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CONTROLS * China - Beijing traffic curbs stifle trade, may ripple to U.S.
Beijing,China -McClatchy Newspapers/Kansas City Star (MO,USA), by TIM JOHNSON -Jul. 17, 2008: -- Road checkpoints erected this week around Beijing to boost security for the Olympic Games have put a chokehold on regional commerce and created ripples likely to reach as far as U.S. store shelves... Long lines of trucks formed at dozens of highway checkpoints around China's capital, leaving many drivers grumbling that they were unable to make deliveries... On Tuesday, police set up three concentric rings of checkpoints along all major roads leading into Beijing. At outer rings in surrounding Hebei province, officers with sniffer dogs and electronic scanners checked all vehicles, searching for hazardous materials and "dangerous" people allegedly seeking to disrupt the Olympic Games... The roadblocks created bottlenecks and traffic jams, some longer than a mile... All vehicles registered outside Beijing were thoroughly examined and allowed entry only with special documents... The first bottlenecks began July 1, when authorities barred heavy polluting trucks from entering Beijing, allowing only trucks with cleaner-burning engines... 
Jiao Shufeng, a driver, spoke near a checkpoint in Langfang, 25 miles southeast of the capital, where drivers lazed in the shade under their trucks, waiting to offload goods to other vehicles with special permits to circulate in Beijing... On Sunday, Beijing will order about half the city's 3.3 million vehicles off the road in a system that allows them to circulate on alternate days, depending on whether they have license plates ending in odd or even numbers, in a move to cut auto emissions... Bryan Scott Larkin, a marketing director at GXS, a Gaithersburg, Md., noted that security, transport and environmental measures affect parts of six nearby provinces, an area much larger than just greater Beijing... Many foreign companies that are dependent on Beijing-area factories for components were caught by surprise at the traffic clampdown, he said, and some don't want to admit that they face disruptions... China suffered transport mayhem from February snowstorms and a devastating May earthquake in Sichuan province, and Larkin said the latest disruptions could influence corporate managers to build new production plants away from China... (Photos by Tim Johnson/MCT - 1 ยท Supervisor Cong Peichao, right, and driver Jiao Shufeng take a rest July 16, 2008 after toiling to transfer cargo from one truck to another on the outskirts of Beijing. Only certain types of trucks are allowed to enter the city due to security and environmental reasons ahead of the Olympic Games - Photo 2 (below): Laborers prepare to transfer cargo July 16, 2008 near a checkpoint outside Beijing to a truck that is licensed to enter the city. Sharp restrictions have gone into effect around the Chinese capital)Labels: trucks' controls
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