During the era of Mao Zedong, Communist cadres would periodically launch campaigns against the “four pests” – referring to rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows.

With the Beijing Summer Olympics coming up in August, the state media occasionally refers to the four “new pests.” Click here for one article that does so. This time the pests refer to spitting, cutting in line, swearing and smoking.

"Promoting civilized behavior among Chinese travelers and residents is a long-term task. For the Games, we need to focus our resources on the main problems," says Zhang Huiguang, head of the Capital Ethics Development Office, referring to the four “new pests.”

I wonder how Ms. Zhang, who is Beijing’s official etiquette maven, feels she is doing in her campaign?

Like the campaigns against the pests of yore, the new one involves massive numbers of people. Beijing has issued 2.8 million pamphlets about daily etiquette to local households and offered polishing courses to all civil servants and 870,000 people working in the service sector, such as taxi drivers, waiters and bus conductors.