China came of age as an Olympic power when it hosted the spectacular Beijing 2008, a display of the unlimited resources and political will some say are essential to its bid for the 2022 Winter Games.
The capital emerged as the frontrunner for 2022 — which would make it the first city ever to host both summer and winter Olympics — after a string of European cities withdrew last year citing public concerns over costs, leaving it facing off against only the Kazakh city of Almaty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government spent more than US$51 billion on the last Winter Games in Sochi, and while democratic South Korea will host the next, there are human rights concerns over both candidates for 2022.
“The dictatorship is now the only direction to go,” said Hong Kong University history professor Xu Guoqi, author of Olympic Dreams: China and Sports 1895-2008. “This is because the cost has been a concern for many, many hosts in the past, so now European countries don’t want to invest — except Russia.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) decides between them tomorrow, after Oslo, Stockholm, Krakow in Poland and Lviv in Ukraine all backed out because of budget worries.
Before Oslo withdrew in October, Norwegian politicians said it was “critical” that democratic countries who “respect human rights” should want to stage the Olympics.
However, the Norwegian government balked at the expected US$5.5 billion cost.
China has no such concerns, said Susan Brownell, a visiting professor at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Sinology.
Brownell said some of China’s Olympic costs would come from its national sports lottery, which distributed US$7.24 billion last year — almost twice as much as Beijing’s entire 2022 budget of US$3.9 billion.
The bid team says it is keeping the budget down by using 11 venues from 2008 — a Games which was estimated to have cost more than US$40 billion — including the Bird’s Nest Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies, and the Water Cube aquatics center for curling.
Ice sports would take place in central Beijing, alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge would be held in Yanqing in the capital’s suburbs, and Zhangjiakou, about 200km away, would host the rest.
The plan makes the bid one of the most geographically spread-out proposals for a Winter Games, making transport links crucial — and some believe its real costs are far higher, as the budget for the event does not incorporate many infrastructure improvements.
Chief among them is a high-speed rail line already under construction between Beijing and Zhangjiakou, at an estimated cost of US$5 billion.
Xu said the bid was intended to promote the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy.
“From a government perspective, they still need to legitimize their political base,” he said. “So they need to hold a big event to make Chinese people feel good.”
The 2008 Games were an unmistakable statement of Beijing’s role on the global stage, but Brownell said the motives for the 2022 bid were more probably rooted in inter-regional rivalry.
Chinese state media announced China’s bid in early November 2013, just two months after Tokyo won the right to host its second Summer Olympics in 2020. They will follow the 2018 winter event in South Korea’s Pyeongchang.
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