MCLC: China jumps into Winter Games bid

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China jumps into Winter Games bid
Yanqing, one of the locations for the proposed Winter Games 2022, is the site of a notorious political prison that has housed the likes of Hu Feng, Jiang Qing, and many others. Wonder if this will come up in the deliberations.
Kirk
Source: NYT (2/16/15)
Shortage of Snow Aside, China Jumps Into Bid for 2022 Winter Games
By DAN LEVIN
Artificial snow at a resort in Chongli, China, which would host some Olympic skiing events. Credit Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
CHONGLI, China — Out here, in the land of China’s Winter Olympics ambitions, there is more propaganda than snow.
Some traces of white cling to the brown hills like dandruff, but along the travel route intended for International Olympic Committee officials, billboards featuring skiers, snowboarders and children have been hastily erected in an attempt to inspire confidence. “Making the bidding effors,” one proclaims in less-than-perfectly spelled English. “Sharing the China Dream.”
Never mind that Chongli, the proposed site for the Olympic Village and Nordic skiing events in Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Games, is 150 miles from the capital by automobile or that, Yanqing, the town designated for Alpine ski competitions, gets about two inches of snow annually.
Yet if anything is in shorter supply than snow, it is confidence in hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics. All five democratic nations that once considered bidding for the Games have pulled out, largely because of overwhelming public opposition.
That has left the committee to decide between two authoritarian countries known more for imprisoning government critics than figure skating. Facing off against Beijing is Almaty, in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian oil hub with a long tradition of winter sports and ruled by a former Soviet apparatchik who has held the presidency for 24 years and counting.
Such is the awkward political landscape that has changed the bid by Beijing, the host of the 2008 Summer Games, from a pipe dream into a serious contender. But that does not mean the Olympic committee, which will make its decision in July, is thrilled with its choices.
Desperate to make the Games more palatable to countries traumatized by a reported $51 billion price tag of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — and appalled by video from Sochi of uniformed Cossacks beating unarmed female protesters with horsewhips — the committee rushed to pass wide-ranging rules changes in December. These included a more affordable bidding and hosting process, the addition of sexual orientation to the Olympic Charter’s nondiscrimination clause, and a contract that host countries must sign that requires protections for the environment, labor and human rights.
“The Olympic movement is in a once-in-a-generation crisis,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, which documented abuse of dissidents and migrant laborers in China and Russia before and during their Olympic Games. “I believe the I.O.C. reforms are a direct response to China and Kazakhstan. It’s just too big of a black eye.”
Of course, that is not the narrative in China. Beyond the prize of Beijing becoming the only city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, the Games would provide another opportunity for the ruling Communist Party to flaunt China’s wealth and power on the world stage.
“The party’s strategy is to use mega-events like the Olympics to rally the people, showcase the country and demonstrate its strong governance,” said Peh Shing Huei, the author of “When the Party Ends: China’s Leaps and Stumbles After the Beijing Olympics.”
Since Beijing formally submitted its candidacy last month, Chinese officials have raced to dust off their 2008 playbook. Mostly, that means telling the commission what they think it wants to hear. “We want our ecological environment as clean as possible, and we shall create a social and cultural environment for pure friendship,” the Beijing Olympic Games Bid Committee website says.
Eager to comply with the I.O.C.’s goal of producing a more economical event, Chinese officials have announced plans to reuse some of the 2008 Olympic venues, which they say will keep costs down to $3.9 billion, a steal compared with the $40 billion spent on the Summer Games seven years ago. Planners have already started building a high-speed rail link to Zhangjiakou, a city near where the Olympic Village would be built, that will reduce travel time from central Beijing to 50 minutes from three and a half hours by car.
But cleaning up the environment has proved far more challenging than building stadiums. According to China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, nearly 90 percent the country’s 74 major cities, including Beijing, failed to meet air quality standards last year. While the government took extreme measures to clear skies during the 2008 Olympics, shutting down factories and limiting the number of cars on the roads, the smog problem has only grown worse.
Last month, Mayor Wang Anshun of Beijing, the bid committee’s president, acknowledged that China’s notorious air pollution had made the city “unlivable.” Still, he has promised that a raft of utopian benefits would come with hosting the Winter Olympics. “The transportation will be more convenient, the sky will be bluer and life will be better,” Mr. Wang said, according to a recent article by the official news agency Xinhua.
The Chinese government has promised to “fully respect” the Olympic Charter and host-city contract, the bid document states. But concerns are high over whether the authorities will abide by the newly enshrined human rights protections in their push for new infrastructure. In the lead up to the 2008 Games, rights groups reported widespread forced evictions of poor Beijing residents, a practice that many fear would return for Beijing 2022. “People standing in way of land redevelopment are going to feel the full force of the party again,” said Mr. Peh, the author.
Technically, Beijing 2022 is more of a brand than a city. According to bid committee officials, events would be spread across three areas farther apart from end to end than New York and Philadelphia: Skating events would be held in Beijing; bobsled, luge and Alpine skiing 60 miles away in Yanqing; and snowboarding, freestyle skiing and other events at the Genting ski resort here in Chongli.
In the lobby of the Genting resort one recent afternoon, ski and snowboard enthusiasts were drinking hot chocolate and smoking cigarettes before heading back out to the resort’s 45 miles of trails, lined mostly with artificially produced snow.
“The conditions are really great, and here you don’t need an air purifier,” said Li Ning, 51, an Amway marketing executive from Beijing who first learned to ski five years ago.
Taking a break from the bunny slope, Wang Mengge, 22, a law student on her second-ever ski outing, gushed over the prospect of Beijing 2022 as she struggled to walk in her clunky ski boots. “I think it’s a win-win,” she said. “The Olympics will definitely promote economic development.”
Though relatively few Chinese have ever snapped on a pair of skis, President Xi Jinping vowed in a letter to the International Olympic Committee that the Games would “ignite the passion” for winter sports among China’s 1.3 billion people.
The awareness campaign has already begun. A few miles from the Genting ski resort, Wu Jifu, 57, a shepherd, watched his flock graze in the shadow of an Olympic billboard.
“Officials came to my village,” he said, “and handed out brochures about skiing.”
Chen Jiehao contributed research.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on February 18, 2015
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