David Emerson, Minister of International Trade who visited Beijing two months ago is a “China expert”. He expressed his deep impression of the photos to the media.

He said even though he personally went to Beijing many times and knows about the country well, yet these pictures still give him a strong impression on Beijing’s traditional buildings and its unique culture.

Exhibit is a good opportunity for Canadians to know more about Olympics, about Beijing, about China, he told reporters.

The exhibit consists of four sections: the traditional landscape of the capital, modern display of the city, culture and arts and citizen expecting Olympics. The exhibit will last until March 2nd.

Officials said they planed to have all 90 subway stations equipped with security-checking facilities by Olympics.
“Only one or two terrorist groups are capable of carrying out attacks in northeast Asia, and their ability to operate within China’s tightly controlled society is very limited, The KNBC quoting
Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, author of the book “Inside al-Qaida — Global Network of Terror.” (more on China fears terrorist at Beijing Olympics…)

Even though China is said to be the last territory that terrorists would ever touch on, security is still among the top concerns of the country.

Yongkang Zhou,  Minister of Public Security in China, expressed the potential challenge of terrorism to the China Daily last year. (more on the story…) 

“Although the general security situation for the Beijing Olympics remains stable, we still face the challenges of terrorism, separatism and extremism,” the minister said.

“Terrorism, in particular, poses the biggest threat.”

More than 80,000 police and security staff will be sent on spot during the games.

Zhenkuan Ding, deputy chief of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Work Safety, said two workers were killed at the National Stadium in accidents in 2006 and 2007.
Since 2003, Beijing has been building or renovating 31 competition stadiums and 45 training facilities in order to run Olympics in August 2008.

Work safety is a major issue in China. Construction workers and miners are on the top of the list holding the most dangerous jobs. Workers can be cheated on by their construction labor contractors, while the government has no clue. So, the first thing to do is to complete legislation so to protect the workers’ rights. Independent parties such as a work union is also essential to address issues on workers’ rights.

According to New York Time’s reporting, however, Beijing’s total figure of six deaths would rank well below the toll in 2004, when Athens was the host of the Games. At least 14 workers died in Athens Olympic construction.

Snowstorm having paralyzed southeast China raised some concerns about the dramatic weather change during the Olympics. (click here to see more on snowstorms in South China…)

On Jan. 30th ‘s Olympic preparation press conference, Jianjie Wang, the Bureau Chief of Beijing Weather Bureau concluded that success experiment on controlling the chance of rain at the opening day has been achieved.
According to the China News Agency, the preparation on weather conditions during the Beijing Olympics has been done successfully.

The weather Bureau analyzed Beijing’s weather conditions of the past thirty years and concluded that the chance of rain at the opening day is 47 per cent, while the chance of storm rain is very slow.

When I deliver the news to some of my foreign friends, they are literally shocked and take it more as a joke—“manipulating the weather?”

China is known for constantly manipulating the weather. I still remember in middle-school science book, there is a chapter called artificial rain. I thought it was universal by then. Only after I came to North America did I find out people never used it here. I wonder why. They don’t have the technology?…Or they simply don’t need it?

Again, it dawned on me that the answer all came to the population. Geographically, China has huge land—the third largest in the world. But once divided by its population, each individual’s property is small. Artificial rain fertilizes the exhausted land so to make full use of it. (more on the population in China…)

On the other hand, it is also the huge population that helps to achieve the impossible—to fight the flood of year 98, to control SARS of year 03, and to keep functioning during the ever-massive snowstorm of this year.

Will Olympics be the nation’s next achievement?

The American housing price turmoil (click here to read more on U.S. housing price crash…)alarmed its major trading partner—China. In recent years, China’s housing price has been skyrocketing, partially ascribed to the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. Many people take investment in real estate as the most lucrative deal. (read more on China’s housing price)

But the recent turbulence of American economy raised a little bit concern of what is going to happen in China. Is Beijing’s housing price going to tumble down after the 2008 Olympics?

It is less likely to happen and the housing price will still be rising, experts say.

When we look at the former Olympics host cities, we may have more confidence in Beijing’s housing price.

Greek housing prices rose dramatically during a period of 1995 to 2002, after Olympics in 1993. The growth rate is up to 65 per cent. Along the two main subway lines, the growth rate of the housing prices has reached as much as 110 per cent.

But the local residents didn’t really buy into the price. Three factors contributed to this. First off, Greece is not so much internationalized with foreign bureaus and offices. There were no such needs. Secondly, Greece is the country with huge land and few people. Over 80 per cent of the population owns private housing. Few people want new house.The private-owing system has existed for long in Greece. Some of the properties were handed down from older generation so it lacks motivation in land development. (more on Greece Olympics…)

After 1993’s Sydney Olympics, flooding investments prop up the housing price. In the following seven to eight years, the housing price of the city doubled. Many new immigrants turned to millionaires, thanks to the prosperous housing market. This growth had been lasting until the end of 2003, almost 10 years after the Olympics.

The city will dedicate lanes to Olympic traffic and increase public transportation with new shuttle buses to accommodate visitors and local residents, an article in The Beijing News said. (more on the story in Chinese)
“The task of controlling pollution and traffic congestion is arduous,” Guo Jinlong, the acting mayor of Beijing, said Sunday, the state media reported.

The number of vehicles in the city was expected to reach 3.3 million by August, meaning that roughly 1.65 million cars and trucks would be pulled off roads each day, according to The Beijing News.

“If Beijing had focused on construction of subway instead of the five rings, Beijing’s public transportation would have been far more efficient than it is today.” said Ning Ni, a scholar with People’s University of China.

Realizing more effort on the upper-ground level would only bring more cars on the street, the central government started to focus on the underground construction—the subway.

Since subway line 5 was put into effect last October, the subway ticket has been reduced to two yuan from five yuan with transfers involving subway line 13 and subway line 8, which travels to beyond the fifth ring.

Now the subway line 10 and the Olympics Special line are both under construction.

Beijing’s traffic is also a result of the souring housing prices.

The average of 2000 U.S. dollars per square-meter in downtown Beijing far more over-exceeded the average annual salary of 5000 U.S. dollars—according to Beijing Statistics Bureau 2006. This means, Beijingers’ annual salary could only buy them 2 square-meters. A 100-square –meter apartment could cost them at least 50 years. (more on the salary in China)

Therefore, most people live outside the central city and work in downtown area. They depend on public transportation a lot. They spend as long as two hours on the way to work everyday.

“How can you blame it? That is the price of living in the capital city,” said Ping Zhong, a newly post-graduate working with the Art Gallery of Beijing.

This month, 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is one of the hot topics on the annual conference of the Finance Magazine, a major financial magazine in China nationwide.

Will China see “post-Olympic effect”? (more on post-Olympic effect on Chinese media…)

“Post-Olympic effect” refers to the phenomenon that the host countries of Olympic games will encounter economic downturn upon finishing the games.

On the conference, Min Zhu, deputy president of Bank of China, delivered a detailed speech on “post-Olympic effect”, with analyzing the data the bank collected. The causes of “post-Olympic effect” are: investment leap before Olympics, consumption leap due to the jamming travelers in the host cities, and the considerable amount of maintenance fee of the construction.

In history, fast economic growth before Olympics is widely witnessed, whereas, economic downturns are always unavoidable.

According to Zhu, as one of the major sponsors of Beijing Olympics, Bank of China has reviewed the Olympic effects in the past 12 years since 1960. For eight years among the twelve, economic growth during eight years’ preparation of Olympics is faster than the previous eight years. GDP growth rate is around 0.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent. In nine years of twelve, the economic growth during the eight years of post-Olympics is slower than the previous eight years. The economic growth rate is around 0.4 per cent to 2.5 per cent. Therefore, it is expected that the economic growth during Olympics is fast but economic downturn during post-Olympics is unavoidable.

Further analysis shows that this phenomenon mostly happens in small countries, not in big countries. Exceptions are America in 1996, Russia in 1980 and German in 1972.

Zhu then concluded that there is correlation between the economic growth rate of a country and the country scale. The economic scale of big countries is big. The Olympics’ impact on big countries is relatively limited. And the “post-Olympic effect” will not necessarily occur in China.

-By Shanshan Lu-

Japanese Industry News

predicts China’s economy will realize soft landing after 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is predicted that the overall direct and indirect investment will have mounted up to 4000 million dollars by then. Half of the investment came from field and building constructions.

According to the China National Information Center, Olympics have contributed a two percent raise annually from 2002 to 2007. Experts say Beijing Olympics won’t result in economic downturn, as opposed to Japan’s 1964 Olympic Games, according to the magazine.

East Aisa Economy Review, on the other hand, predicted China’s economy will confront side effects of hot economy after 2008. According to its analyses, Olympics will bring in too much currency trading, which will result in hot economy and essentially—inflation. The current economic growth of 12 per cent is exceeding China’s potential capacity of economic growth. Therefore, economic adjustment is necessary after year 2008. If the central government is unable to control the tendency of “over-heating”, then the economic growth rate will be even higher. And there will appear economy bubble in real estate industry.

Take Japan for example. Japan experienced severe economic depression and security crisis after holding 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. But Japan have successfully recovered from it and achieved jack-ups after a short period of time. Japan’s success is as a result of the common use of high technology, improved ability of exporting, high needs of national commodities.

But China’s situation is fairly different. China doesn’t possess some of the key elements under the current situation, which are needed for economic recovery. Some of the concerns are the raising price of oil and rice and the high fluid of currency, which never happened in Japan.