Add locusts to China's list of calamities
First there was the freak snowstorm in February. Then the Tibetan riots in March. Then in rapid succession the controversial torch relay, Sichuan earthquake, widespread flooding and an algae bloom that's tarnishing the Olympic sailing venue. Just when it seemed that nothing else could go wrong this year in China, the locusts arrived.
Locusts? What is going on here? The litany of near-biblical woes would seem to lack only a famine, frogs and smiting of the first born.
The Middle Kingdom's parade of problems has threatened to put a major damper on China's anticipated moment of glory less than five weeks before the start of the 2008 Beijing Games.
"This sure has been a weird year," said Ma Zhijie, 20, who works in a coffee shop. "There are so many disasters, it's hard to know what's happening."
Authorities have been working overtime to tackle, contain and spin their way out of each new setback. But the volume of calamities this year would challenge any government, let alone one that has staked so much on pulling off the perfect Olympic Games.
This week, China sent out an all-points bulletin for exterminators. About 33,000 professional pest killers were quickly dispatched to Inner Mongolia in hope of preventing a cloud of locusts from descending on Beijing during the Games.
The vermin apparently hatched a month early because of warmer-than-usual weather and already have eaten their way through 3.2 million acres of grassland in three areas of the countryside. With the capital only a few hundred miles away and the Chinese leadership in no mood to take chances, about 200 tons of pesticide, 100,000 sprayers and four aircraft have been thrown into this battle against the bugs.
"To ensure a smooth Olympic Games and stable agricultural production, we have launched a full prevention plan to prevent and control further locust migration," Bao Xiang, head of the badly hit Xilingol League grassland work station, told the state-run New China News Agency.
Though China's response to some of the year's crises was sluggish, by the time the magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Sichuan province in May the government was able to mount a rapid and effective response.
"All the disasters this year have certainly given the government lots of practice at crisis management," said Peng Zongchao, a public policy professor at Beijing's Qinghua University. "Some have been natural, some man-made, some related to health, some to social security."
