China's Olympics

Contemporary Review, March, 2002 by Michael Collins

On 9 September, 2000, President Zhang Jemin wrote to Juan Antonio Samaranch: 'my colleagues and I fully support Beijing's Olympic bid'. China plans to create over the next seven years a venue which will exceed the world's highest expectations and have the potential to give the best Games ever. Mayor Liu Qi has promised world class transport, leading-edge technology and a beautiful clean environment. Given the constraints on capital, human resources, organizational capacity, infrastructure and learning ability which are to be expected in a still developing economy, that will be a stupendous achievement, especially in the light of the tremendous success of the Sydney Olympics.

As far back as 1990 Beijing successfully hosted its first comprehensive international sports event, the 11th Asian Games, and was narrowly unsuccessful in its bid for the 2000 Olympics in 1993. On 20 February, 2001, IOC technical representatives made a five-day inspection visit as the basis for a final report to the IOC. They professed themselves highly satisfied and much impressed both with the city's plans and resources and with the progress already made. Their report, published the following month, declared Beijing fully qualified to host the Games and added the highly significant comment that Beijing's bid offered 'unique advantages'. In autumn 2001 the city delighted Olympic officials, including the new IOC President Jacques Rogge, with the universally high standards achieved in its hosting of the Universiade (World Student Games). There remains, of course, a long agenda of work to be addressed and much still to be learnt. But as Mayor Liu Qi has put it: 'we regard the bid also as a learning process'. Th e Beijing Olympic Bid Committee (BOBICO) is fully cooperating with the IOC's knowledge transfer arrangements, through which lessons learnt from the previous Games are transmitted from the last host city to its successor. Based on economic growth that averaged 10.8 per cent in the 10 years to 2000 and is predicted to remain between 7 and 8 per cent for the next few years, Beijing has been able to meet the IOC's financial resources requirements comfortably, especially since the Government of China has made clear its willingness to underwrite the event. Indeed the Olympic bid can be seen as a pacemaker spurring the city's development along a track which has already been marked Out. Beijing is making rapid strides towards its development goals for environmental protection, transportation, telecommunications and tourism, as well as state-of-the-art sports facilities which will match the best ever used at the Olympics.