Beijing to hold next year’s APEC summit
The 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit will be held in Beijing. It is viewed as a good opportunity to expedite urban development and pollution control, said a press officer of the Beijing municipal government.
Zhao Huimin, director general of the Foreign Affairs Office of Beijing’s municipal government, announced that the 2014 APEC summit will be held at Yanqi Lake, a scenic site in Beijing’s northwestern suburbs at a Tuesday press briefing in Bali, Indonesia.
Yanqi Lake was selected to let leaders of the APEC member economies enjoy the beautiful views of Beijing’s outskirts, Zhao said, adding that compared with the time when Beijing held the 29th Olympic Games in 2008, the city has become more experienced to curb air pollution.
“Construction work at the site will follow environmentally-friendly principles. The venues will be using 100 percent clean energy, with all sewage and household waste processed, making the site an outstanding example of green and energy saving architecture,” Zhao was quoted by the Beijing Youth Daily as saying.
The public expressed their welcome to the summit. However, severe air pollution which haunted the capital during the seven-day National Day holiday and reoccurred recently became the biggest challenge the city is facing.
“Compared with 2008, Beijing is facing greater pressure due to an increasing number of vehicles and more chemical facilities have been seen around Beijing in the past five years,” Wang Tao, a scholar at Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, told the Global Times.
“Air pollution is hard to curb within one year unless the government shuts down those chemical plants and takes more tightened restrictions to vehicle usage,” Wang noted.
Beijing had launched an ambitious and strict clean air plan, aiming to reduce polluting particulate matter by 25 percent from 2012 by 2017.
The project was designed to be an international conference and exhibition center which takes up 31 square kilometers, with a total investment of 36 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) and is capable of housing up to 20,000 people.
“The construction of the site started several months ago. Many engineering companies have participated in the project, with some of the buildings being close to finished now,” a communication officer, surnamed Guo, with a construction company responsible for three buildings of the project, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Zhao also presented the logo of the 2014 APEC summit, which represents the Chinese government’s wish of cooperation with the other member economies by outlining a pattern of the earth with 21 horizontal, colorful lines, each representing a member economy.
The design also shares a similarity with Tiantan, or the Temple of Heaven, one of the most popular historical sites in Beijing.