Beijing will be a new city by the time Olympics arrive

[Fiona]

sportsillustrated.com Alexander Wolff


It's been almost one whole city map since I last visited Beijing.

That's not saying much, of course. I was there in June, and the 2008 Summer Olympics host city is changing so rapidly, the authorities issue an entirely new map every three months. Of the Olympic motto of citius, altius, fortius, the first ("fast") most definitely applies.

During my visit came word that the Chinese and Russian Olympic committees had struck a pact to cooperate -- to swap training tips, stage coaching exchanges and share medical advances -- in the hopes of dislodging the U.S. from its perch atop the medal standings. That's a long way from the "FFCS" days of the early 1970s, when on those few occasions the Chinese did agree to share a stage with their international counterparts, they did so only while incessantly mouthing the platitude "Friendship First, Competition Second."

When it comes to things Olympic, China is barreling simultaneously down parallel tracks. One is an unapologetic drive to establish itself as a global sports power when the world turns its attention to Beijing in less than three years. That task is the charge of the Chinese Olympic Committee, and as that entente cordiale with the Russians proves, the government is going to great lengths to banish forever the notion of China as "the sick man of Asia."

At the same time, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG), wants to be a gracious host, offering a smoothly functioning city, breathable air and the fairest possible competitive platform for its invited athletic guests.

But there's another goal I picked up on during my visit, and that is to alter the Chinese mindset. Xu Jicheng, a well-respected journalist, is helping BOCOG prepare to accommodate the media hordes. He runs in elite circles, among the mandarins of Chinese sport and business, which are today as intimately entwined as they are in the U.S.

"The real goal of the Olympics won't be medals won," Xu told me. "The goal will be to put in place a trend that will far outlast the Olympics, of sports throughout the country being pushed forward by market forces."

The Chinese mentality is undergoing a revolution. In 1992 it wasn't possible for a citizen to oppose the Three Gorges Dam, the massive and controversial public-works project that dislocated millions of people and forever altered the landscape.

But with Beijing proposing to stage a "green Olympics," the authorities suddenly are giving grassroots environmental protests a more sympathetic hearing -- and these uprisings often succeed in bringing remorseless developers to heel. As the '08 Olympics approach and the whole world watches, any party factotum that talks the environmental talk is going to have to walk the green walk. Today the Beijing municipal government even has a polling firm that asks citizens a variation on that old Ed Koch chestnut, "How'm I doin'?"

I heard a story about the aftermath of Beijing's humiliating loss to Sydney in the race to host the 2000 Olympics. It holds that the Chinese, rather than simply going off to lick their wounds, decided to abandon entirely the idea of bidding for the '04 Olympics, and instead wait for '08, for a reason unique to their culture. In Chinese numerology, the number four is associated with death, where eight is smooth, rounded and auspicious.

I ran this by Wang Wei, a BOCOG vice president young enough to have been educated in the U.S. He laughed, then said, "This was a very serious decision that couldn't be based on luck. Ten different government ministries studied whether we should bid again. After 2000 people needed a break to reassess and review everything. The most important difference is that we'll be much better prepared in '08 than we were in '00, or would have been in '04."

Here's how well-girded Beijing is: Where every Olympic host city in recent memory has been perpetually behind in its preparations, Beijing is progressing so smartly that the International Olympic Committee is urging it to slow down.

"I would say on-schedule rather than ahead of schedule," cautions Wang. "The original plan was to have everything completed by 2006. But that would have left us with a maintenance issue involving additional costs. So on the IOC's advice, we readjusted to the end of 2007. That still allows enough time for test events and trial runs."

Beijing does construction the same way it does most everything else, unrelentingly and fast. All over town you can see the ideogram "chai" (meaning "tear down") branded on vacant apartment blocks. People are being evicted from their homes and given compensation from the government or developer so they might find new housing. But only a fraction of that change is Olympics-related. Most is part of the churn, economic development for its own sake, in the busiest country on earth.

The Olympics, says another BOCOG executive vice president Jiang Xiaoyu, will make Beijing "a permanently modern city."

Permanently modern, perhaps. But permanently impermanent. Four years ago the IOC gave the Games to Beijing. In three years the city that actually stages them won't be even remotely the same place.