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Beijing makes good time with 2008 preparations
The huge digital clock on Beijing's Tiananmen Square shows there are still some 1,100 days until the start of the 2008 Olympics. The Chinese capital, however, is already well on its way towards being ready.
Eight of the 11 new venues planned for the Beijing Games are under construction, the rest will be before the end of this year and ground has been broken on key support buildings, from the sprawling Olympic Village to a high-tech communications centre. "Preparations for the Beijing Olympics are going according to schedule and progressing relatively smoothly," Liu Qi, president of the 2008 Beijing Olympic organising committee, said last week. "All the venues will be finished in 2007, and surrounding roads and bridges will also be completed on time," the online edition of Hong Kong's Phoenix television quoted Liu as saying. Following this month's subway and bus bombings that killed more than 50 people in London, host of the 2012 Olympics, Chinese officials have been talking about stepping up security for the 2008 Games but have revealed little in the way of specific plans. "Especially after the London bombings, we have again raised the safety and security requirements for the Beijing Olympics," Liu said, without elaborating. Last week, Beijing police were ordered to carry out their duties "based on the standards set for the coming Olympic Games" and to begin implementing new security checks for large public events so that flaws could be ironed out before the August 8-24 2008 Games, the official Xinhua news agency said. "There are only around 1,000 days to go before the Olympic Games in 2008," the China Daily quoted Beijing police chief Ma Zhenchuan as saying. "We have to use every opportunity to raise our risk management abilities towards terrorist attacks and familiarise ourselves with high security inspections for the Olympic Games." BUDGET INCREASED Beijing has hiked up its original $1.625-billion operating budget for the Games to closer to $2 billion due in part to security concerns after the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States. But the city has also been trying to tighten its belt, with measures such as further reducing already scaled-back plans for the "bird's nest" National Stadium, the site of the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics competitions. The shift of the equestrian events to Hong Kong should help the economy drive, allowing planners to avoid the costs and headaches of building a venue and quarantine facilities. While the steel bones of the National Stadium are already visible above ground, work on the National Indoor Stadium, the gymnastics and handball venue designed to evoke a folding Chinese fan, the Olympic wrestling facility and the Laoshan Velodrome for cycling have started only in the past few months. As of early June, China's total investment in five main Olympic venues had hit 30.7 billion yuan ($3.79 billion), with more than 12 billion yuan slated to go to the sites this year alone, the semi-official English version of the People's Daily said. Organisers' estimates of the total bill for the 2008 Olympics have risen to $40 billion from $37 billion, with most of the money targeted for new roads and subway lines and efforts to improve the city's power grid and environment. Almost 90 billion yuan would be poured into 60 key construction projects this year, the People's Daily said. SATELLITE LAUNCH The loftiest Games-related projects is the planned August launch of a small satellite that will take up an orbit over Beijing and snap a picture a week of the city to keep track of construction on and around the Olympic Green. "Once it is in orbit, even the smallest illegal building in the area will not be able to hide," Beijing science official Li Shizhu was quoted as saying by the Beijing Morning Post. In a sign of the prestige Beijing is giving the Games, the Olympic Green and the Olympic Village have been located on the ancient north-south axis that bisects the Forbidden City and other imperial landmarks and used to represent the Chinese emperor's central position in the nation. "Beijing's Olympic Village will set a record by housing the largest number of athletes for the longest duration of time in Olympic history," Xinhua has boasted. The city is looking so far ahead it is already screening big names to direct its opening and closing ceremonies. The list of bidders for the directing chair reads like a who's who of the Chinese film world, including global commercial successes Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. The native heroes could face stiff competition from a formidable Hollywood contender, none other than Steven Spielberg. The director of the ceremonies, and the tentative plans for the events themselves, should be announced in September.
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