Heads Up: China’s Fear of Summer

Austin Ramzy has a new story on Time.com about the increasingly bizarre atmosphere in Beijing as the Games draw near. Bottom line: jogging and pillow fights verbotten! meanwhile, Ishaan Tharoor, a Time reporter in Hong Kong, has a related story about the range of restrictions being imposed on foreigners trying to get visas to come into China. This has been going on for a while, but for some reason, habit perhaps, officials had until a few days ago flatly denied there had been any change in policy. Now the Foreign ministry has admitted there’s a new policy but I haven’t seen any explanation of the rationale behind the change, which is causing a huge headache for businessmen, students and other folk. Just pre-Games jitters, I guess. Question is, what’s it going to be like in Beijing by the time August rolls around?