Doug McIntyre:

FILTHY air, calcified traffic, run-amok developers, the Dodgers versus the Padres. Sounds like a typical Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, but this isn’t SoCal, it’s NorChi; Beijing, to be precise - a fascinating and somewhat frightening megalopolis of 16million-plus.

I hitchhiked to China with the San Diego Padres and sponged off the Dodgers, all part of Major League Baseball’s China Series, the first ever big league games to be played in the People’s Republic. As a “Bong Chi” fan and as the host of the morning show on the Dodgers’ flagship station, I was curious to see how America’s game would be received in a country that has received so many American jobs and nearly countless billions in U.S. trade.

What I discovered instead was a capital city so overwhelming in scale it makes Los Angeles seem like a village.

The vastness of Beijing cannot be overstated. The dominant feature of the skyline is a chorus line of cranes lifting I-beams to the umpteenth floor of the umpteenth office tower springing up out of the dust-choked streets below.

If you thought the Grand Avenue project was grand, wait till you get a peek at Peking, sorry, Beijing. With only a little hyperbole, Beijing is jumping out of the soil like weeds after a spring rain. There are so many loose billions floating around Beijing, you have to wonder if we don’t have more communists in L.A. In Santa Monica it’s a no-brainer.

he enormity of the investment in China’s capital takes your breath away. And speaking of breath, the air comes in regular and super-chunk. Take the worst acrid smoke of the brush fires and lay that across the entire city of L.A. every single day, and you’ll have some idea of what it’s like in modern Beijing. The Chinese government is aware of the problem but considers pollution “growing pains.”

How the people feel about it in the “People’s Republic” is of little concern. And that leads to the other dominant feature of Beijing: The uniform presence of uniforms.

Police and soldiers stand watch on every corner, every public gathering spot. Soldiers prevented the Dodgers’ team bus from entering the stadium. Soldiers prevented Chan Ho Park from signing autographs. Soldiers prevent any sign of public protest in Tiananmen Square. At times there were so many soldiers it appeared their only job was to watch each other.

Our oldest boy is a soldier, and we couldn’t be prouder of him. But when soldiers become the dominant feature of the street, you quickly see them as oppressors rather than protectors. In L.A. we’re trying to figure out how to hire 1,000 new cops. In Beijing, they seem to have 1,000 cops per square mile.

There is such a thing as being too safe.