China Making Grand Plans

China’s ancient capital is proposing a very modern Olympics. Street lights in its Olympic village would be solar-powered. Geothermal energy would heat athletes’ showers. Satellite-guided taxis would whisk VIPs around town.

When Chinese officials talk about the Olympics promoting change, a modern makeover of their capital is foremost in their minds.

The city known for its imperial parks and palaces and the stark communist architecture of Tiananmen Square hopes an Olympics would showcase a new and dynamic 21st century metropolis.

The city is promising a pre-Olympic construction frenzy to rival the building of the Great Wall -- with multibillion-dollar plans to clear Beijing’s acrid smog, unclog its increasingly jammed roads and erect world-class venues. The city says its games would be the highest-tech Olympics ever.

The International Olympic Committee will pick the host of the 2008 Summer Games on July 13. Beijing, Paris and Toronto are front-runners. Also running, but not thought to have a chance, are Osaka, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Central to Beijing’s grandiose plans is a giant Olympic park on its northern outskirts.

For the moment, fields, a bus station, aging buildings, factories, simple one-story homes and small firms largely cover the site. But by 2008, officials say it will house a futuristic complex of stadiums and sports facilities, a gleaming exhibition center and a lake-enclosed trade center with twin skyscrapers.

The height of the skyscrapers has not been decided, but they are expected to be about 1,640 feet, said Gao Yicun, the bid committee’s chief of design and planning. That would surpass Malaysia’s Petronas Towers, now the world’s tallest at 1,483 feet.

From the Olympic park, a line drawn directly south would pass through some of Beijing’s most famous landmarks, including the Forbidden City where China’s emperors lived and Tiananmen Gate that overlooks the square. Planners placed the park on this north-south line to tie it to Beijing’s past, Gao said.

“This will be the present and future of Beijing linked by this axis to the history of the city,” he said. “It symbolizes the continuity of the culture, our history.”

More than half of the 3,000-acre Olympic site would be taken up by a forested park with a lake and man-made hills -- part of Beijing’s efforts to present an environmentally friendly bid.

Thousands of trees have been planted. A lake where ducks paddle on placid waters is to be enlarged, and the earth piled up to make hills.

The 17,600-bed athletes’ village would use solar energy to light its streets and possibly athletes’ rooms. Already, solar-powered lights and public phones have been installed outside a newly renovated sports hall that would play host to handball in 2008.

Planners are looking to geothermal energy to heat water in the athletes’ village, Gao said. Vehicles in the village would be electric.

“We will use as much of this clean energy as possible,” he said.

Beijing also has earmarked $12 billion for a decade-long environmental program it says will raise its air and water quality to within World Health Organization standards by 2008. The city is ordering polluting factories to cut emissions, move or close. It also is switching from coal to cleaner natural gas for cooking and heating and planting trees as barriers against choking dust storms that sometimes blanket the city.

New city buses powered by cleaner fuels are replacing diesel buses.

The IOC has praised Beijing’s plans. Its evaluation report said the Olympics would leave “a major environmental legacy for Beijing” and that the athletes’ village is “well thought-out.”

Planned new venues “will ensure an excellent legacy for Chinese sport,” the report added.

Thirteen existing sports venues in Beijing are to be renovated by 2008. The city is building eleven new sites whether it gets the games or not, and eight more if it is picked on July 13.

Fourteen of the total 32 Beijing venues, including a planned showpiece 80,000-seat main stadium, would be in the Olympic park. All will be no more than 30 minutes drive from the athletes’ village.

Beijing, which has nearly 14 million residents, expects 2 million visitors for the Olympics.

To help move people around, the city plans to expand its 33 miles of subway lines to 87 miles. Subways would link the Olympic park to the city, and a line from the airport to the city will be ready by 2005.

Taxis with satellite-navigation systems would be available for Olympic VIPs and athletes.

Beijing has promised to spend $20 billion to triple the length of its expressways, expand its transport network and build new sport venues by 2008.

Many of the venues are still on the drawing board--intentionally.

If Beijing built Olympic facilities now, it would have to renovate again by 2008, Gao said. Better to wait, he said, so builders can use the latest technologies.

“We have the money but we’re not spending it yet,” he said. “Why not wait until the last minute and use it correctly?”