BEIJING - China's aviation authority, citing safety concerns, has announced plans to scale back flights at overstretched Beijing airport and ban the creation of new airlines before 2010.

China's airlines have carried 19.6 percent more passengers so far this year than last year, straining ground support, the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, known by its initials, CAAC, said in a statement posted on its Web site.

"Along with the rapid development of the industry have come ever-more urgent problems with the supply of technical personnel, air space resources, and airport safety guarantees," said the notice, dated Wednesday and posted on the Web site Thursday.

Fight arrivals and departures at Beijing Capital Airport will be restricted to 1,050 per day, or 58 per hour at peak times, by the end of October, and fall further to 1,000 per day, or a maximum of 55 at peak hours, by the end of March 2008, the notice said.

China's three biggest carriers, Air China, China Eastern and China Southern, will be required to cut a total of 336 daily flights, the notice said.

Spokesmen for the airlines confirmed plans to cut flights but said they had yet to be given official notice by the CAAC.

China Southern's Peng Jun said she understood the airline planned to cut 10 flights. Others declined to give details.

Beijing is already the world's ninth busiest airport by number of passengers handled, and is bracing for a jump in traffic around the time of the Olympic Summer Games one year from this month.

Frequent long delays have already prompted regulators to eliminate some chronically late flights. The airport, currently undergoing a $3.3 billion extension to be finished by year's end, handled 26 million passengers in the first half of the year, about 53 percent of the 48.7 million handled all of last year.

Other high-traffic airports will be required to take similar measures by March 2008, the CAAC said, without mentioning any specific airports or numbers of flights.

There was no mention of foreign airlines being affected.

The CAAC said new airlines would be permitted from 2010 on, but the threshold for entering the market would be raised significantly, the CAAC said.

The CAAC said it would "support and encourage" cargo carriers based in less densely populated western and northeastern China, those flying during less busy night hours, those using foreign crews and those flying domestically made aircraft.

It said growth in cargo capacity would be encouraged but said flying time, aircraft maintenance and other conditions would be closely regulated.

"In order to ensure safety and bring about the positive, rapid, healthy and orderly development of the industry, the CAAC has decided to carry out an overall adjustment in the number of flights, entry into the aviation industry, and rise in cargo capacity," the notice said.

BEIJING -- On the floor at Beijing's Capital Airport a sign reads: ''Careful Landslip Attention Security.''
On a billboard, this mysterious message: ''Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not.''

Beijing officials have promised to crack down on bad English in preparation for the 2008 Olympics and they've asked the public to help police bad grammar and faulty syntax.

With 500,000 foreigners expected for the Olympics, taxi drivers who can't speak English -- or signs that mangle the language -- could be an embarrassment and distract from the $40 billion being poured into rebuilding the city for the Games.

Liu Yang, who heads the ''Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program'' for the city government, said 6,500 ''standardized'' English-language signs were put up last year on Beijing roads.

Liu said a language hotline may be set up for the games to encourage the public to report nonsense English.

AP

BEIJING (AP) - Trial runs on a subway line that will serve the Beijing Summer Olympics start at the end of June, state media reported Sunday.

Construction of the No. 5 line, which cuts through the heart of the city, is finished with workers building the last station, Ding Shukui, deputy manager of the city's rail traffic company, was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

"Trial operations begin on June 30,'' Ding said.

The 27.6-kilometer (17.1-mile) north-south line runs through the eastern part of the downtown area. Construction began in late 2002 and cost 12 billion yuan (US$1.55 billion; euro1.14 billion), Xinhua said.

The subway cars will also be equipped with a wireless communication network so live broadcasts of the Olympics can be shown on televisions in each car.

Beijing has 95 kilometers (56 miles) of mass transit rail lines but by the Olympics, which start in August 2008, there will be nine lines totaling 200 kilometers (124 miles), Xinhua said, including the 28.1-kilometer (17.5-mile) airport extension from downtown to the new Beijing Capital International Airport which opens June 30 next year.-AP

 

The Associated Press

BEIJING: Countdown clocks scattered across Beijing reach 500 days on Monday, and nobody doubts the stadium, roads and other infrastructure will be ready for one of the most eagerly anticipated Olympics.

This summer, 26 test events will shape up the venues, part of a gargantuan US$40 billion (euro30 billion) building project to modernize China's capital — with low-slung alleyways and brightly painted, curved wooden roof beams giving way to hundreds of glass towers and cranes.

But it might be the human infrastructure that will come under the most intense scrutiny when 500,000 foreign visitors and 20,000 journalists arrive next summer.

With just over 16 months to go, the Beijing Organizing Committee largely has shunned foreign expertise, overlooking a bank of technical experts who have worked at other games.

"I think all the venues are coming along according to the plan, and the Olympic Village," said Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden, a vice president of the International Olympic Committee. "Perhaps they are lacking some staff, but hopefully they will in a couple of months have everything in place — I hope."

Unlike the 2004 Games in Athens, there'll be no last-minute painting, no frantic carpenters adding finishing touches. In fact, Beijing organizers were told a few years ago to slow their pace.

"For sure, Beijing is a lot further ahead than Athens was," Lindberg said.

Tu Mingde, the former leader of the Chinese Olympic Committee, acknowledged this month that the IOC wants local organizers to hire more foreign experts from previous games. It was an unusually frank admission from a man instrumental in the city's winning bid to host the games.

With a 9 percent growth rate for the past 25 years, China is an expert at building things. But the country has no experience with an event as complex as the Olympics and limited contact with a demanding international media that mostly speaks English.

Small items could blindside local organizers.

Signs of trouble already have appeared:

_ Last summer's junior world athletics championships in Beijing ran smoothly, but the stadium was devoid of concession stands. Chinese organizers didn't think to provide them. Chinese fans didn't expect them, but foreigners were surprised.

_ For one of the cycling venues, BOCOG has hired a relatively inexperienced photographer, in his mid-20s, who has worked for the English-language Shanghai Daily newspaper. He'll oversee a pack of the world's most seasoned photographers.

_ News releases for BOCOG's weekly press conferences are in Chinese only. Simultaneous translation to English is provided for interviews, but fluency is spotty.

English also was a problem at the recent Asian Winter Games in northeastern China, viewed as an organizational test.

One official publication described figure skating as "jump, going around and posing on the ice with skates." Snowboarding was "upspring with standing upside down and going round." Speedskating was "to skate on the lane of ice rink speedy."

Security also was lax at some venues. And mostly university-age volunteers crowded around Chinese winners, turning a medal ceremony into chaos.

"They know they are lacking the international experience and need to bring in expertise," said Lindberg, who was in Beijing this month.

She said some departments, including Olympic marketing, had been quick to hire foreign help. Others have been slower.

"Until now I have only Chinese staff on the venue teams," said Sun Weijia, BOCOG's director of media operations, which is in charge of services for the expected 20,000 media members. "I don't have any foreign staff, but I do have some advisers from overseas."

He said fewer than 100 non-Chinese would be needed, most coming two or three months before the Games.

"I think that it is quite normal for them (IOC) to have some concerns," Sun said. "But I think we are trying to respond to them very positively because we plan to hire some foreign expertise."

Behind the differing expectations lies a clash in agendas. Though the Olympics are an international stage, the communist government is aiming at a domestic audience of 1.3 billion, hoping to generate pride and boost popularity.

Susan E. Brownell, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and an expert on China sports, said the country wants to run its own Games, partly as a sign it has overthrown the Western colonialism and domination that plagued China 100 years ago.

"Letting Westerners organize their Olympic sports would have a bad resonance," she said. "The Olympic Games should be a stepping stone to an increasing Chinese presence in the Western-dominated institutions and cliques that underpin the world of international sports. If you give Westerners too much control, it just reinforces the Western-dominated status quo."

Tracey Holmes, a journalist who worked in Beijing for two years for CCTV, China's state broadcaster, offered a similar explanation.

"They don't want credit going outside the country when this is essentially what they consider to be their event," she said.

Holmes anchors a weekend sports program for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and worked for the Sydney organizing committee for the 2000 Olympics. She experienced China's centralized topdown management and suggested it might hurt.

"In the heat of the Olympic Games, all sorts of things happen — the politics, the behind the scenes shenanigans, positive drug tests. All the planning stuff you have on paper goes out the window. I guess the big question is whether people are ready for that."

Relaxed rules for reporters went into effect on Jan. 1, a move China hopes will generate positive coverage.

It's also likely to magnify festering problems.

Beijing's air pollution is among Asia's worst, and efforts to clean up might be outpaced by booming industrialization. Officials have shuttered several chemical and steel plants on the city's edge, and many polluters will shut down — or cut back — during the Games.

"The air is not good enough yet, Lindberg said. "And the traffic just now is terrible."

The city has 2.9 million registered vehicles, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by the Olympics, a 13 percent increase. This will be remedied temporarily by special Olympic lanes for dignitaries and government-ordered bans on driving.

The government's also trying to ban bad manners. Chinese officials want to soften the country's economically aggressive image, and a campaign to change behavīor, targeting spitting in public, is under way.

Officials have designated the 11th of each month "Queue-up Day," with Liu Qi, chairman of the Beijing Organizing Committee, leading the manners lessons at venues around the city.

There are even concerns about the torch relay. This summer's rehearsal could be problematic, with some environmentalists opposed to taking the torch to the top of Mt. Everest. It's also unclear whether the torch will go to Taiwan, which split from China in 1949 and has rejected reunification with the mainland.