非汉族人民集中的地区的环境退化和耕地的丧失是推动种族关系紧张并要求更大的自治或独立的一个因素。

在中国南方，其影响适得其反： 1 季风暴雨，严重水灾和热带风暴的增加。每年数以千万计的人受水灾的影响。 2008年6月在很多省份包括安徽，广东，湖南等省区发生了50年来最严重的降雨。国家海洋局的报告已警告说，如果海洋继续上升，沿海大城市如上海和广州，会遇到“无法想象的挑战”。科学家警告说，到2050年上海可能会被淹没掉。2007年春季，中国政权公布关于气候变化的首次国家评估报告，预测在中国北部的七大河流之三——淮河，辽河，海河流域——的地区降雨量急剧下降30 ％ 。反过来，由于更高的温度，这将导致小麦，大米和玉米产量在本世纪下半叶减产37 ％。中国粮食自给自足的能力已经不足，在这样的假设下将面临完全崩溃的局面。

全球性的后果也将是毁灭性的。如果目前的趋势继续下去，科学家警告，中国产生的温室气体的增加量将数倍于老工业化国家正在按照——完全不充分的——京都议定书削减的排放量。中国未来五年内增加的排放量定为约23亿吨，使得37个富裕国家在京都议定书下强制削减的17亿吨相形见拙

社会主义者一贯认为，资本主义'解决方案' ，如京都议定书无法阻止全球变暖。这是因为他们是根据'自由市场'的机制运作的，该机制常常导致协定形同虚设而且往往导向欺诈性的排放权的交易。他们被在资本主义——一个残酷竞争的制度，在该制度下，每个政府旨在为自己的公司谋取最大利益——的基础上无可避免的暗斗所困扰。在欧洲和美国的政府要求下，中国和其他新兴工业化国家接受了更严格的限制二氧化碳排放量的要求，这已被一些亚洲国家政府称为'绿色帝国主义' 。这一指控不是完全没有道理的。富裕的资本主义国家的伪善的政府知道没有任何限制——自己的公司是许多中国的污染问题背后之源。绿色和平组织英国领导人约翰舒文解释说： “对中国的排放量飙升负责的不只是北京，而且包括华盛顿，布鲁塞尔和东京。”并把矛头指向西方产业大规模的迁移。他说：“所有我们所做的就是出口西方的碳产物之很大的份额到中国，今天我们看到了后果。”

浪费资源的产业

近十年来中国经济年增长率10 ％ 。不过，这是带有人力资源和自然资源的巨大成本的。正如环保总局第二把手的潘岳指出的， “我们正在使用太多的原料以维持这方面的增长。例如生产价值一万美元的货物，我们需要用去比日本7倍多的资源，美国的近6倍以及或许最令人惭愧的是比印度都要高出近3倍 “ 。 [2005年3月7日周刊] 例如，中国的钢铁行业消耗了该国电力的16 ％，相比之下，所有中国的家庭的耗电总量也只有10 ％ 。中国发电厂的主要燃料是煤炭——占76 ％——这导致酸雨，烟雾，呼吸系统疾病，当然包括全球气候变暖。每星期有一家新的燃煤发电厂在中国的某个地方建立起来。鉴于它是世界上最大的煤炭生产国，估计煤储量为55000亿吨，这种趋势肯定将继续下去。

中国工业和农业亦导致巨大的水资源浪费，生产一单位的国内生产总值需要消耗比日本高出10倍以上的水或者比韩国高出6倍以上的水。该国迅速步入水供应的严重关头。主要的水专家马军警告说，中国东北地区几个城市，包括北京，从现在开始五至七年内可能用尽水资源。新华通讯社预测，北京将在2010年达到危机点，那时其人口将超过其供水能力约300万人。正在扩大的戈壁沙漠和北京相距只不过220公里——甚至再次开始讨论关于迁都的事。在奥运会期间，短期内的'修正'是从邻近省份，如河北和山西抽取最优质的水到北京。据估计，为了奥运游客，将用这些省份的3亿立方米的水来冲洗北京市中心的污染和淤滞的河流和湖泊。这项政策遭到了'捐助'的省份的批评是可以理解的。山西省的前共产党的头头齐远（音译）抗议说：“为了维护北京的水质，我们要关闭所有我们的工厂，但我们仍然需要生活，所以我说，政府有必要补偿山西”。

显然，中国的一党专政的政权是没有能力挽回该国——和整个地球与它一起——奔向生态灾难的境地。只有从目前的精英，资本家和未经选举产生的国家官员手里剥夺工业生产控制权并通过全民制订一套环境上可持续的经济发展的民主社会主义计划，才能改变目前的灾难性的趋势。
The Green Olympics?

Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world

Vincent Kolo and Chen Lizhi, chinaworker.info

The Beijing Olympic Games have been billed as the 'Green Olympics'. This slogan was used by the Chinese regime in its successful bid for the games in 2001, and was backed up by ambitious commitments to improve air and water quality in the Chinese capital. But this was always going to be a tall order. Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Rather than tackling the real problems, Chinese officials have opted for a number of short-term and largely cosmetic measures that will mostly only last for the duration of the games. This use of temporary expedients – "smog and mirrors" in the words of one blogger – is characteristic of the Chinese regime. China faces the most terrifying ecological crisis in the world. There are no parallels in peacetime for such monumental degradation of a country's natural resources, water and land.

Despite spending almost $17 billion on environmental improvements for the Olympic Games, Beijing's non-stop construction boom and exploding car usage have largely thwarted government efforts to improve air quality. During the period of the Olympics 1.5 million cars will be ordered off the city's roads in order to thin out the level of airborne toxins. Millions of trees have been planted for the Olympics, especially in the vicinity of the capital's international airport to greet new arrivals. But environmentalists are divided over the benefits of this, given the additional strain it places on Beijing's scarce water resources. Nearly 200 steel, cement, chemical and other factories have been closed or relocated outside city boundaries. But as the website Wired commented, "Neighboring cities cheerfully rolled out the welcome mat for the capital's filthiest factories, then spewed record amounts of coal smoke into the region's skies to keep them humming." Up to 70 percent of Beijing's atmospheric pollution comes from surrounding provinces – just one example of how the city's Olympic face-lift has been sabotaged by processes in the wider economy. "Extensive use of coal, the city's geographical location and a growing number of motor vehicles means the pace of improvement in Beijing's air quality is slow," concluded a report from the United Nations Environment Program. This report found that in 2006 the average level of small particulate matter, a major health hazard, in Beijing's air was eight times higher than World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. Other types of air pollution – sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide – rose or failed to improve during 2006 following three years of declines.

Health concerns led Haile Gebrselassie, the men's marathon world record-holder, who is asthmatic, to pull out of that event, although he still intended to compete in the 10,000 metres in Beijing. "The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42 km in my current condition," he announced. The US Olympic team announced it would bring 1,000 specially designed air pollution masks to Beijing. In their new attire the team looked like "a gathering of Darth Vaders", according to one US athlete. Yet Beijing's 17 million inhabitants must breath this air every day, not just during a three-week international competition. While other infamously polluted metropolises like Mexico City and Los Angeles have an average air pollution index of 66 and 44 respectively, Beijing has sometimes recorded figures above 300, at which point the air becomes 'hazardous'. For a child exposed to this level of airborne toxins, it is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day! Research by Peking University environmental science professors calculated that particulate pollution caused 25,000 deaths in Beijing in 2002 alone, and the loss of 7.2 percent of the city's GDP. According to a 2006 survey of the 84 major cities in China by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), Beijing had the fewest number of days attaining the national air quality standard – and its air quality was even worse in 2007.

A third of the city's particulate dust comes from roughly 3,000 construction sites, which work around the clock in Chinese cities. The low-paid migrant workers who work on and in many cases also live on these sites are not provided with Olympic-style gas masks. An even bigger threat to air quality is presented by Beijing's growing car pool, which will number 3.3 million by the time of the Olympics. More than a thousand new cars roll onto the city's roads every day. When car ownership broke through the 3 million mark in 2007, Beijing's mayor, Wang Qishan, said this symbolised the city's "prosperous and fast development". But respondents in a Sina.com survey took another view, with 55 percent saying it was 'bad news' and 31 percent fearing the city's pollution problems would get worse.

The average car in the United States causes over 273 kilograms of air pollution annually according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet environmental standards for car engines in China are lower than in the US and considerably lower than those in Europe. Recent tests found emission levels of Chinese cars to be on a par with cars used in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s; these cars emit 10-20 times more pollution than cars currently used in Western countries. According a joint Chinese-US study, 40 percent of cars and 70 percent of taxis in Beijing fail to meet the most basic Western emission standards. To make matters worse, the fastest growing segment of the Chinese car market is for the really big polluters – fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and luxury models. Sales of these vehicles rose by 50 percent in 2007, compared to overall market growth of 20 percent. This trend tells us a lot about China's domestic market: it is skewed towards a small relatively affluent minority, while the vast majority are too poor to engage in western style consumerism.

Car culture

China's transformation from 'bicycle kingdom' into the world's second-biggest and fastest-growing vehicle market shows the destructive power of capitalism and its blind chase for profits. The sheer insanity from an environmental perspective of reproducing the western capitalist model of mass car ownership in China – with 1.3 billion people – should be obvious to anyone. Motor vehicles are the single biggest source of greenhouse gases worldwide and they now cause between 70 to 80 percent of air pollution in Chinese cities, pollution that claims 750,000 lives a year according to a 2007 report produced jointly by the World Bank and the Chinese government. Yet the global motor giants, welcomed with open arms by the same government, are doing their utmost to insure that China continues along this road. These companies have invested huge sums in recent years as they pin their hopes on China to offset sluggish or falling sales in other markets. The market leader, General Motors, now sells over a million cars annually in China. Volkswagen sells more cars in China than in Germany.

These companies and others such as oil companies whose fate is tied to automobile production, have built up a powerful web of interests with Chinese officials at city, provincial and national level, and with the state-owned companies linked to them. As one car industry analyst put it, "The Chinese government has made no secret of its intention to develop a car culture and a car industry. All of the forces are working together." The government welcomes car companies as a source of investment, jobs and technology, and its policies have been designed accordingly. "Highways crisscross the country, and ancient city centers have been bulldozed to make way for car-friendly avenues," China Daily commented. Investment in railways, by far the most environmentally friendly means of mass transportation, has been dwarfed by a frenetic road-building programme. Official statistics show that 6,500 km of new railways were built in the last five years. But this compares to 4,400 km of new six-lane expressways built in 2006 alone, and a further 8,300 km of expressways in 2007. One of the reasons for this lopsided emphasis on road-building is that almost all China's expressways are toll roads, mainly financed by private companies under contract to provincial governments. More recently even the railways are being opened to private capital, but on a much smaller scale. As for the boom in toll roads, in many parts of the country local governments have lost control of this process. The National Audit Office investigated 100 roads in 18 provinces and discovered that 158 illegal toll stations had been erected, which together had collected in 14.9 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) in unlawful charges by the end of 2005.

No wonder motor industry executives are all smiles. The growth of China's vehicle market has been spectacular: 300 percent in just six years. The number of private cars rose from six million in the year 2000, to 32.4 million in 2007. WTO membership since 2001 has been crucial to this development, by lowering import tariffs and opening China more extensively to the global car giants. US, European, Japanese and Korean companies now account for 70 percent of domestic sales. China's soaring car usage is itself a significant influence on the global price of oil, which increased five-fold between 2003-08. China is the world's second largest oil importer and motor vehicles now consume over half its imported oil. They consumed 65.6 million tons of oil in the year 2000, which by the year 2010 will have doubled to 138 million tons of oil annually, rising to 256 million tons by 2020. [China Daily, 6 October 2004] As the Washington Post pointed out, "the ravenous appetite of the automobile is one reason Beijing has dispatched engineers and deal makers from Siberia to Angola to Indonesia in search of new oil." China now buys more oil from Saudi Arabia than the US does, and is the biggest foreign investor in oil producers Iran and Sudan. In geopolitical as well as ecological terms, therefore, the advent of 'car culture' in China is reshaping the world and setting the stage for future clashes between the older imperialist powers and a rising China.

The effects in terms of air pollution and traffic congestion are simply staggering and not just in Beijing of course. The mayor of the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, China's richest city, actually appealed to its people to stop buying cars. "Although I have no legal power to do this, I am asking everyone not to buy cars," he told a public meeting in July 2007. Beijing's city planners have also expressed frustration: "The core of the traffic problem in Beijing is that the growth in road construction is out of step with the increase in vehicles. The number of vehicles can increase by the thousands on just one day but we cannot build a new road in the same time," exclaimed Cheng Xianghui, a member of the Beijing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The city only has parking space for 1.4 million of its more than 3 million cars.

Not only are the people of Beijing being poisoned; its traffic now moves at less than half the speed it did in the 1980s – just 11 kilometres an hour during peak periods. China Daily bemoaned the fact that, "Beijing's roads are like an enormous parking lot at rush hour. People complain that riding a bicycle is often faster than driving a car." When the world's top motor executives came to the city in April 2008 for the Beijing Auto Show they got a taste of the mayhem their companies have created. The capital's legendary gridlock turned what is normally a half-hour ride to the exhibition centre into a two-hour crawl. Some of the executives, Osamu Masuko of Mitsubishi Motors and Carlos Ghosn of Renault among them, opted to get out of their limousines in heavy rain and walk the last mile of the way.

Yet an alternative to mass car ownership with all its attendant ills is nowhere to be seen. This is now urgent not just in China but internationally. Under heavy pressure to clean-up their act, motor companies themselves are bringing forward plans for more petroleum-electric 'hybrid' engines and pure electric engines, as well as greater use of biofuels. All these developments, however, are designed to perpetuate today's system of mass car usage rather than offer a real alternative. Even a hypothetical 'new epoch' of wholly electric cars would not improve ´the overall picture given that fossil fuels still account for 66 percent of global electricity output. And, as in China, the fastest growing source of electricity worldwide is also the worst environmental offender: coal! Meanwhile biofuels such as ethanol are proving to be disaster on the basis of the capitalist mode of production for profit. Food crops are being displaced by more profitable biofuel production and the result is starvation in some parts of the neo-colonial world. Neither does this spare the environment – ethanol made from some crops such as palm oil actually produces more greenhouse gases than petrol or diesel. The socialist alternative involves democratic control and planning of economic development and the redirection of resources from destructive to socially necessary and environmentally sustainable production. Instead of today's wasteful and duplicative competition among 120 China-based car companies, many of which will inevitably close down as the market becomes more concentrated, the resources and accumulated labour skills of this industry should be pooled and channeled into a massive expansion of safe, cheap and efficient public transport.

The main cause of exploding car ownership in China is the lack of efficient public transport systems in most cities. This sector has largely missed out on the massive investment programmes of recent years, while money has been ploughed into industrial parks and property development. The situation in Beijing is among the worst in the country. A trip through the city on one of its many overcrowded buses is an ordeal, especially when its ubiquitous traffic jams mean standing, packed like sardines, for ages without moving. Not surprisingly, Beijing scored near the bottom of a survey of 287 Chinese cities in the category of transport satisfaction in a 2006 Report on the Quality of Urban Life. The capital's subway train network is also chronically under-dimensioned. It has just five subway lines with 83 stations (the fifth subway line was opened in 2007 as part of the city's pre-Olympic makeover) to service 17 million inhabitants. New York, with a population of 8.2 million, has 26 subway lines and 468 stations. While the New York subway transports 6.4 million passengers daily, Beijing only manages 2.2 million.

"In New York City, public transport shares 76 percent of the total traffic flow. The number is 91, 40 and 70 percent in Tokyo, London and Paris, respectively. But in Beijing it's still 29 percent," a transport expert told China Daily (28 May 2007). Even the planned expansion of the subway system – adding six new lines by 2012 – will still only raise the proportion of Beijing residents using public transport to 45 percent.

In place of a serious strategy to turn this situation around, officials in Beijing have resorted to a series of stopgap measures mostly for reasons of political expedience, to avoid at all costs an Olympic fiasco. Hence all the tree-planting, the car-free days, and the 'cloud-seeding' (shooting up rockets to cause rain that flushes out air pollutants). And if all else fails, Chinese officials have a tried and tested method for resolving difficult problems: fiddling the statistics! The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau has been accused of removing monitoring sites from areas with poor air quality and changing the basis upon which air pollution is measured in order to boost the number of so-called 'blue sky days'.


China and global warming

The United Nations' panel on climate change has issued warnings that unless the amount of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere are stabilised in the next eight years, a rise in temperatures to 'disastrous' levels will be unavoidable. Yet, based on massively increased consumption of fossil fuels to power its hugely wasteful industries and traffic jams, China has overtaken the United States to become the world's 'biggest polluter' and main driver of climate change.

China already suffers more natural disasters than any other country and their frequency is rising as a result of population growth, urbanization, desertification and not least, climate change. The shrinking of the polar ice caps is recognised as a major climate threat leading to higher global temperatures and rising sea levels. But the glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the world's 'third pole', are also shrinking at the alarming rate of seven percent a year. "The melting glacier will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification and increase sandstorms," warned a report in Xinhua. Glacial retreat is responsible for the disappearance of thousands of lakes in mountainous regions of western China, while desert now accounts for 27.6 percent of the country's territory, mostly in northern and northwestern regions. Environmental degradation and loss of farmland in these regions, with their concentration of non-Han peoples, is one factor fueling ethnic tensions and demands for greater autonomy or independence.

In southern China however the effects will be the opposite: an increase in monsoon rains, severe floods and tropical storms. Tens of millions of people are effected by flooding every year. June 2008 saw the heaviest rainfall for 50 years in provinces including Anhui, Guangdong and Hunan. A report from the State Oceanic Administration has warned that coastal metropolises such as Shanghai and Guangzhou will encounter 'unimaginable challenges' if the oceans keep rising. Scientists warn that Shanghai could be submerged by 2050. In the Spring of 2007, the Chinese regime released its first national assessment report on climate change, predicting a fall in precipitation of 30 percent in three of China's seven major river regions – around the Huai, Liao, and Hai rivers – in northern China. This in turn would lead to a 37 percent reduction in wheat, rice and corn yields in the second half of the century due to higher temperatures. China's ability to feed itself, already under strain, faces complete breakdown on the basis of such a scenario.

The global fallout will also be devastating. If current trends continue, scientists warn, China's increased production of greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by older industrialised nations under the – wholly inadequate – Kyoto Protocol. China's emissions are set to increase by about 2.3 billion tonnes over the next five years, dwarfing the 1.7 billion tonnes in cutbacks imposed on 37 rich countries, including the United States, under Kyoto rules.

Socialists have consistently argued that capitalist 'solutions' such as Kyoto are incapable of stopping global warming. This is because they are based upon 'free market' mechanisms such as the ineffectual and often fraudulent trade in emission rights. They are also dogged by governmental infighting which is inevitable on the basis of capitalism – a system of cutthroat rivalry in which each government seeks advantages for its own companies. Demands from governments in Europe and America that China and other newly industrialising nations accept tougher limits on carbon emissions have been attacked by some Asian governments as 'green imperialism'. There is some truth to this accusation. The hypocrisy of governments in the rich capitalist states knows no limits – their own companies are behind much of China's pollution. "Responsibility for China's soaring emissions lies not just in Beijing but also in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo," explained Greenpeace UK director John Sauven, pointing to the mass relocation of Western industry. "All we've done is export a great slice of the West's carbon footprint to China, and today we see the result," he said.

Wasteful industry

The Chinese economy has grown at an annual rate of ten percent for almost a decade. But this has been achieved at a colossal cost in terms of human and natural resources. As Pan Yue, SEPA's second in command pointed out, "We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth. To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India." [Spiegel, 7 March 2005] China's steel industry, for example, consumes 16 percent of the country's electrical power, compared to 10 percent for all China's households put together. The main fuel for Chinese power plants is coal – 76 percent of the total – which causes acid rain, smog, respiratory diseases and of course global warming. Every week a new coal-fired power station comes into service somewhere in China. Given that it is the world's biggest coal producer, with estimated reserves of 5.5 trillion tons, this trend is set to continue.

Chinese industry and agriculture is also hugely wasteful of water, requiring ten times more water than Japan and six times more than South Korea to produce one unit of gross domestic product. The country is rapidly approaching crunch time for water supplies. Ma Jun, a leading water expert, warns that several cities in the northeast of China, including Beijing, could run out of water in five to seven years from now. The Xinhua news agency predicts that Beijing will reach crisis point in 2010, when its population will outstrip its water supplies by around three million people. The Gobi desert, which is advancing, is just 220 km from Beijing – there have even been discussions about moving the Chinese capital. Again, a short-term 'fix' will be applied during the Olympics by pumping the best quality water from neighbouring provinces such as Hebei and Shaanxi. An estimated 300 million cubic metres of water from these provinces will be used to flush out polluted and stagnant rivers and lakes in central Beijing for the benefit of Olympic tourists. This policy has understandably drawn criticism from the 'donor' provinces. "In order to preserve the quality of Beijing's water we have to close all our factories. But we still need to live. So I say the government needs to compensate Shaanxi," protested the former Communist party boss of Shaanxi province, An Qiyuan.

Clearly, China's one-party regime is incapable of arresting the country's – and with it the whole planet's – headlong rush towards ecological disaster. Only by wresting control of industrial production from the present elite of capitalists and unelected state officials, and involving the entire population in drawing up a democratic socialist plan for environmentally sustainable economic development can the present disastrous course be changed.