Beijing to host the 2022 Winter Olympics
Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics. The city beat out Almaty, Kazakhstan, which was the only other bid. This will make Beijing the first city in over a century to host the summer and winter Olympics.
These games come at a very different time in China’s economic life than the 2008 games. “China was a very different country in 2001,” says Rob Schmitz, Marketplace China correspondent. “Things were looking up. The economy was going crazy. It was going almost at double digit speed,” he says. “In the years leading up to 2008, we had 10 to 14 percent GDP growth. That’s not the case anymore. We’ve got 5 to 7 percent GDP growth and things are slowing down.”
The games will happen seven years from now, and China will have to build the infrastructure to support the Olympics. “China’s trying to change the way that its economy is run. They’re trying to turn from an infrastructure-led economy to a consumer-growth-led economy. And here we have a huge, huge infrastructure project,” Schmitz says. “This is the old model of growth. This is not the direction that China wants to go with its economy on paper at least.”
Pollution was a big issue for the Summer Olympics and will affect the Winter Olympics as well. “Beijing has made some significant efforts, some significant movement, on the pollution issue,” Schmitz says. “Realistically, there’s going to be a lot of pollution for years to come. What we’ll probably see is a repeat of the 2008 Olympics, where they flipped the switch and basically had all these restrictions on factories, and when it’s done, start it all over.”
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
