Hosting the Olympic Games means doing a lot more than building a few stadiums and subway lines, as Beijing has found out.
Keen to present its best face to the world during the prestigious sporting event, the city is racing against time to improve the behavior of local residents.
Citywide campaigns are under way to curb Beijing residents' bad habits such as queue-jumping, littering, using foul language and spitting in public.
"Hosting the Olympics is not only about building grand stadiums," said Zheng Mojie, deputy director of Beijing's Capital Ethics Development Office, the official etiquette watchdog.
"As tens of thousands of foreign visitors are expected to flood into China next summer, both China's positive and negative sides will be amplified. So we must change those bad local habits," she added.
Millions of brochures were sent out to individuals to introduce a new code of conduct, while polishing courses are being offered to all civil servants and the people working in the service sector, such as cab drivers, shopping assistants, waiters and waitresses, and bus conductors.
The 11th of each month has been instituted as "Queuing Day", because the date symbolizes an orderly line, when residents are told to stand in line to catch public transportation. In addition, people caught spitting in public face fines of up to 50 yuan (6.60U.S. dollars) and rude manners when watching sports competitions may incur a detention.
"We are happy that much progress is being made and our work has begun to pay off," Zheng told Xinhua.
A survey released by the Renmin University of China found that in 2006, 4.95 percent of people still spat, down by 3.5 percentage points from 2005.
From November 2005 to November 2006, the poll covered 10,000 local residents and 1,000 foreigners who had lived in Beijing for more than two years. The survey team also gathered observations from 230,000 people at 320 public venues and 180,000 automobiles.
The survey revealed that the occurrence of littering in public had dropped from 9.1 percent in 2005 to 5.3 percent in 2006 and queue-jumping dropped from 9 percent to 6 percent.
The "civic index" of Beijing residents scored 69.06 in 2006, 3.85 points higher than 2005. The index takes into account public compliance with rules in public health and public order, attitudes towards strangers, etiquette in watching sports events and willingness to contribute to the Olympic Games.
"We expect the index to further rise for this year when the 2007 report is released," Zheng said.
However, the "civic index" still fails to meet the standard required for the 2008 Olympics, according to Sha Lianxiang, a professor at the Department of Sociology, Renmin University.
Zheng admitted that it's an arduous mission to raise the level of civility of the whole society.
"There's a saying that it takes three generations' time to bring up a noble, so I cannot guarantee that impolite behavior will not be spotted in the city when the Olympics take place next August," she said.
"Our goal is to rebuild the majority people to be civilized."
(Xinhua News Agency December 20, 2007)
