China's drive to host best Olympic games

The 100,000-seat national athletics stadium, encased in a transparent membrane and supported by steel mesh, is known as the Bird's Nest.

In her little brick home deep in the hutongs, the residential alleyways of old Beijing, Shao Liu is counting the days to the Olympic Games' opening ceremony. China has just beaten Brazil in volleyball and Shao Liu, a serene 59-year-old, glows with quiet pride.

A David Beckham poster hangs in a window next door. Like her neighbours, Shao Liu follows any sport in which China is involved, and her ageing TV dominates the tiny lounge of the compact home where she has lived for 28 years.

Ticket prices being what they are, watching on TV is the closest Shao Liu and her neighbours are likely to get to the games Beijing will host in three years, but any disappointment is muted.

"I am very happy the Olympics will be in Beijing," the retired factory worker says through an interpreter. It is China's chance to shine, not just on the medal table but in revealing itself to the world.

National pride apart, it's difficult to see how residents in the hutongs will gain from China's hosting of the the multi-billion-dollar 29th Olympic Games.

Shao Liu's home is one of 11 clustered around a courtyard, extended families sharing a single toilet. Although vast swathes of hutong and siheyan (courtyard-style housing blocks) have been cleared under Beijing's juggernaut modernisation, this is still how many of the city's 13 million residents live. These are not slums, but existence can be hand-to-mouth.

Stewing in a taxi that has crawled all of 100 metres in 10 minutes, or stumbling over hawkers in the subway, it's tempting to wonder not what Beijingers will make of the Olympic Games but what the Olympic Games will make of Beijing.

August, when the games are held, is not quite as hot as mid-July, when daytime temperatures reach the mid-30s, but still steamy. Electricity supply remains knife-edge in the summer, when even modest homes run cheap air-conditioning units.

The city is cocooned in pollution - a fog-like layer euphemistically called mist. Main roads, which form a perfect chessboard on this billiard-table-flat landscape, are jammed all day with ageing Japanese and newer European cars. Diesel fumes belch from rusting buses.

Subway trains look as if they belong in the same museum as Auckland's recycled relics. Thousands still get around by bicycle.

But there's a Prada or Gucci sign on every upmarket boulevard - the new Beijing is a collision of West and East, of old and new.

In three years' time, 10,000 athletes, 20,000 journalists and as many as one million visitors from the world's richest nations will be thrown into this mix.

No one here believes Beijing won't take the Olympics in its stride.

"We should do a better job than Sydney," beams Stella, a 23-year-old tour guide. "Because there are one billion people in China, there are one billion ideas.

"Sydney was excellent. Everyone in China thinks we are going to outdo Sydney."

The full apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party, the municipal government and the Beijing organising committee are behind this exercise in national pride and international oneupmanship. These games are not only the People's Olympics but the Green Olympics and the High-tech Olympics.

Billions have been invested in identifying and training thousands of prospective medal winners, billions more in showing the world that China has "arrived".

Locals are not cynical, perhaps reflecting a media that still has to watch its back.

"We want to know how good our athletes are at home. We are excited to see how much it does for the city," Stella says.

Right now, Beijing is a work in progress. Counting the cranes on the skyline, it's understandable that China uses an estimated 40 per cent of the world's cement and is distorting the international market for steel.

Sturdy office and apartment towers have sprawled outwards from the city centre and wide boulevards with glass-fronted retailing give the city an international flavour.

Early post-Mao construction paid homage to Chinese architectural tradition, but more recent additions are cutting-edge and controversial. Stunning newcomers include the National Theatre, a glass dome surrounded by water known as the Duck Egg, designed by Frenchman Paul Andreu, and the Z Crisscross, the China TV headquarters designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

But behind the glitzy face is a body in need of repair. Infrastructure, particularly roads and public transport, has struggled to keep pace.

Last year, 100 million sq m of floor space was added to the city. About $20 billion was invested in real estate, mostly apartments and villas. Some of this development would have happened anyway, but the Olympics has accelerated the process. Even bigger money is being poured into roads and rail. Four underground lines, three bridges and 59 roads will be built in time for the games and a high-tech airport terminal is planned. Total infrastructure investment last year was 500 billion yuan ($88 billion).

The main Olympic venues and Olympic village will be clustered on a 517,000 sq m site in the city's north, linked to the city centre by a dedicated roadway and subway.

Although the city may not grind to an Atlanta-style halt, a big challenge for organisers is the cloying pollution. Some of the fog-like haze which hangs over the city mid-summer is temporary - blamed on a combination of construction dust and "atmospherics".

Some factories, including Capital Steel, have been forced from the city and others are being upgraded. New vehicle emission standards and better quality petrol are being ushered in. Natural gas heating will gradually reduce coal use.

Shao Shiwei, a deputy communications director with the Beijing Olympics organising committee, is confident the measures will ensure the games take place under a "clear, blue sky".

As Greece struggled to have venues ready for last year's historic return of the Olympics, a joke did the rounds that Beijing would be ready before Athens. That's not the case, with work on 11 stadiums and the Olympic village still at the foundation stage, but there's little doubt they'll be ready in time.

Most spectacular is the 100,000-seat national athletics stadium designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Encased in a transparent membrane supported by steel mesh, it is known as the Bird's Nest.

Alongside it, the Water Cube - the 17,000-seat national aquatics centre - is almost as striking, its walls and roof resembling flowing water.

Official estimates put the construction costs, including new and refurbished venues and roading and rail links, at $23 billion. Operating costs are a snip at $2.3 billion, considerably less than Athens.

There seems a genuine effort to avoid the budget blowouts and running losses synonymous with recent games. Work on the national stadium was halted for a while last year for a redesign to trim costs. The retractable roof was cancelled and capacity reduced by 9000 seats. Existing facilities such as the dated Workers Stadium are being refurbished rather than replaced.

After the games, the venue for fencing and air-pistol events will become the National Convention Centre.

Two-thirds of the seating in the aquatics centre will make way for a movie theatre and the area opened to the public. The Olympic Village will be added to the city's housing stock.

Public-private partnerships, inconceivable in Mao's time, will fund much of the construction. The national stadium will be jointly run with a private investment consortium for 30 years before reverting to the municipal government.

Highway and subway construction is being financed in the same way. Line 4, one of four new metro lines, will be operated for 30 years by Hong Kong Metro Corporation, which is providing $800 million in equipment with the municipal government funding the $1.8 billion construction.

"Giving management of public utilities to private companies reduces the burden on the people and the state and will be better for development," says the organising committee's Shao Shiwei. "China is a big market in the process of economic development - it is very attractive to foreign investors."

Nevertheless, locals expect to pay more in taxes - they just don't know how much. "I have no idea," says tour guide Stella. "The company I work for doesn't tell me."

The Government has already signalled that food prices will rise 2 per cent at six-monthly intervals next year. "Some people will struggle," says Stella, "but Chinese people accept these things. It's not that bad - a lot of people have more salary too. Five years ago, earning 3000 yuan ($550) a month was big money. Not so now."

Despite concern about the costs and the impact on what's left of Beijing's Ming heritage, the redevelopment is broadly welcomed. The municipal government has introduced laws to preserve what is left of the siheyuan and hutong. For all their charm, sanitation and roading improvements were sorely needed.

Hundreds of thousands have been uprooted and forced to take government-backed loans to live in apartments. But as long as living standards continue to rise, locals accept the party line about the greater good.

The roading programme will do much to ease traffic flows, says Stella. Construction work will bring more jobs, although most will be filled by transient labourers from outside Beijing - and new hotels will need staff.

The municipal government estimates the games will generate 2.1 million jobs and is promising to train 800,000 volunteers.

The thousands who come for the Olympics, and the estimated four billion watching on TV, will still be enchanted by a culture and heritage from the early Ming Dynasty to Mao.

The chessboard street pattern follows a blueprint laid down by Emperor Yongle in the early-1400s.

The Forbidden City, just north of Tiananmen Square in the city's heart, is a vast monument to an architectural tradition still reflected in the upturned eaves and pagoda roofs of office and apartment buildings.

Remnants of the old city walls - ordered to be demolished during the cultural revolution - are now tourist attractions.

In parks such as the Temple of Heaven Park, people gather early each morning to keep cultural traditions such as tai chi alive.

But games followers will also see a city hellbent on modernisation, eager to take its place on the world stage.

The risk is that the Olympics will tilt the balance between old and new, and East and West, forever.