China thinking big for 2008 Summer Games

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But China is no longer the dour, controlled society of a generation ago, as evidenced by its athletes in Turin. Figure skater Zhang Dan’s tumble to the ice at the start of her pairs routine only to come back flawlessly to win silver was a crowd-pleasing highlight. When 20-year-old short track speed skater Wang Meng took China’s first gold medal of the games, she jumped up on the awards podium before the announcer called her name. “I couldn’t contain my excitement,” she said afterward.

Beijing is setting itself up to be what Turin is not, rigorously planned and wildly enthusiastic. Turin’s people have been criticized as lackluster fans. The city’s $3.4 billion spending on the Olympics has been utilitarian, upgrading the 1930s era Stadio Comunale for the opening and closing ceremonies and building the Olympic Village for athletes on the site of a 70-year-old fruit and vegetable market.

By contrast, though summer games are three to four times the scale of winter ones, Beijing will spend more than 10 times what Turin did. It’s dotting the skyline with signature structures — a $380 million National Stadium covered in a bird’s nest-like lattice of steel, a nearly $2 billion new terminal and runway for the airport. Beijing has five mascots, compared with Turin’s two.

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The sense is of a city charged up and in overdrive, causing Chinese journalist Wang Xiaofeng to joke about it on his blog: “Beijing will stage the best Olympics, with the most people, the most events, the most themes, the most mascots, the most money spent, the most doping rumors, the most money-losing and the most influential in the history of the Olympic Games.”

Beijing’s preparations will speed up in coming weeks. The organizing committee, which has taken in $1 billion in sponsorship, is expected to issue two contracts, one to an international public relations company, the other for ticketing systems. Over the next nine months, $1 billion in Olympic-related contracts will be issued, said Peter Foss of General Electric Co., an Olympics sponsor which has reorganized staff to win more games business.

GE, which had $5 billion in revenues in China last year, wants to double that amount by 2008, Foss said, and “the Olympics is one way we can speed up the process.”

IOC officials, which have expressed full confidence in the Chinese efforts, have told Beijing to slow down construction, lest venues be completed too early and increase operating and maintenance costs.

The former IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, summed the situation up succinctly, telling his Chinese hosts at a Turin reception:

“Beijing will stage the most successful Olympic Games in history.”

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