In a report to the third session of the 12th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress that opened Saturday Beijing’s Mayor Wang Qishan vowed that 2005 will be a “key action year” in preparation for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games. According to the China Daily, in his report the mayor said, “we will spare no efforts to ensure successful competition of Olympic venues and auxiliary facilities. New venues, the National Conference Centre, the Olympic Village and the journalists’ village will start construction this year”. He added, “we will speed up road building and building facilities surrounding the venues and start work on scenic projects in the central area of the Olympic Park”. He also vowed to strengthen supervision and auditing work to make sure all preparations were above board. Wang said construction of the four urban railway lines will be sped up this year and building of five sewage treatment plants will also be accelerated. Two thousand boilers that had burned coal will be converted to using clean energy this year and up to 3,800 buses that used to run on diesel oil have been taken out of service. Also, new and environmentally friendly cars will replace about 20,000 taxis that fail to meet the European lll emissions standards. In his report the mayor said that more government investment will be injected into rural areas. Wang’s report said the municipal government’s investment in the public sector, which includes public health, schools, scientific research, culture and historic relic protection, reached $1.6 billion last year, 28 per cent higher than in 2003.
There were also several problems that Wang pointed out. He said, “Beijing has restricted water and land resources. Use of resources is not efficient enough”. He also said the income gap between different groups in the city was vast. The mayor added that the local government should improve its work efficiency and stamp out corruption.
Meanwhile, the German sportswear manufacturer Adidas-Salomon signed a deal with Beijing 2008 Monday to become an official partner of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Both sides refused to disclose the amount of money involved, but experts said that it could reach $50 million, reports the People’s Daily. Under the agreement Adidas will provide sportswear for all the staff, volunteers and technical officials at the 2008 Games and will outfit the Chinese Olympic teams competing at the 2006 Turin Winter Games and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The composite logo of Adidas and Beijing 2008 were unveiled Monday. To date BOCOG has signed seven partners for the 2008 Games including Volkswagen, China Mobile, Sinopec and Bank of China.
Beijing 2008 has received more than 100,000 entries for its motto and the deadline for submissions is January 31. BOCOG is now classifying and registering the submitted entries before announcing the winter in the first half of the year. Entries came from all over the world through e-mails and letters from countries including the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Cuba, Norway, Brazil, in Chinese English, French and Spanish.
