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The U.S. is considering basing its athletes in South Korea during the Beijing Olympics, Bloomberg news agency reported on Sunday. According to the report, the U.S. is mulling a plan to locate its athletes in South Korea during the Olympic Games in order not to expose them to Beijing's "serious" air pollution problems. The plan would have the athletes fly to Beijing only to participate in their events.
Last April, officials from the U.S. Olympic Committee visited the city of Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province and said it would be a good place to base the U.S. soccer team and track athletes for training.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has called attention to China's serious pollution problems. IOC President Jacques Rogge even suggested that concerns about air pollution in Beijing could lead to some Olympic endurance events, such as the marathon, being postponed, according to Bloomberg.
"The Chinese government has to do something significant ahead of the Beijing Olympics," Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. "We have to give consideration for China shutting down production before the Games."
China's government meanwhile is busy trying to tackle the pollution problem. Beijing announced it would spend US$175 million on pollution management and control projects and it will be spending $13 billion on cleaning up the city's air by the opening day of the games, scheduled for Aug. 8 next year. The government has also demanded that large state-run businesses meet energy-saving standards and reduce their emissions.
"The economic costs of China's pollution are escalating," Jing Ulrich, chairman of China equities at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in the Bloomberg report. "To effectively tackle these issues, China must change its macroeconomic structure. Instead of relying on heavy industry, the government should promote the service sector and private consumption."
According to research by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, China, the worldĄŻs second largest energy consumer, last year became the world's biggest source of carbon dioxide gas, beating out the U.S.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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