Related stories

Bazaar Beliefs: The Dao of the Beijing Antiquarian A Walking Tour of Beijing - The Eastern Route A Lingering Memory: THE BEIJINGER Photographers Reveal the True Beijing The 16th Macao Arts Festival 2005

Life After the Games

The athletes, journalists and hordes of foreign visitors have boarded their planes, and the sounds of cheering and celebration are fading away. The 2008 Summer Games are over, and Beijing can finally take a well-earned breather. After a Herculean, seven-year effort and the euphoric highs of those 16 memorable days in August and 11 days in September, what does the future hold for a post-Olympic Chinese capital?

It is clear that Beijingers can and should feel proud that their city carried off the Games in such a welcoming, spectacular and successful style. Olympic headlines were predominantly about sport, which is how it should be. Audiences around the world were wowed by some truly beautiful exhibitions of Chinese culture and technology, as well as some gripping displays of sporting excellence. Millions around the globe saw and experienced China properly for the first time, and first impressions were overwhelmingly positive.

Despite accusations of missed opportunities from some quarters, and worries about an economic slowdown in others, these Games have given Beijing the perfect springboard to continue its development in the right direction. Locals and expats alike have all seen how much more pleasant this city can be when skies are blue and traffic isn’t backed up from Tiananmen to Tianjin: now is the time to make the temporary upgrade a permanent one.

Green technology and heightened eco-awareness were both key features of these Games, and the government deserves support and praise for its Olympic drive toward sustainability. We aren’t going to see the back of coal-fired power stations in China for years to come, nor are the country’s other serious environmental problems going to disappear overnight. However, these Games have shown the world that Beijing is committed to tackling a whole raft of challenging issues, and that encouragement rather than criticism is generally far more constructive.   

Sustainability was certainly in mind when Beijing’s new Olympic venues were on the drawing board. For the 2004 Games in Greece, Athens spent more than $3 billion developing 36 sites, most of which now lie derelict and empty. Even the Greek government has belatedly conceded a dire lack of planning.

Luckily it seems that Beijing has learned from Athens’ mistakes. The athletes’ village will become a high-end apartment development, the Olympic Park will come into play as Beijing’s “green lung,” and the various stadia will be transformed into sports centres, public leisure facilities and exhibition halls.

From transport and communications through to sporting and entertainment venues, Beijing now has some fantastic infrastructure, most of it built to cost and on schedule. In a country notorious for its over-budget and woefully delayed civil engineering projects (Channel Tunnel, Millennium Dome, and, already, its Olympic cost overruns), it will be interesting to see how London compares when preparing for the next Games in 2012. I hope they’re digging the foundations already.