Beijing pushes on with 2022 Olympic bid
Print Edition
BEIJING is pushing ahead with its 2022 Winter Olympics bid with preparations from pollution mitigation to infrastructure construction.
“The bid by Beijing and co-host Zhangjiakou has entered its sprint phase,” said Zhang Jiandong, Beijing vice mayor and vice president of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Bid Committee.
Zhangjiakou, in Hebei Province, is about 200 kilometers northwest of the capital.
Construction of a high-speed railway line, which will cut the travel time between the two cities to about 50 minutes from more than 3 hours, is expected to start this year.
The committee will “mobilize all positive factors and do its best ... to make the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) feel Beijing is the right choice,” Zhang said yesterday.
Beijing’s municipal legislature yesterday passed a resolution to support the bid and urged the city government to closely coordinate with Hebei Province.
An official bid was submitted last month, and an IOC evaluation delegation is set to arrive in Beijing next month.
The only other competing city — Almaty in Kazakhstan — will be evaluated later this month.
After the success of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a poll conducted last year in 32 cities found that 95 percent of Chinese people supported the bid for the winter games.
Despite that, air pollution remains an issue for the nation’s capital.
Beijing is regularly clouded in smog, but authoirties claim the PM2.5 density fell 4 percent last year. They hope to cut that by a further 5 percent this year partly by closing 300 polluting factories and by spending 10.8 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) on projects to ease the problem.
Beijing, a city of more than 21 million people, has begun to relocate non-essential functions, such as low-end manufacturing, wholesale markets and certain institutions.
IOC members will cast their votes on July 31 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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