China Is Choking on Its Success
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Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Walking through Beijing’s TiananmenSquare last week, a German family of five surrounded me, allwearing large face masks and sunglasses. They weren’t robbingme, just asking me to take their photo. When I yelled thecustomary “Say ‘cheese,’” the dad joked: “We are smilingunder here.”
Only China’s pollution bubble is no laughing matter, andtourists tell the story. Thanks to extreme air pollution,foreign arrivals plunged by roughly 50 percent in the firstthree-quarters of the year. Beijing could see even fewervisitors to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and the famoussquare dominated by a painting of Mao Zedong thanks to images ofacrid smog that have been beaming around the globe.