Built-In Commitment

A dozen yellow cranes tower over what, come 2008, will be the 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium. Like bees in hardhats, crews of men load, lift, carry, pound and sweat in the summer sun.

“Create great Olympic environment!” proclaims a banner in yellow Chinese characters on a red background. “Ensure worker safety and health!”

Across the road, the swim venue for the 2008 Summer Olympics is going up. It promises to be a sight -- plans call for it to be layered in a blue skin cut by white in a style designed to evoke the look of the hydrogen and oxygen molecules that make up water.

A few miles away rises the Wukesong indoor arena, the basketball venue. Construction began March 28, and since then about 600 men have worked on it nine hours a day, five days a week. “Everything is going according to plan,” said Dai Xinzhi, 43, a supervising engineer at the site.

Four years ago Wednesday, Beijing won the right to stage the 2008 Summer Games. With memories vivid of the construction delays that dogged preparations for the 2004 Athens Games, the Chinese have undertaken a massive construction job in and around Beijing, promising it will all be done well in advance of the start of the Games on Aug. 8, 2008.

“We don’t have ‘won’t be finished’ or ‘impossible’ in our vocabulary,” said Liu Zhi, a senior economist and deputy director of the city’s development commission.

The scale and scope of the construction is unprecedented in the modern Olympics. The most recent official estimate of the overall cost for Games-related sites and urban infrastructure projects was $38 billion.

The bulk of the money is going toward roads, railways and environmental enhancements, all aimed at giving Beijing a new look. That underscores the Olympics’ role as catalyst for urban renewal -- the impetus for bids for the 2012 Games from such cities as London and New York. The International Olympic Committee last week awarded those Games to London.

It also makes plain the staggering financial burden of a modern Games -- and raises questions about whether only the wealthiest nations can afford the Olympics even as IOC President Jacques Rogge pushes to take the Games to Africa and South America, where they have never been staged.

For Chinese officials, the cost is an investment in civic life that will extend well beyond the 17 days of the Games.

“We are working on projects that will benefit the citizens of Beijing for real life,” Liu said.

Rogge said the $38-billion investment should be viewed in a context that compares it to the size of the country. “[Thirty-eight] billion is a lot of money, but what does [that] mean for a country of 1.3 billion people -- as opposed to 10 million people in Greece?” he said recently. “ ... You have to see it as an investment. But it is definitely not disproportionate.”

The Greek government spent about $14 billion readying for 2004. London’s 2012 plan calls for $16 billion in infrastructure investments.

Four years ago, in bidding for the 2008 Games, the Beijing proposal fixed the investment here at $14 billion. The bid team’s slogan, since replaced by “One World One Dream,” couldn’t have been more emphatic in explaining Beijing’s plan: “New Beijing, Great Olympics.”

A few months later, after the Games were secured, the estimate was raised to $30 billion. A few weeks ago, it grew again.

“The likes of Los Angeles and London, the infrastructure is already there,” said Jia Qingguo, a professor of international studies at Beijing University who received his doctorate at Cornell. “But Beijing is a developing city.”

Jia also noted that the Olympics prompt a sense of urgency that spurs development that might otherwise take years and years.

“It’s a function of time,” he said. “Without the Olympics, these things happen later. With the Olympics, they happen sooner.”

Of the 36 Olympic venues, 31 are in Beijing -- 11 new, 11 at existing facilities that are being renovated, and nine will be temporary venues.

Of the new venues, construction is underway at eight. Groundbreaking is due soon on the other three, said Liu Jingmin, an executive vice president with the Beijing 2008 organizing committee.

The stadium, north of central Beijing and the Forbidden City, is due to be finished in 2007. The structure is due to be wrapped in a way that has prompted some here to call it the “bird’s nest.”

Four years ago, Beijing was served by two subway lines. Two light-rail lines have since been built. Four more such lines are being built now, said Zhou Zhengyu, a senior engineer and vice director of the municipal agency that oversees the building and repair of roads and highways.

Also, a third terminal at the city’s main airport is due to be finished by 2007, and renovation of nearly 400 miles of sewage pipe is underway.

The city is encircled by ring roads, highways in the style of interstate freeways in the United States. There are now five and another is under construction. There were only four in 2001 when Beijing won the Games, and two of those already have been renovated.

Meantime, in the final stages of construction is a network of radial “arms” that extend from the ring roads. When complete, the network will measure 228 miles -- and all but less than 40 of those miles already are complete.

“The plan is there. The budget is there,” Zhou said. “We’ll finish it in the next three years.”