Beijing is blossomed with Christmas-related paraphernalia in stores and along streets, lightening up the city a bit.And we had the year's first snowfall, a light dusting. But the coal-burning heaters which keep many Beijingers warm still manage to shroud the place in haze when there's no wind to dissipate the pollution. Those noxious, old-fashioned coal-bricks are being replaced by natural gas as a source of fuel, but not quickly enough to help dispel pollution worries during the 2008 Summer Games.

But, hey, in the name of holiday cheer, how about taking seriously the government's promises to create a "Green Olympics" -- or at least give it a good try, thus improving the city's environment in the process?

At least that's how Nicholas Parker, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Cleantech Group, would have it. Last week Beijing-based Cleantech held a forum in Beijing to encourage networking among "investors, innovators and influencers" in the world of environmentally-friendly technologies. They're certainly focused on the bright side of the future. Clean technologies are attracting 10 percent of total venture capital (VC) in China, third only to information technology and communications.

If the current trajectory holds true, cleantech's share of VC funds will only grow — to as much as 40 percent within the next investment cycle, reportedly. Within the first three quarters of 2007, eastern China landed a spot among the world's top-10 regions in terms of cleantech investment. It is the only region to do so in the developing world—and next to Western Europe, the only one outside the U.S.

China's expected to overtake the U.S. as the leading global emitter of greenhouse gases by the time the Olympics take place -- a decade sooner than expected. And many 2007 goals for cleaning up pollution and promoting sustainable development  have not been met.

Still, worries about a pollution-shrouded Olympics have penetrated official consciousness, and we'll no doubt see an increasingly ambitious raft of clean-up of measures -- such as reducing industrial production in neighboring areas -- in advance of the Games. The country's 11^th Five-Year-Plan outlines comprehensive measures which gear the country toward sustainable development, alternative energy (as opposed to fossil fuels) and cleaner technologies. The impact of those policies won't be felt before the Olympics take place. But as part of its legacy, the Games may leave a greener city than Beijing might otherwise have turned out to be.That's not a bad gift, Christmas or otherwise.

What do the Beijing Games have to do with this week’s diplomatic hissy-fit between Chinese and European Union senior officials over product safety? Following months of export scandals and Western recalls of flawed Chinese goods, the Beijing Olympics media center laid on a Nov. 12 press visit to a string of chicken-processing, pig-butchering and product-inspection facilities to emphasize the city’s commitment to food safety.

Among other things we saw neat assembly lines of pig carcasses being sawed, sliced and cut into bits. While graphic, the scenes bore little resemblance to how we imagine most meat gets processed in China, evoking the Chicago abattoirs of Upton Sinclair’s time. Chinese factory officials bent over backwards to assure us their high standards guaranteed food safety for ALL Beijing citizens, not just visiting Olympians. That was to deflate rumors that secret pig-raising centers had been established to guaranteed hormone-free “pampered” pork for Olympic athletes – gossip which blogger Andrew Lih dubbed “the Olympic pig conspiracy.”

The timing of that media event seemed quite the coincidence when, this past week, Beijing opened a big international food-safety conference. That’s when the high-level catfight erupted. First EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson tore into Chinese authorities for their record of unsafe exports and “tidal wave” of counterfeits. “During the summer some Chinese officials pointed out that less than 1 percent of China’s exports to Europe had alleged health risks,” he declared, “But Europe imports half a billion euros worth of goods from China daily, so even 1 percent is not acceptable.”

Mandelson’s rant was “unfair” and “inappropriate for today’s occasion”, maintained Wei Chuanzhong, deputy director of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (one of the organizations that featured during our little press trip, by the way). Chinese vice premier Wu Yi-- Beijing’s top trade official, nicknamed the “Iron Lady” -- was even more miffed. She declared herself “extremely unhappy” with Mandelson’s remarks and defended China’s efforts to improve quality control and crack down on pirated goods.

Later that same day, Mandelson riposted that Wu should not have taken exception to his statement that four-fifths of the counterfeit items pouring over Europe’s borders originate in China. “We must seek truth from facts,” he said, citing a phrase identified with Beijing’s late strongman Deng Xiaoping.

What exactly are the facts surrounding China’s food-safety record, and why are Western officials so concerned? Here’s an interview my colleague Han Songmei conducted with Dr Roger Skinner, who’s investigated China’s food safety system as a consultant for the World Health Organization. The London-based specialist is lead author of a report on suggested reforms that was sponsored by China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), the World Health Organization and the Asian Development Bank. Skinner was remarkably candid; check out these excerpts: