With the 2022 Winter Olympics, China is hoping to nurture an abiding interest in skiing, curling, ice hockey and other winter sports that could increase consumer spending, particularly in the country's chilly and economically struggling northeast
China’s National Stadium in Beijing, on Feb. 4, 2022, which was built ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and is being used again. For many cities, the Games make no economic sense, but national pride and an enthusiasm for building transportation infrastructure change the equation for Beijing. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — To make an Olympic ski jump, China clad a hillside in steel and blanketed it with artificial snow. To construct a high-speed rail line linking the venues and Beijing, engineers blasted tunnels through the surrounding mountains. And to keep the coronavirus at bay, workers are conducting tens of thousands of PCR tests on Games participants every day.
Hosting the Winter Olympics is costing China billions of dollars, a scale of expenditure that has made the event less appealing to many cities around the world in recent years. More and more of them have concluded that the Games are not worth being left with a hefty bill, white elephant stadiums, and fewer benefits from tourism than they had hoped.
But China looks at the Games with a different calculus. Beijing has long relied on heavy investments in building railway lines, highways and other infrastructure to provide millions of jobs to its citizens and reduce transportation costs. With the 2022 Games, it also hopes to nurture an abiding interest in skiing, curling, ice hockey and other winter sports that could increase consumer spending, particularly in the country’s chilly and economically struggling northeast.
Perhaps most important of all to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the Olympics are a chance to demonstrate to the world his country’s unity and confidence under his leadership.
“For China’s international image, prestige, and face, as the Chinese would say, nothing is too expensive,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University.
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