{"id":10562,"date":"2014-11-05T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=10562"},"modified":"2014-11-04T07:50:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T11:50:11","slug":"beijings-apec-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/beijings-apec-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing’s APEC Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

A huge part of Chinese culture is the concept of “face<\/strong>”\u00a0(\u9762\u5b50 – mi\u00e0n zi). This basically means one’s reputation, and it goes for all social circles – family, friends, business, and society at large. Beijing’s horrible air pollution is notorious, and it is unfortunately one of the first things that comes to mind when the Chinese capital is brought up in conversation. For Chinese officials, the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing could potentially be a giant loss of face. Just imagine Barack Obama showing up on Air Force One with all of the TV cameras running, being greeted by a disgusting, smoggy sky. This would be incredibly embarrassing for China, and the government is going to do everything in its power to make sure that it doesn’t happen.<\/p>\n

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Image by Kevin Dooley from www.flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

If this seems like deja vu<\/em>, it’s because this same thing happened back in 2008 in the lead up to the summer Olympics. Factories were either shut down or drastically decreased their output, half the cars were taken off the road, and over $20 billion was invested to clean up the ‘Jing before the world arrived for the games. As anyone who has been to or lived in Beijing since the Olympics ended can attest to, the clean air didn’t last for long. As a matter of fact, the pollution levels in Beijing recently hit 20 times the level considered safe<\/a>. The smog stuck around for the Beijing marathon, where plenty of runners donned the famous pollution mask<\/a> and quite a few backed out of the race entirely. Of course, the constant media coverage of the dangerous levels of pollution – not only in Beijing but all around the country – is a serious loss of face for China.<\/p>\n