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Young World
How polite!
Photo: AP
Watching etiquette: The National Stadium in Beijing.
Less spitting, better queuing and cleaner streets show that Beijing has become more “civilized”. But there’s still a long way to go with its etiquette if it is to attain Olympic standards, said the Xinhua news agency, citing a new study. China wants to leave nothing to chance when the eyes of the world turn its way for the Olympics in August and the Beijing government has waged a long campaign to hone manners. Renmin University created
an annual “civic index” three years ago to gauge progress, surveying thousands of residents and sending out teams of observers, Xinhua said. The 2007 results all pointed in the right direction: 2.5 percent of people spat in public, down from 4.9 percent in 2006; instances of queue jumping dropped to 1.5 percent from 6 percent; and littering fell to 2.9 percent from 5.3 percent. In the drive to reform behavior, Beijing has instituted the 11th of every month as “voluntarily wait in line” day, distributed millions of etiquette pamphlets and threatened to detain boorish fans at sporting events. Beijing’s aggregate score in the civic index was 73.4 last year, still below the Olympics target of 80 points, Sha Lianxian, a sociology professor at Renmin’s University, told Xinhua.
COMPLIED BY NIMI KURIAN
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