The Bird's Nest

According to historical patterns, the Olympic Games have not only been a grand celebration of sports, but more importantly, for the host city and country, the Olympic Games bring unimaginable publicity and business activity. For the People’s Republic of China, the July 13, 2001 International Olympic Committee (IOC) announcement that Beijing would host the 2008 Olympic Games marked China's emergence as a major global player. Just as the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1988 Seoul Olympics propelled Japan and South Korea onto the global stage, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was China's "coming out" party—an event that showcased China's maturation into a great economic and, to a lesser extent, political power. As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao noted on April 24 of 2008, the Beijing Olympics present an opportunity for China to show the world how "democratic, open, civilized, friendly, and harmonious" it is.

After winning its 2001 bid to host the Olympic Games, China launched a massive seven-year effort to prepare for the event. The huge inflows of investment to support the Olympics and recreate Beijing have had an important ripple effect on economic growth.

SPORTS FACILITIES--

China planned (in some cases, with foreign architects) and built the Olympic Park and the 37 stadiums and venues that hosted the Olympic events. These include 32 buildings in Beijing—19 new and 13 refurbished—and venues in five other Chinese cities—a sailing center in Qingdao and soccer stadiums in Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang, and Shanghai. China also constructed 59 training centers and infrastructure projects for the Paralympic Games, held in Beijing in September 2008 following the Olympics. Beijing's stadiums, in particular the National Stadium (or "Bird's Nest"), are state of the art and well designed and available for use after the Games. The area around Beijing's massive Bird's Nest stadium will be turned into a shopping and entertainment complex in three to five years. Plans call for the $450 million stadium to anchor a complex of shops and entertainment outlets in three to five years. They will continue to develop tourism as a major draw for the Bird's Nest, while seeking sports and entertainment events.

The Water Cube

TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE--

According to Liu Zhi, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission, from 2002 through the beginning of the games, Beijing spent $1.1 billion on transportation improvements, such as building and extending Beijing's subway system, completing the city's light rail system, and constructing and refurbishing more than 318 km of city streets—including 23 roads in and around the Olympics sites, two new ring roads around the city, and high-tech traffic control systems. The city also built an enormous new airport terminal at the Beijing Capital International Airport and extended the toll road to the airport.

URBAN RENEWAL--

According to Beijing's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), Beijing spent more than $200 million demolishing dilapidated housing and urban buildings, refurbishing 25 historic areas, including many of the city's landmarks, old streets, and beautiful, four-corner residences that date from the imperial period, and restoring Beijing's many historic places, including the Forbidden City.

HIGH TECHNOLOGY--

China's capital budgeted it spent $3.6 billion transforming Beijing into a "digital" city, with widespread use of digital and broadband telecommunications, wireless transmission and networking technologies, and "intelligent technologies," including smart cards.

TOURISM--

The number of tourists in Beijing has risen rapidly, a result of the increased visibility that the Olympics bring to the host country. Though estimates of the number of people who visited China during the Olympics—or even the number of people who visited China in 2008—vary significantly, it is clear that the games were a magnet for tourists. Chen Jian, president of the Beijing Olympic Economic Research Association, estimated in the spring that Beijing would receive roughly 600,000 foreign visitors and 2.5 million domestic Chinese tourists during the Olympic games and that the number of foreign tourists in Beijing would grow 8 to 9 percent annually in the decade following the games because of the games themselves.

Foreign students studying in Beijing who experienced the Olympic summer craze were awed by the improvements in commercial services and infrastructure that took place within the weeks leading up to the Opening Ceremony in early August. A Princeton student who arrived in Beijing in mid-June reports being surprised during the first week of August when she frequented the bars in Beiing’s popular Sanlitun neighborhood only to find a three-story mini-mall on the same corner where two months earlier had stood a brick building on the verge of collapse. Most impressive was Beijing’s newly-built network of commercial villages, all named Soho, erected by a Beijing-based industrial development company of the same name. The leaders of SOHO China have undertaken a number of high-profile architectural enterprises under the slogan “building city center prosperity.” From these projects have emerged shop-towns throughout Beijing, housing top brand names such as Gucci and Chanel and giving the unmistakable impression of a new era of Chinese consumerism. The openness of China to foreigners was made apparent by the government-sponsored “Beijing Welcomes You” banners, but by the friendly gestures of shop-keepers and cab drivers, all eager to do business and exchange “Ni hao” with foreign passer-by’s.

The number of hotels in Beijing has also jumped in recent years. Since China entered the WTO and won its Olympic bid, the country has reduced hotel ownership restrictions. Starting in 2002, foreign investors could own a majority stake in hotels, and in 2006, wholly foreign-owned hotels were permitted. These moves cleared the way for an extensive expansion of foreign-owned hotels and other tourism facilities.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS--

Every Beijing resident is keenly aware of the city's environmental challenges. Air quality, particularly in the summer, can be less than optimal, with particulate matter at alarmingly high levels. Though Beijing has taken steps to improve air quality, such as ordering coal-burning power plants to reduce emissions, construction projects halted during the period around the Olympic games, and 200 heavily polluting factories to move out of the city, air quality will remained a worry for the athletes who participated in the games.

Under the Beijing Sustainable Development Plan, China launched 20 projects to improve the quality of Beijing's environment, with an overall investment of $12.2 billion. The city established new wastewater treatment plants, solid-waste processing facilities, green belts, and built a fleet of clean buses for the games. Beijing phased out ozone-depleting substances ahead of schedule, made use of water- or air-source heat pump systems to save energy in Olympic stadiums, replaced 47,000 old taxis and 7,000 diesel buses, and required vehicles to meet EU emissions standards. In addition, natural gas (use of which is up tenfold), geothermal, and wind power are gradually replacing coal. Much of Beijing is now covered by trees, bushes, and lawns—a radical departure from the past—and Beijing has set up 20 natural reserves to protect forests, wild plants, animals, wetlands, and geological formations, according to an October 2007 report on Beijing's environmental record. In fact, the 2008 Olympics was one of the most environmentally friendly ever, despite concerns about Beijing's air pollution.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT--

The huge inflows of investment to support the Olympics and recreate Beijing have had an important ripple effect on economic growth, not simply in Beijing but in areas surrounding the capital. It is estimated that spending on the Olympics added 2.5 percent annually to Beijing's overall economic growth since 2002.

Furthermore, the recruitment of Beijing Olympic partners, sponsors, suppliers, and many other companies that want to take advantage of the Olympic "buzz" in Beijing has helped to boost advertising spending sharply. Advertising spending in China, 42.5 percent of which is focused on television, will likely rise from $14.7 billion in 2007 to roughly $18.4 billion this year, and spending on Internet advertising may rise by as much as 30 percent, according to an October 2007 advertising expenditure forecast.

Similarly, China's sports industry, immature in 2001, is growing rapidly. The Hong Kong Trade Development Council estimates that China's sports industry, though tiny now, has a market potential of $250 billion. Driven by major international sporting events held in China, such as the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, FIFA’s Women's World Cup 2007, and the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010, China's sports industry will soon grow by 20 percent a year, particularly in Beijing, Guangdong, Liaoning, and Zhejiang.