Will the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games cost less than the 2004 Athens Games, as a headline in Xinhuanet suggests, or will Beijing break the bank, according to the Wall Street Journal?
Xinhuanet reported Monday that Beijing will spend less than the Athens 2008 Games, which cost $2.4 billion, according to Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice-president of BOCOG. “Beijing will adhere to the principle of ‘frugal Olympics’ in organizing the 2008 Games. We used the paper two-sided now”.
He added that Beijing has its original operating budget of $1.609 billion for the Games and will earn $1.625 billion. There will be financially a positive outcome of about $16 million, said Jiang.
But on the same day the Wall Street Journal writes that the “Beijing Games are fast shaping up as one of the most extravagant Olympics ever”.
The newspaper cites the case of Qingdao, venue for the 2008 sailing competition, “pulling out all the stops” by relocating a heavily polluting shipyard near the city centre “to make way for a state-of-the-art sailing marina with an athletes village boasting the amenities of a five-star hotel”. Some infrastructure projects, including an expansion of the year-old airport, a high-speed railway, a 23-mile-long bay bridge and new sewage treatment plans, lighting and landscaping for the city, were also added with an estimated price tag of as much as $8.5 billion, although most of the projects actually have little to do with Olympics.
The newspaper writes that is seems like everyone is China is trying to get a piece of the Olympics action. It quotes an executive with the China subsidiary of U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co., a top Olympic sponsor saying, “anything that involves a crane is called an Olympics project”.
Although officials of the Beijing Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) say Beijing’s budget won’t exceed Athens’ budget, the newspaper says much of China’s expenditures aren’t in this official budget.
Meanwhile, with three years to go, Beijing and several minor host cities are building infrastructures at “staggering” expense, says the Wall Street Journal. Even cities unconnected to the Games are spending. Provincial Hohhot on the edge of the Mongolian steppes, which isn’t hosting an Olympic event, is getting a new $70 million airport and a highway to Beijing in case inclement weather closes Beijing’s airport during the Games.
Liu Jingsheng, head of the Beijing Reform and Development Commission, which oversees project approvals, says, “investment in infrastructure will serve the 2008 Games, but its major goal is serving the people of Beijing after 2008”.
