Beijing Costs Rise

Chinese authorities plan to spend $30 billion readying Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics, a senior official with the Beijing organizing committee said Saturday, more than double the amount estimated before last summer’s International Olympic Committee vote awarding the Games to the Chinese capital.

Liu Jingmin, executive vice president for the Beijing 2008 organizing committee, said in an interview with The Times that the Chinese government figures it will spend $4billion on Games-specific construction and another $26 billion on general infrastructure, such as roadways and rail lines, and on environmental protection.

Such costs were estimated at $14.2 billion in advance of the vote last July at which the IOC awarded the 2008 Olympics to Beijing.

The revised--yet still preliminary--estimate dramatically illuminates the Chinese government’s commitment to modernizing Beijing by 2008. “The most important thing for us is to give Beijing a new look, a new face,” Liu said.

The figures also, however, underscore the challenge facing the IOC, in particular Jacques Rogge, the Belgian elected its president last July, who has said repeatedly that he wants to reduce the size and scope of the Games so that it will be more affordable for cities that have never staged the Games--particularly in Africa and South America, which have never played host to the Olympics.

A special IOC commission is due to study the issue in the coming months. The IOC intends to take up the commission’s recommendations, if any, at a general assembly due to be held this November in Mexico City.

What remains unclear is whether the Chinese experience will amount to a one-time aberration, or whether Beijing 2008 serves as a financial model for cities and nations requiring a radical infrastructure upgrade to be ready for an Olympics.

For comparison purposes, the Greek government only three weeks ago announced that it calculates it will spend $3.5 billion in advance of the Summer Games in Athens in 2004. A government spokesman said about two-thirds of the budget would be used for Olympic works, the remainder to improve infrastructure throughout the country.

In advance of the Salt Lake Games, $1.1 billion in government funds were allocated to road and rail construction in Utah, but there is sharp dispute about whether that sum ought to be included in Olympic-related accounting.

The money would have been spent regardless of the Games, but some spending was accelerated to ensure that projects were completed in time for the Olympics.

Direct federal, state and local government spending on the Salt Lake Olympics amounts to a separate budget category and totals $622 million.

In all, direct costs for the Salt Lake Games total $1.9 billion; $1.3billion comes from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Operating costs for the Summer Games tend to run higher than the Winter Olympics. The preliminary estimate for Beijing 2008’s operating budget is $1.6 billion, Liu said. That is roughly in line with the Athens 2004 and Sydney 2000 Summer Games operating budgets.

Adding Beijing’s operating and capital budgets together yields a total climbing toward $32 billion.

Liu made it plain that the Chinese view the 2008 Games as nothing less than catalyst for an extensive modernization of Beijing, with a particular focus on upgrading environmental controls.

The onset of the Games “will of course bring some tremendous changes in Beijing’s development,” he said.

“We are going to enjoy some very exciting moments over the next seven years.”

He also went on record as saying that Chinese officials intend to run bidding and construction processes free from corruption, saying that to “adopt international practice is quite essential to us.”

To that end, he said that Beijing 2008 officials are even now “undergoing a study about how to make coverage of the Olympic Games more transparent,” meaning open, particularly to press from the United States and other western nations, adding, “One of the principles of the Olympic Games is to be open to the outside.”