Beijing's Bureau of Land Resources and Public Security has already ordered all unlicensed mines to stop work immediately, dismantle their equipment, and hand in any explosives within 15 days. Those who do this willingly will have their punishments for operating without a license lessened or dropped. Beijing is located in a rural area, and most of the illegal mines are in the city.
To a certain extent, Beijing resembles Los Angeles. It is full of freeways, automobiles, and gated suburbs. It has gone from a mainly bicycle-commuting city to a car-dependent metro area in just one generation. Beijing, like Los Angeles, suffers from traffic congestion that is sometimes so severe that people sit in traffic for hours, emitting more pollution and smog. And around Beijing are industrial parks full of trichloroethylene-emitting factories and heavy manufacturing, soot-saturated steel foundries.
With the enormous financial cost, one would think that more than just the 2008 Summer Olympics would be affected. Studies have shown that 25% of the air pollution in Los Angeles comes from China. And 40% of the air pollution in certain sites in California comes from Asia. When China performs these changes, it will let the U.S. know that controlling air pollution in one part of the world can have a positive effect on the atmosphere on the other side of the world. If a change is detected in China's emissions this far away, then this experiment will prove that the health of the planet can also be improved.
In addition to preparing for the Olympics in this way, the Chinese government has launched a series of campaigns in recent years to decrease the country's number of coal mine accidents, which result in the deaths of more than 5,000 coal miners each year, but the numbers have not changed. Fires and other deadly disasters are often blamed on managers who ignore safety rules or fail to install required life-saving equipment such as ventilators.
Chinese leaders have placed great significance on the 2008 Olympics and view the event as the most historic in recent decades. And because the shutdown will markedly reduce air pollution levels across Asia and the Pacific, scientists believe it will also prove to be a turning point in world history.
