Sept 2005 - Association of Dutch Businessmen

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ASIA For Fame & Glory - The 30 th Olympic Games in Beijing By Barry Doesburg The 117 th International Olympic Committee Meeting in Singapore was not one to be missed. For sure the media did not. From July 6 th to 9 th the entire IOC, over 100 voting members, together with the organizing committees of the five candidate cities gathered in the Raffles Ballroom of the Raffles City Convention Centre to elect the host city of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in 2012. London beat Paris in the final round of voting by 54 votes to 50. This will be the first time that a city will host the Olympic Games for the third time. London hosted the Games in 1908 and 1948. The other Candidate Cities Paris, New York, Moscow and Madrid were thanked by IOC President Jacques Rogge for their excellent efforts and the quality of their candidatures. Once more, it became clear that the Olympic Games are much more than just a sporting event. History, pride, patriotism, politics, media attention, tourism, enormous budgets boosting the economy and infrastructure, are raising the stakes high. The toughest and most prestigious battles are fought seven years before the torch even hits the fire. The British brought Tony Blair and David Beckham; the French had Jacques Chirac to support their bid. The IOC itself is not very shy of prestige either. It is full of royalty: Prince Willem Alexander of Orange, Le Grand-Duc de Luxembourg, Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, HRH Princess Royal of Great Britain and Price Albert II of Monaco are all members. China knows it, desperately needs it and no doubt will make the Games to a big success, the Chinese way. The dragon has many faces. And the timing is perfect! Some Background The Beijing 2008 Games will take place from 8 August 2008 until 24 August 2008. Approximately 10,500 athletes are expected to participate in the Games with around 20,000 reporters, photographers and cameramen bringing the Games to the world. That’s 2 media staff for each athlete! The official emblem of Beijing 2008 entitled “Chinese Seal-Dancing Beijing” combines the Chinese seal and the art of calligraphy with sporting features, transforming the elements into a human figure running forward and embracing triumph. The figure resembles the Chinese character “Jing”, which stands for the name of the host city and represents a particularly significant Chinese style. The artwork embodies four messages: Chinese culture, the color of red China, Beijing welcomes friends from all over the world and to promote the Olympic motto of ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Faster, Higher, Stronger). Economics & Infrastructure Beijing will experience a major boost in its world standing in connection with the Olympics and is hoping to cash in with total investments in the city expected to exceed US$182 billion. Of this US$34 billion will be pumped into the city’s infrastructure and service industry and more than US$36 billion in the development of finance, trade, logistics, exhibitions and tourism sectors. Another US$3.7 billion will go on 400km of new expressways, US$6.7 billion on public transport (among others 4 new subway lines) and other roads and US$4.4 billion on environment protection. And so it goes on. Altogether it will be one of the largest construction projects ever in China since the construction of the Great Wall. Beijing mayor Wang Qishan explained that in terms of urban development, China’s capital lagged far behind previous host cities as Sydney and Atlanta. It still has 400 villages on its outskirts and hotels and hospitals are all concentrated in the city centre. One of the most urgent needs is to develop housing, roads and other infrastructure in outlying areas to diffuse the 14 million people and 2 million cars (The Straits Times, 21/05/2005). To improve the safety of the athletes and all visitors during the Games. The security budget is likely to top the US$1.3 billion spent in Athens. Other cities will be involved as well in the Olympics. The Organising Committee for the Games (BOCOG) has announced that partnership agreements have been signed with four cities outside Beijing, that will host the football preliminaries during the 2008 Games: Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Qinhuangdao. The equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong for the welfare of the horses. The Olympic village, which covers a total area of 66 hectares, lies at the North end of Beijing’s central axis and has the Olympic Forrest Park to its North and the major Olympic venues to its South. The village will join a long list of important sites 11 Vol.15 • No. 7 • September 2005
ASIA It is expected that the Games will at least add another 0.3-0.4% to the gross domestic product. Western economists assume that the Olympic Games speed up the development and may save as much as ten years. According to the Beijing City Tax Department for every 10 billion yuan spent on the Olympics, GDP will increase with 3.7 billion yuan. www.as-p.de on the central axis, including the Forbidden City - getting a thorough makeover before the Games - and the Temple of Heaven. Once the Games are over, the village will be taken over by a private development company, who will remodel the apartments into residential buildings. Architecture It is expected that the Games will at least add another 0.3-0.4% to the gross domestic product. Western economists assume that the Olympic Games speed up the development and may save as much as ten years. According to the Beijing City Tax Department for every 10 billion yuan spent on the Olympics, GDP will increase with 3.7 billion yuan. The sector likely to benefit most from the Games is of course the construction industry; they are winners already. The reinvention of Beijing as a modern international city ready to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games has presented Chinese planners with a dilemma - how to reconcile imported design ideas from the West with China’s unique architectural heritage. A score of landmark projects defining the future face of Beijing has been awarded to foreign architects. For example, what is dubbed Beijing’s first European-style skyscraper, which will host the headquarters of China Central Television, is on the drawing boards of Dutch architects from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. One of the most interesting projects is that of renowned German architect, Albert Speer Jr., who has designed an ambitious plan to build a 25- kilometer boulevard (north-south axis) across the city that will connect the new Olympic Park in the north with the Imperial Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the city center. This urban planner happens to be the son of Adolf Hitler’s personal architect, Albert Speer and the choice has stirred many ghosts from the past in Germany, where architects have suggested that there is an uncanny parallel between the Beijing axis of Albert Speer Jr. and the north-south axis planned by the elder Speer for Hitler’s new Berlin, which was to be called “world capital Germania”. Of this great world capital, which was to house ten million and be completed in 1950, only the foundations were ever laid, when the big chancellery of Germania was built in 1936. The sixty-eight-year-old Speer responds to these accusations of having dug up a Nazi town planning project with these words: “It is an unfortunate fact that comparisons with my father are inevitable, but I want to help ferry Beijing into the new millennium. The Berlin project in the ’30s was just megalomania”. Setting aside these likeline, Speer Jr’s project offers a number of responses to urban issues in Beijing. Above all, its big pollution problem is solved by recycling water or rainwater, use of alternative energy sources and environmentally sustainable factories. Politics When IOC excluded South Africa from the Games between 1964 and 1992 due to the apartheid system, it made a rare principle action to make South Africa aware that its policies did not meet international standard. The Free Tibet Campaign claims now that the IOC is measuring double standards and has opposed Beijing’s bid and calls on the IOC to put human rights at the top of the agenda. Supporters within the IOC suggested that the Olympic Games would facilitate an improvement in human rights. Reuters reported in January 2001, even before the bid, that Liu Qi, Mayor of Beijing and now President of the BOCOG, told an Olympics rally in September 2000 that the city would “resolutely smash and crack down on Falun Gong and other evil cults”, and drive away beggars, the homeless and prostitutes to prepare for the 2008 bid. And just over a week after the IOC decision in July 2001, Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing made a direct link between Beijing’s success in being granted the 2008 Olympic Games and the regime’s crackdown on Falun Gong. Very different visions altogether but they all use the Games as a political tool. Jacques Rogge: “On the issue of human rights... the IOC will make sure that within its sphere, which is sport, that all the human rights are totally respected.” Another issue is that of the political status of Taiwan. The Republic of China (ROC) competed as Chinese Taipei at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. In addition, a flag was especially designed for the games separate from the flag of the Republic of China. The ROC flag is banned at the Olympic Games. In Mainland China, the team is known as the “Zhongguo Taibei Team” (Taipei, China, where China implies the PRC) and in Taiwan the team is known as the “Zhonghua Team” (another variation of the term China, but obtained here as 12 Vol.15 • No. 7 • September 2005
Page 1 and 2: September 2005 MITA 373/03/2001
Page 3 and 4: A monthly publication of the Associ
Page 5 and 6: BUSINESS A global financial informa
Page 7 and 8: BUSINESS An inspiring speech and an
Page 9: BUSINESS the doctors started crying
Page 13 and 14: SINGAPORE The transformation of Sin
Page 15 and 16: BIZZ AGENDA World Food Fair 2005 Ta
Page 17 and 18: DUTCH NEWS 2005, Dutch Media/Newspa
Page 19 and 20: POP & DROP A QUESTION Banda Aceh, w
Page 21: ASSOCIATION INFO New Members Pieter

Sept 2005 - Association of Dutch Businessmen

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