Winter Games 2022 in Beijing: Olympic melts – Tagesspiegel

21:31 clock From Benedikt Voigt <- self.position: 1 -> <- classid: hcf center -> <- position: center -> <- text position: hcf text-left -> <- inisprint: false -> <- inhaspic: true ->

Beijing was the first city will be the Olympic Summer Games and Winter Games aligns. After winning the bid for Beijing 2022, however, it rained criticism from all sides.

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Thousands of Beijing citizens flocked evening to Tiananmen Square, car horns sounded, national flags stuck in the evening sky. “Long live the motherland”, called by students who had climbed on a traffic light, others voted even an old propaganda song on: “Without the Communist Party there would be no new China”. So thrilled Beijing had celebrated the contract for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games 14 years ago. On Friday, however, after the second award of the Olympic Games in Beijing, we saw hardly celebrating Chinese in the entertainment district of Sanlitun. “We are not so enthusiastic, because it’s all about Winter Games,” said the Beijing Wu Xiaowen of the “New York Times”, “we do not these sports and also not look at these games.”

The Olympic Winter Games in 2022 will therefore take place in a city that has little snow, hardly any water and no winter sports tradition. The fact that the General Assembly of the International Olympic Committee in Kuala Lumpur has nevertheless decided to Beijing, was also recalled that the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after the cancellation of Stockholm, Oslo, Krakow and Munich had no real choice.

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Beijing will be the third East Asian city in a row, the Olympic Games aligns

The Kazakh city of Almaty as the only remaining competitor had gone as an outsider in the race, but could nevertheless on real snow, existing sports venues and winter sports experience point. “Keeping it real” was the consistent slogan of the Kazakh application. At the end of Almaty was beaten narrowly in a vote overshadowed by technical difficulties with 40 to 44 votes

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The members of the Beijing bid committee jumped jubilantly on, as IOC President Thomas Bach, the sign “Beijing 2022″ held in the cameras. The games will be “in our country, in Asia and around the world promote the incredible potential of winter sports,” promised “Beijing 2022″ in an initial statement. The good sporting experience from 2008, the financial strength of the Chinese government and the major economic development opportunities that China may offer to winter sports, were the main pluses of China’s application. Around 300 million Chinese in North China could be enthusiastic about the winter sports by the Winter Games, Beijing had promised. The Chinese application was launched in 2013 as a trial balloon and had only won by the withdrawal of the European competitors of seriousness.

Beijing will now be the first city, the Summer Games and Winter Games aligns. In addition, the Chinese capital after Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo in 2020 to be the third East Asian city in a row, which hosts the Olympic Games. In this region hosting the Games is still apparently as an expression of national strength, while in many Western countries the population shrink from the high cost. As has been seen recently with the withdrawal of Boston as a candidate city for 2024. The IOC has the 2020 reform agenda launched for this reason, among others, which should bring more sustainability and less cost. Beijing but can ensure conditionally only.

The city is struggling with traffic and air pollution

While Beijing will reuse in 2022 six sports facilities that were built for the 2008 Summer Games. Among other things, the opening and closing ceremonies will be held in the Bird’s Nest. But bobsled and luge track and the alpine competitions will be held in Yanqing 70 km away, biathletes, cross-country skiers or snowboarders must go to 140 kilometers northeast of Beijing located Zhangjiakou. A yet-to-build high-speed train with media work space, so courted Beijing will connect the Olympic sites. With three billion dollars the cost of Beijing 2022 are estimated low, compared with the $ 50 billion that should have cost Sochi 2014. But in Beijing’s calculations about the infrastructure costs for the high-speed train and the Olympic roads to Zhangjiakou not listed.

In addition, the critical issues that have overshadowed Beijing 2008, more relevant than ever. The city is struggling with pollution and traffic, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated dramatically recently, the authoritarian government made more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists arrested. In press freedom index of “Reporters without Borders” China fell from place 167 (2008) at No. 175 (2014), continue to the Internet is censored massively

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Human rights activists criticize the choice of Beijing. She was “a slap in the face,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Olympic motto ‘Faster, higher, stronger’ is the perfect description for the attack of the Chinese Government on the civilian population.” For the Tibet Initiative Germany, the IOC had “the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time sent”.

However, the IOC has the promise of the Beijing organizers familiar to want to deliver “excellent Games”. For the lack of real snow enough water and artificial snow machines were ready, they said. Prompt Beijing had recruiters read on Twitter jokes about faking what the Chinese might indeed very well. The Winter Games in Beijing in 2022 but they could now receive, which are reality since Friday

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