OLYMPICS-CHINA/ZHANGJIAKOU China gears up for Winter Olympics inspection team visit

Record ID: 332394

  • Title: OLYMPICS-CHINA/ZHANGJIAKOU China gears up for Winter Olympics inspection team visit
  • Date: 20th March 2015
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF BEIJING CANDIDATE CITY SIGN ON ROAD LEADING TO SECRET GARDEN GENTING RESORT, ONE OF THE LOCATIONS FOR THE GAMES
  • Embargoed: 4th April 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9E829TR0BRTQEHK0W69R3W89I
  • Story Text: When the International Olympics Committee (IOC) arrives in China to assess its 2022 Winter Games bid early next week, the big unknown will be Zhangjiakou.
    Home to around 800,000, it is, by Chinese standards, a small city around three hours driving time from its co-host Beijing, and would be the potential venue for many of the skiing events.
    Officials have slated building a multi-billion yuan high-speed rail-link to cut travelling time between the host cities to less than an hour. But distance will not be the main concern for the IOC.
    Questions over climate and pollution hang over the bid, which overall scored weakest among the initial three candidate cities on environmental impact.
    An old industrial centre, Zhangjiakou's economy is dominated by coal, iron steel and cement, and the city and surrounding areas are dotted with chimneys billowing smoke.
    The region's officials say they hope hosting the Olympics will help the region shift away from outdated polluting industries towards a more green-tourism based economy.
    The rationale is both environmental and economic. With natural resources in the area fast depleting, the city has been wallowing in the economic doldrums.
    The first quarter of 2014 saw regional GDP contracted 0.3 percent, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
    Villagers near the ski resorts hope that the Olympics will help bring more jobs to the region.
    "There'll be more job opportunities, they'll need more workers, we'll all be able to go and work in the hotels or as service workers, it will boost the economy, it will definitely boost the economy," said Fu Guizhi, 52, a resident of Zhuanzhilian village.
    For the bid to succeed, and for pollution to be tackled, authorities are going to have to convince the IOC that the can produce enough of one crucial resource: snow.
    Much of the northern part of China faces huge water shortages, and though winters are cold, sometimes bitterly so, the mountains that surround the capital to the north and west rarely see snow.
    The Genting secret garden resort, where some of the skiing events would be held, says it has an annual average accumulated snowfall of 0.63 m. That compares to 9.6m for Chamonix in France and 11.9m in Whistler in Canada.
    While the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games Bid Committee declined to comment on preparations for the bid, Wang Hui, spokeswoman for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games Bid Committee, vowed in January that snow levels will be sufficient for the Games.
    A dearth of snow was overcome at the Sochi Games and at Vancouver in 2010. Organisers for the Sochi games stored some 450,000 cubic meters of snow in the nearby Caucasus Mountains ahead of the games, and produced more with snow cannons.
    Even in March, with the temperature well above freezing in its lower reaches, a layer of albeit brownish snow still covered many of the slopes at Genting.
    The resort administrators also declined to comment on preparations for the Olympic visit, but out on the pistes skiers said they were happy with the snow cover and were confident that pollution issues would be sorted by the time the Olympics rolled into town.
    "There's practically no smog here, Beijing is putting a really great amount of effort into cleaning it up and by the time it's 2020 I think it will already be very good, everyone's really putting a lot of effort into this, and people's environmental awareness is really strong, I'm pretty optimistic about this," said Liang Gong, a trader from Beijing.
    Down in the valley local authorities are so intent on improving the air they have ordered the closure of all the small-scale quarries dotted about the area, said Liu Baojiang, one of two workers left guarding the remains of a quarry that had employed between 80-90 people until it was demolished two years ago.
    "Originally this was an iron ore quarry, the quarry would produce iron powder which was emitted into the air and affected the environment. So it was closed, the reason why is because of the Olympics, the Olympics is coming soon so they want to make the environment even better," he said.
    Organisers implemented drastic measures to bring blue skies and easy breathing for athletes during the 2008 Beijing summer Games, ordering 60 percent of the city's cars off the road and last-minute industrial cut-backs.
    With a roughly $40 Billion price tag, that competition was the most costly ever staged. Officials this time round are promising a more spartan affair, focussing on the legacy the games will have for the local area.
    As Zhangjiakou enters the final countdown to the visit, the authorities were busy making the final cosmetic adjustments along the road that will lead the IOC to the slopes.
    After the March 22-29 inspection is concluded they will have to wait until July 31 to see if it's all paid off.
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