Inner Workings of the World's Megacities

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Those lines will remain after the Olympics, but the big question is whether Beijing's environmental drive will too. "I don't want to say the city can't turn itself around. It can. But it takes more than good intentions and impressive targets. It takes real commitments," says Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future. While the Olympics did touch off a new effort, the Games didn't change the fundamental weakness of China's environmental management. The central government's power to enforce green initiatives wanes in the provinces, which often pursue development over environmental protection. The biggest risk, says Zhang, is not that Beijing won't stay clean but that the rest of the country could remain stuck in an ecological tar pit. "My concern is that Beijing will be something of a showcase," he says. "Improvements in Beijing don't necessarily mean improvements in the rest of China." After all, you can kick all the polluters off Chemical Industry Road, but that doesn't stop them from going somewhere else.