Rings, Ka-Ching in Beijing

A year ago tonight, this sprawling, ancient capital erupted in elation. The International Olympic Committee had just awarded Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games, affirming for millions--if not billions--of Chinese the importance of China’s place in the world, triggering a flag-waving, horn-honking, music-jamming, firecracker-exploding party in the streets.

Now, under a polluted sky, amid the never-ending clamor of construction crews, the heady scent of money seemingly in the air along with the dizzying stench of exhaust fumes and the unmistakable aroma of Kentucky Fried Chicken, authorities have launched the most ambitious program ever undertaken in preparation for an Olympic Games.

The Chinese have vowed to stage the best Olympic Games. They intend to spend $30 billion readying Beijing for 2008, far more than has been spent on any other Olympics. Their slogan: “New Beijing, Great Olympics.”

Local and national officials intend to do the usual--build an Olympic stadium, an Olympic village and various sporting venues. But they also seek to use the Games as a catalyst to transform Beijing, improving and modernizing the city’s roads, railroads, airports, telecommunications links and sewage systems and, they say, improving its environment. Beijing is already in the throes of a massive building program; the Games will accelerate matters dramatically.

Some experts even say the Games--in combination with China’s admission to the World Trade Organization--represent an opportunity to bring about a dramatic turning point in Chinese history.

“From the evidence I’ve seen ... the government will use [the Games] to effect deeper political and social unity,” said Thomas Breslin, a China scholar at Florida International University in Miami who spent two weeks this spring touring Beijing and eastern China.

“Getting ready for the Olympics, being an impressive host, an efficient host, will represent an opportunity somewhat similar to the great campaigns in previous regimes in China.”

As an indicator of the social pressure already under way, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper recently launched a campaign urging the capital’s men to keep their shirts on while outdoors, even in sweltering summer heat. The newspaper made it plain that it did so with 2008 in mind--that jelly-bellied, sweaty guys on parade in the streets did not offer the sort of image becoming an Olympic host city.

Observed Liu Jingmin, vice mayor of Beijing and executive vice president of the Beijing 2008 organizing committee, “It’s like the 2008 Games are a boat. There is enthusiasm and hope inside the boat,” meaning the relatively small circle of those directly involved now with Olympic preparations. But as time goes on, “everybody in Beijing, in society” will be urged to climb aboard.

Can it be done? Will it be done? How will it be done? And, perhaps most intriguing, should it be done in a nation with enduring human-rights concerns?

The International Olympic Committee answered the last of these questions last year, when it overwhelmingly voted to award the Games to Beijing, acknowledging but blunting the human-rights issue.

Concerns over human rights played a key role in sidetracking Beijing’s 1993 bid for the 2000 Games.

Such concerns still simmer, with activists seeking to draw the IOC’s attention to human-rights concerns.

Some have been clearly documented--as in the cases of 65 people executed on June 26 for drug crimes, many after public rallies where thousands watched judges condemn the accused. Chinese authorities have said they believe such executions serve as a deterrent. United Nations authorities have said they do not condone the practice.

Some have been less so--as was the case of a report, issued in May by U.S.-based Chinese democracy activists, not independently verified--alleging that police in northeastern China had already been told to get ready for the Games by targeting followers of the Falun Gong movement. Its followers say it is a meditation and exercise group; the government calls it a cult, and banned it in 1999.

The IOC says it is resolutely committed to holding the 2008 Games in Beijing.

“The Games will improve the [human-rights] situation,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said in a recent interview. “I’ve said to the Chinese authorities, ‘Please do your utter best to improve human rights.’ I am convinced the Games will improve the situation. And we are going to work for that.”

Rogge, a Belgian elected last July to an eight-year term, succeeding Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, has said repeatedly that the IOC will not monitor China’s human-rights situation but will be in close contact with the United Nations and such rights groups as Amnesty International.

In April, after Rogge had appeared on the BBC show “Hardtalk,” saying the IOC “will make sure within the sphere of sports ... that [human rights] will be respected,” some follow-up reports suggested the IOC might go so far as to take the Games away from Beijing if the rights situation was not to the IOC’s approval.

“There was a wrong interpretation,” Rogge said. He emphasized that any such suggestion is “the most stupid [idea] that I’ve ever heard about.”

The truth is, the IOC is eagerly anticipating the 2008 Games.

It views the Games as a chance to spread the Olympic gospel to one-fifth of the world’s population and expects them to serve, Rogge said, as “a big booster for sport in Asia.”

Also, for the IOC, Chinese Olympic officials and scores of companies in China and abroad, the 2008 Games offer a big-time money-making opportunity.

Here is a chance to introduce products to an emerging market of 1.4 billion people, or, for those firms already doing business in China, to expand marketing reach by piggybacking on the glamour of the five rings, as well as on a project that carries nationalistic, patriotic zeal.

Liu, the Beijing 2008 executive vice president, said he believes organizers might be able to raise $700 million from highly motivated corporate sponsors. Combined with about $300 million due from IOC marketing programs, that would mean $1 billion in sponsorships.

Asked what he thought Chairman Mao would think about $1 billion in capitalist sponsor income underwriting an Olympics in China, Liu replied, laughing, “I believe if he was still alive, he’d be very happy. And he’d be happy [to preside] over the opening ceremonies because he loved sports so much.”

Said Nick Moore, the Beijing regional manager for Coca-Cola, a longtime Olympic sponsor, “They are really on the road here. The WTO, the Olympics, the World Cup,” a reference to China’s first appearance earlier this year in the global soccer tournament. “There’s so much optimism here--a feeling their time has come, that it’s their turn on the world stage.

“We want to help China have a good time. We want to help China celebrate.”

Here, too, is a chance to get in on some of that $30 billion in advance money. The Chinese intend to spend $4 billion on Games-related construction and another $26 billion on roadways, rail lines and environmental protection.

“There is no question China is a totally different dimension--in terms of what the Games can do for China and what China can do for the Games,” said Michael Payne, the IOC’s marketing director. “And in the business community, there is an incredible realization at the role the Games will play as a catalyst for change.”

Yuan Bin, Beijing 2008’s deputy marketing director, said that more than 100 companies had already come calling at Beijing 2008’s temporary offices, adding, “Every day, there are companies coming.”

Rick Burton, executive director of the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, said, “If you’re not already in China, it’s already too late. You’ve got to be on the ground, working China right now. The way they build relationships is very different from the way we do things in the West.”

Nineteen Olympic venues in Beijing need to be built, including an 80,000-seat stadium, an 18,000-seat arena for gymnastics and volleyball and an 18,000-seat swimming center. Thirteen other venues will be renovated or expanded.

The sports venues will be concentrated at two sites, one north of central Beijing, the other west, both abutting what is called the Fourth Ring Road--at present the outer ring of a series of concentric highways encircling Beijing. By 2008 plans call for a Fifth and a Sixth Ring Road.

The city will nearly quadruple the size of its subway system, from 54 kilometers to 201. It also plans to build new bus terminals and parking lots.

In addition, it plans to improve sewage systems and add thousands of acres of trees, according to the Beijing 2008 master plan. The trees, officials hope, will help limit Beijing’s fierce sandstorms carrying the product of dust that flies in from the Gobi desert, particularly in the winter and spring.

The 2008 master plan calls for Olympic-related construction work to begin in 2003 and be completed by 2006, allowing for venue testing before the Games.

As it is, the construction clamor is about to get more fierce. Shang Yuzhu, a 79-year-old retired kindergarten teacher, shook her head in amazement.

“Since the [WTO] and the Olympics were announced, Beijing has become more internationalized. We’ve seen so much more construction,” she said one day recently over a lunch of homemade dumplings, a construction crane shining bright yellow in the dull afternoon haze outside her fourth-story window.

A lifelong resident of Beijing, she added, “I’ve even lost my way because there is so much construction. I can’t find my place. So many changes. So many more to come.”