ON August 28, the board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will meet in Moscow to select three to five candidate cities to compete for the right to host the games in 2008.
In a western suburb of Beijing, chimneys from the city's biggest factory, Shougang Steel, spew smoke, covering the capital in a grey haze. Can the mainland win with such serious pollution?
'On most days you cannot see the sky,' said Wang Xinhua, who has worked at the steel plant since 1975. 'When I leave my apartment in the morning, the air inside is clean. When I return in the evening, the rooms are full of haze. It is the biggest source of pollution in Beijing.'
The plant that was the pride of the city in the Maoist era has become an embarrassment in an era of environmentalism, when there is a surplus of steel in China and throughout the world. Most people in Beijing wish it would close or, according to a proposal made years ago but constantly denied, be moved to a coastal region in the east.
Beijing's bid for the Olympics, which failed by just two votes in 1993 for the games that went to Sydney, has brought the issue to a head.
If this were the Britain of Margaret Thatcher's era, the plant would be closed.
However, for the communist government, the political risk of 200,000 angry unemployed steelworkers marching the 20 kilometres from the plant to storm the party headquarters at Zhongnanhai is too high.
