Enter the dragon
Tang Yuankai

IMAGINE (all five) Heathrow terminals under one roof and then add an extra 17 percent of floor space,” said Briton Norman Foster. The famous architect was talking about the third terminal (T3) of Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) designed by him.
As one of the most important projects for the Beijing Olympics, T3, which cost 27 billion yuan ($3.8 billion), was put into use on February 29. The building covers 98 hectares of floor space, equivalent to about 170 football pitches. It runs almost 3 km from south to north. The parking tower alone, which occupies 340,000 square meters, is triple the size of the National Stadium.
“It has taken Heathrow 50 years to grow to its present scale. In Beijing, the process should be completed in less than five. Here is society changing by the power of 10,” said Foster. The opening of T3 makes BCIA the only airport in China that has three terminals, double towers and three airport runways. The number of the boarding gates in T3 is double the total number of Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. “The take-off and landing capacity has been upgraded from 1,000 flights per day to between 1,700 and 1,800 flights per day, including large aircraft of the new generation, such as the A380 of Airbus,” said Zhang Guobao, Vice Minister of the National Development and Reform Commission.
Passengers can easily lose direction in large airports, but this is less likely in T3. “Because all the steel pipes on the roof are designed in a north-south direction, as long as passengers raise their heads, they will easily be able to tell their direction by the pipes,” said Fan Jun from the Beijing Urban Construction Group.
Unavoidably, T3 has also raised some doubts and arguments over its huge cost and size. Zhu Jingyuan, Designer in Chief of BCIA Expansion Project Department, has her own opinion on this issue. In China, one third of flights will take off and land at BCIA, and more than a quarter of the passengers will come and go through BCIA. “The airport is a barometer of economic growth. If we don’t build a large enough airport, it will not be able to meet demands in near future, and the extension and reconstruction of the airport will cost even more,” said Zhu.
The first terminal of BCIA was built on March 1, 1958. At that time, it occupied more than 10,000 square meters, and could handle 230 passengers per hour at its busiest hours. In 1991, the number of passengers coming and going reached 8.7 million. The single terminal was unable to deal with this number so Terminal 2 was designed and put into use in November 1999. After just three years, it was unable again to meet the demands of rising passenger numbers.
According to estimations by the civil aviation authorities of China, the annual number of passengers coming and going through BCIA will reach 60 million in 2015 and the volume of freight handled will reach 1.8 million tons. “During the Olympic Games in August, the volume of passengers will reach 5.56 million. The figure is very close to the estimated flow in busiest months in 2015, and the new terminal can totally meet the demand,” said Li Jiaxiang, Director of China Civil Aviation Administration.
The increased capacity will consolidate the status of BCIA as the world’s eighth biggest airport, and it is expected to become one of the five biggest airports in the world.
Dragon-like
From the sky, the shape of T3 is like a dragon lying in the northeast of Beijing.
Dragon is the totem of China, a symbol of strength and good fortune. The whole terminal can be divided into five parts.
The “dragon head” is the traffic center and parking tower, which has 7,000 parking lots.
The “dragon body” refers to three functional areas: C, D, E. Area C houses passenger check-in, luggage claim and domestic boarding. D area is reserved temporally for flights during the Olympics and Paralympics. Area E is the international airport lounge.
There are no obstacles blocking vision between the functional areas and the external walls are all transparent glass. Stepping into the check-in hall, passengers will feel like they are standing under the sky with changing clouds overhead.
The terminal is designed so that passengers will not feel tired even after walking a long distance, because they walk downward all the way, and in the opposite direction can be carried by escalators or battery-driven cars.
Apart from 450 escalators, elevators, automatic trails and battery-driven cars, a kind of small train-automatic people mover has been introduced in T3 that passengers can use free of charge.
There are several hundred triangle-shaped skylights open in the roof to collect natural sunlight. They look like the scales of a dragon. The designers have given full consideration to the climate of Beijing: cold winter, hot summer, with a short spring and autumn. The skylights open toward the southeast allowing sunlight in the winter to flow into the terminal and be absorbed to the largest degree, while in summer they can keep the building cooler as well as providing natural sunlight.
Compared with other domestic terminals that mostly look heavy and thick, the roof of T3 looks simple. The pipe-shaped steel structure props up a “clear sky” that is 30 meters high. There are no complicated pipes, such as the air supply channels of air conditioners, or telecommunications equipment, which is hidden in the ceilings in the other terminals. Zhu revealed the position of the pipes pointing to square-shaped boxes. “The pipes are in these boxes, the pillars supporting the roof are empty inside for holding the pipes,” he said.
The traffic web that extends to all directions is like the dragon’s whiskers. The subsidiary traffic project of the T3 construction includes three highways and a subway.
Apart from driving cars, or taking taxis and buses, there will be a new subway line built connecting the airport to the city. The subway from Dongzhimen to the airport will be put into use in July. From Dongzhimen to the airport will take around 10 minutes.
There is an underground maze in the new terminal: the largest and fastest luggage handling system of the world, which cost 2 billion yuan ($281 million) to create. Its top speed is 12 meters per second, even faster than Liu Xiang, China’s champion in the 110-meter hurdle race at the last Olympics. It can deal with almost 20,000 pieces of luggage every hour. The length of its channel is nearly 70 km.
It is ‘very China’
“At first sight of the terminal, you can tell it is China,” said Norman Foster.
T3 is dotted with traditional Chinese elements and symbols that represent good luck for the Chinese people. All these are connected with modern technology. For example, the color of the steel structure on the roof changes gradually from bright red to golden yellow. The red color represents enthusiasm and happiness, and the color of golden yellow is the main color of the Forbidden City, representing dignity and wealth. “My inspiration comes from China’s ship building and color planning,” revealed Foster.
The bold usage of bright colors makes T3 different from other airports. It says in a more enthusiastic way to people: welcome to Beijing.
There are 10 cultural scenic spots designed in T3, the inspiration for which comes from traditional Chinese construction and ancient gardens. The spots provide some quiet places for passengers to take a rest and make it much easier for people to identify a meeting place. There are also hundreds of groceries and restaurants in the new terminal.
T3 makes use of an environmental control system to decrease energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
In the busy hours of the day, T3 will operate a light sensor control system. When natural light is sufficient, the terminal’s lights will shut off automatically. At night, when there are not many passengers, the lights will operate by mobile sensors. In this way, T3 is expected to save around 1.6 million kw of power every year.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review  Articles Exchange Item)

Musharraf has one or two cards up his sleeve
Sir Cyril Townsend

FOLLOWING the general election in Pakistan on Feb. 18, it does seem that this troubled country of 162 million people has been making some progress. The intriguing question now is what is the future of President Pervez Musharraf?
Compared to Russia’s recent rigged and false elections, those in this suspended member of the Commonwealth (since 1999) were credible, strengthened democracy and pointed in the direction of change. There had been speculation that their results would lead to further unrest and protest, but this has not yet happened.
The political standing of President Musharraf has plunged. He has made many errors and enemies since he led a successful military coup against the corrupt civilian government in 1999, and his opponents will tell you he is finished. I have yet to be convinced and he has one or two cards up his sleeve. It is not going to be easy to remove a recently elected president, who for the moment has real power, whose political foes have little in common, and abroad both the United States and the United Kingdom need his support in the battle against Al-Qaeda. President Musharraf appeared to think his party, the former ruling party called the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), was going to do well in the election. It crashed. It won only 42 seats in the 342-strong National Assembly and 19 of the party’s former ministers were kicked out.
In one of the most contentious elections since the birth of the state in 1947, the Pakistan People’s Party took 88 seats making it the largest party. It will be remembered Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister was its leader and she returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18. A highly significant and influential personality in the politics of her country, she was assassinated by persons unknown, on Dec. 27. Asif Ali Zardari, her widower, is under her surprise will a co-chairman of the party with her 19-year-old son Bilawal Zardari, who has returned to Oxford University to complete his studies.
Asif Ali Zardari, who is not an MP, is a highly controversial figure, and the Bhutto family has its power base in Sind province. When his wife was prime minister, Asif Ali Zardari had the reputation for creaming off 10 percent of government contracts. While the Pakistan People’s Party clearly gained a sympathy vote it was not a massive one. I suspect the party will find it hard to maintain a high level of support as the memory of Benazir Bhutto begins to fade.
The party that came second was the Pakistan Muslim League (N) that is strong in Punjab. It won 66 seats. It is led by Nawaz Sharif, another twice elected prime minister like Benazir Bhutto. He was removed by Gen. Musharraf in 1999. He flew from London to Pakistan on Sept. 10, was presented with new charges of corruption, and flown on to Saudi Arabia. On March 9, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) reached a power-sharing deal and talks continue on the formation of an anti-President Musharraf government. Asif Ali Zardari told the crowd:
“We feel that the country is on the verge of making history. This was also the desire of Benazir Bhutto and we also intend to stick to the road to democracy; we are aware of the problems that the country is facing.”
In November, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhury, and some 60 other judges serving in the higher courts, were removed by President Musharraf, who considered they were unlikely to endorse his controversial re-election as president for another five years. The two major parties who are working together have promised to restore them all within 30 days of the new Parliament’s opening. The chief justice remains for the moment under house arrest. The restoration of the chief justice and the other 60 judges is opposed by President Musharraf and there would be a major confrontation between the new government and the president. President Musharraf has accepted the result of the general election. He has asked recently for his opponents to put politics aside - hardly a possibility in such extraordinary circumstances - and concentrate on forming a “stable government and peace in society”. He has claimed he will become a “father figure”. The National Assembly needs a two-third majority to strip him of his powers. The Senate is still in the hands of the former ruling party.
The roller coaster of Pakistani politics continues. Meanwhile, beyond Islamabad the country’s myriad problems require urgent and concentrated attention - particularly those of extremism and terrorism.

—Arab News





The long onion road
M J Akbar

A short cut is often the longest road in politics. As the time to the next general election shortens to months from years, both the Congress and the BJP are searching for a short cut to power.
The temptation is understandable. Politics is a difficult journey, rife with roadblocks and accidents. But who will persuade politicians that voters live on the long road, not the short cut?
There is something very irresistible about a short cut, with its promise of speed and good luck. The massive loan waiver in Finance Minister P. Chidamabaram’s end-of-February Budget is such a classic short cut that the only reaction from ruling coalition MPs has been a demand for more handouts. They want waivers on everything: You merely attach “poor” to a bank loan and sanctify a political purchase. Debit is being converted into political credit. When you have run out of good sense, you throw money and hope for the best.
The opposite of a bad debt is a good debt. If you could make a nation rich by handing out cash to the poor, every nation in the world would be wealthy. It costs very little to print cash, as the Germans of the Weimar Republic discovered when they found that it was cheaper to burn currency notes for heating rather than buy fuel with it. Eventually the Germans burned their respectable inflationary government and brought Hitler to power. There are many factors that are pushing up today’s Indian inflation, but the sudden injection of nonproductive cash into the system will certainly not bring inflation down.
You don’t have to win the Nobel prize in economics to realize that an economy is lifted by an investment of good debt. How does that concept translate into policy in the case of a starved rural economy? You have to invest in a ruined farm, not in a ruined bank account; the future earnings of a revived farm should pay off the debt, which can be amortized over a longer period. It took no more than a day for the synchronized post-budget applause to muffle. Economists and analysts punched holes in it. Congress used an old tactic to cover up mistakes in the hurriedly packaged offer, by packing remedies into Rahul Gandhi’s speech on the budget, which he read from a prepared text. He may not have fully understood the details, since economics is not his strong subject, but his staff did a good collage of newspaper clippings.
Why is there a convention in Parliament that you do not give your speeches from a prepared text? Parliament is not a test of memory. Parliament is not a classroom where the student with the highest rote-quotient wins the most coveted prize. An MP is permitted use of notes, and the best orators refer to them during a debate. Most debates are on complex matters of governance; much of the detail can be infuriating in its obscurity. But that is what governance and Parliament are about.
The reason why you do not read from a prepared text is because you are meant to have a grasp of your subject. You place your own views in front of the House, not a speechwriter’s; that is the difference between a speech that is delivered and one that is read out from a prepared text. For the Congress, the budget is less important than the continuous reconstruction of Rahul Gandhi as a future prime minister. He has the privilege of dynasty, and is above conventions. One can understand a touch of nervousness in a first speech by a new MP, but after four years in the House you have to live by its rules. A further privilege is that the dynast is placed in charge of all the good news. The bad news is left for minions to handle.—Arab News