Preparing for ‘APEC War’ in China
What price a successful international meeting? Smoggy skies, upended work routines, an abruptly weaned baby — everything, it seems, is worth it, as a bevy of government orders kicks in to prepare the Chinese capital for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting beginning on Wednesday. “Prepare for theAPEC war,” said an item on the website of the Committee of China Energy Conservation Association.
Many of the measures have been aimed at cleaning the city’s polluted skies. On Monday, to cut traffic and emissions, special regulations took effect ordering cars with license plates ending in odd or even numbers off the roads on alternate days. That is affecting the ability of people to get around and of some trucks to make food and other deliveries, including of milk supplies to homes, according to multiple news media and anecdotal reports.
Government offices and schools have been ordered to take an “APEC holiday” during the meeting to reduce traffic for the convenience of dignitaries, a process known to every taxi driver here as “traffic control.” But nothing comes free. Officials and students have had to compensate for the holiday by agreeing to show up at their desks for parts of two consecutive weekends, the last one and the next.
That means that families with one state employee and another in the private sector, or one child in a state school and another in a private school, are off at different times, leading to logistical challenges and, even, arguments. Sensing a possible break from their toil, many of the lowly paid “ayis,” or helpers, who clean the homes and mind the children of the wealthy have asked for the days off, only to be rebuffed by outraged employers.
Then there was Qu Nan, a waitress at the APEC venue, who had to wean her baby early in order to go into the required work lockdown for several days before the meeting, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
“I really treasured the opportunity to work for the V.I.P.s,” Ms. Qu told Xinhua. “But my child was less than 1 year old and not yet weaned.”
“Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t handle weaning my baby. On the evenings before, whenever I thought about it, I’d cry and say I couldn’t bear to be parted from my baby. My husband comforted me and said, ‘Never mind.’ He really got it. I guess there are some personal problems that you just have to deal with yourself,” she said philosophically.
Perhaps most striking were state plans to “disappear” Beijing’s pollution by ordering factories to shut down. What that meant in practice was that they ramped up production beforehand in order not to damage targets and slow growth, in a process known in state media reports as “adjusting production.” That, in turn, may have worsened pollution in October — which was indeed high.
“Hazardous” or “severely polluted” air became the norm in a season that is more often associated with the best weather of the year, when “the sky is high and the air is crisp.” Through most of October, smoggy skies hung low over Beijing, causing people to jam antipollution masks on their faces, runners to drop out of the city’s international marathon, and everyone from shop assistants to socialites to complain.
“Iron and steel factories received the government’s message to shut off production during APEC long ago, so they changed production schedules accordingly,” said Xu Zhongbo, the head of Beijing Metallurgical Consulting, in a telephone interview. That meant October was heavily polluted, but November may be better.
Equipment normally shut down for maintenance was kept running, said Mr. Xu, making it easy to ramp up production.
“Normally, due to limited capacity of equipment, around 80 percent of equipment is used to produce, and the rest, about 20 percent, undergoes cleaning and maintenance checks,” he said. “But with factories prohibited from producing during APEC, they used 100 percent of equipment for production before November began.”
One of the most polluting processes in iron and steel factories is sintering, part of the smelting process. “Sintering is the most polluting procedure, so the haze was really severe in those days,” he said.
Usually carried out after equipment is cleaned and checked, that stage was skipped in order to increase output, he explained. The result was devastating pollution that had many people coughing and reaching for their masks. But to the state, it apparently was all worth it.
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