In the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Chinese government officials at both the central and municipal levels are keenly aware that they must transform Beijing into a world-class city. Indeed, China's capital is woefully unprepared for what will undoubtedly be the single largest international event that China has ever hosted.

To prepare for the Olympics, Beijing plans to redevelop large tracts of central city real estate, extend its urban transportation infrastructure, clean up its air, create new parks, and restore historic landmarks

The pressure to transform Beijing will generate numerous benefits; most notably, enduring changes to the city's urban form through the completion of a comprehensive urban regeneration program. Mid-September 2008 is a decidedly harsh and inflexible deadline by which the city will have to resolve numerous longstanding environmental, transportation, and other infrastructure problems. Massive spending on infrastructure projects and related capital construction programs will benefit the municipal economy in the short term by creating jobs.

The pace and scale of investment in urban infrastructure and environmental improvement will accelerate considerably, leaving the city with a major new central park, where there is now none; a much-expanded mass transit system, which will include a sorely needed connection between the north and south areas of the central city; and fi- nally, much more rigorous environmental protection systems and the infrastructure and facilities required to back them up (see Figure 1).

Specifically, Beijing plans to address problems relating to:

• The environment
  Beijing still suffers from severe dust storms, which blanket the city with some 25,700 tons of sandy dust each spring and give rise to the glowing, purplish-orange springtime sunsets for which the city is famous. The city is also home to 110 polluting factories, which ring the inner city, and some 1.17 million automotive vehicles. In addition, around 10-15 percent of the inner city's 6 million residents still heat their homes with coal-burning stoves in the winter, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB).
  
  China's representatives pledged to the International Olympic Committee that, if chosen to host the 2008 Olympics, Beijing would reduce its ambient air pollution to the level of Paris today. To attain this difficult goal, the Chinese government has reportedly earmarked roughly RMB45 billion ($5.4 billion) to resolve some of the city's most serious environmental problems. In an attempt to control the dust storms, Beijing will soon take steps to increase the forested area surrounding the central city by 50 percent by 2005, through the addition of a 125-km tree belt.
  
  In another, dramatic bid to improve the air quality, 90 percent of the city's 20,000-odd public buses will switch from diesel to natural gas by 2008, up from 60 percent today. Sixty percent of the city's 67,000 taxis will also use natural gas by 2008, up from 40 percent today.
  
  Beijing will also move the 110 polluting factories now inside the fourth ring road--which have a total floor area of 6.13 million m2 and primarily serve the chemical, pharmaceutical, and textile industries--to locations outside of the fourth ring road by 2007. According to the Beijing Municipal EPB, this move will cut the total amount of inner-city land devoted to industrial purposes by half, to 7 percent. In addition, to safeguard the quality of water in, around, and under Beijing, the city will require the treatment of 90 percent of its sewage in modern treatment plants by 2010, up from 60 percent today.
  
  
• Transportation
  Traffic in Beijing is frequently snarled--in part because of the excessive number of lowgrade taxis and other similar vehicles that the city has licensed in recent years and because of the shortage of north-south roadways and metro and light-rail links. The phasing out of the small, uncomfortable Xiali taxis, manufactured in Tianjin, which in 2001 accounted for 77.5 percent of the 67,000 taxis licensed to operate in Beijing, was markedly accelerated in early 2002.
  
  The metro system provides inadequate service to the city's northern and southern areas, with one line currently running east-west and the other following the path of the second ring road. Olympic preparation plans include some RMB90 billion ($10.8 billion) for various kinds of transportation improvements to the inner-city light rail system and the metro, the inner-city expressway system, and outlying high-speed expressways, as well as the accelerated completion of the city's ring road system. The Beijing government has made completion of the city's light rail system a high priority over the next five years, with more than 100 km of new light rail currently under construction. Beijing's plans also include the completion of the No.5 metro line, the Batong and Chunyi branch metro lines, and the Wangjing branch line. Within the same time frame, the city will complete preparatory work to launch construction of the No.4 and No.9 metro lines. As a result of this work, by 2006 Beijing will have 138 km of inner-city metro and light rail lines, up from 53 km today (see Figure 2).
  
  The more than 10 expressways that radiate outward from the center of Beijing are the spokes of a system that is giving rise to a dense network of transportation connection points, linking Beijing with its outlying suburban areas. Also by 2006, the city will revamp some 200 km of inner-city roads to form an expressway system and complete the fifth and sixth ring roads, according to the Beijing Municipal Traffic Administration Bureau. In addition, the Bejing-Miyun Expressway, which is currently still in the planning stage, and the third phase of the Beijing- Badaling Expressway are both scheduled for completion by then.
  
  
• Utilities and high technology
  Beijing will use the RMB15 billion ($1.8 billion) that is earmarked for the city's utilities to improve the city's water, power, and gas supplies, according to the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG, see Beijing's 2008 Olympic Organizing Commitee). Within the next five years, Beijing will establish a second Shanxi-Beijing natural gas pipeline, tripling or quadrupling the city's current supply of natural gas. By 2005, BOCOG estimates that electricity use will soar from the present 31.8 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) to 50 billion, with peak period use expected to jump from 67.8 billion to 100 billion kWh.
  
  

  China plans to spend RMB30 billion ($3.6 billion) on "digitalizing Beijing." This will entail upgrading the city's basic information technology and telecommunications infrastructures and districtwide networks of fiber-optic cable.

  China also plans to spend RMB30 billion ($3.6 billion) on "digitalizing Beijing." This will entail upgrading the city's basic information technology and telecommunications infrastructures and districtwide networks of fiber-optic cable. The Chaoyang, Dongcheng, Haidian, Shijingshan, and Fengtai districts will be the highest priority areas for the provision of modern telecommunications infrastructure, and as such will be the city's first platforms for the widespread use of ecommerce, e-administration, and distance education. The Olympic Park area will have access to digital and broadband telecommunications, wireless transmission and networking technologies, and other intelligent technology solutions, according to BOCOG.
  
  
• Heritage and urban regeneration
  In the 1950s, the Beijing government chose not to preserve the whole of the city's historic center, which covered 62 km², on the grounds that it would be too costly and unmanageable. But as the Jianguomenwai central business district, Fuchengmenwai Financial District, and the Wangfujing commercial area continue to expand rapidly, the city's leaders have come to realize that not merely the city's ancient monuments but also the cityscape in older neighborhoods constitute part of the city's charm and character.
  
  The Beijing Municipal Construction Commission issued two regulations in 1999 that identified areas for historic preservation within the second ring road amounting to 5.58 km² (about 9 percent of the area within the second ring road), which was subdivided into 25 sites. This area amounts to 15 picturesque ancient streets, three cultural-historical areas, four enclosed courtyardtype residences (siheyuan), four historical lane areas (hutong), and three major commercial and cultural streets. Almost all of these properties are situated near the Qing Dynasty-era Imperial City. The plan aims to restore ancient sites and monuments gradually back to their original condition and convert the most attractive of them into public museums, thereby expanding the historical areas open to Beijing's tourists.
  Initially the Beijing government did not seem in any hurry to implement the plan, but shortly after the city was granted the 2008 Olympic Games it announced an acceleration of the plan and designated some $208 million to restore historical sites and remove old, dilapidated buildings that surround them.
  

  Upon completion, the Olympic Park will provide a desperately needed new "lung" amidst the miles of macadam ringing Beijing's concrete canyons.

  City officials have also stepped up the removal of slum and substandard housing. Between 1990 and 2000, a total of almost 5 million m² of substandard housing was demolished in Beijing--the equivalent of about 184,000 residential units averaging about 27 m² each--forcing the relocation of some 165,000 urban households. The government wants to demolish an additional 9.34 million m² of older housing, out of a total residential stock of some 28 million m², resulting in the dislocation of yet another 350,000 inner-city households, according to BOCOG.
  
  

Beijing's 2008 Olympic Organizing Committee Five months after Beijing won the bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the city officially launched the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG). According to Liu Qi, president of BOCOG and mayor of Beijing, the committee will focus its work on market development strategy, image design, stadium planning and construction, and talent recruitment, among other issues. The committee will also strengthen China's communication and cooperation with the International Olympic Committee and other international sports organizations. BOCOG consists of 13 departments: general strategy, market development, propaganda, external liaison, engineering, finance, legal affairs, supervision and auditing, sports, personnel, technology, environmental protection, and a general office. President: Liu Qi (mayor of Beijing) Executive President: Yuan Weimin (director of State Sports Bureau) Acting Vice President: Liu Jingmin (vice mayor of Beijing) Vice Presidents: Duan Shijie (deputy director of State Sports Bureau), Jiang Xiaoyu (director of Propaganda Dept. of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee), Li Zhijian (president of All-China Sports Federation and deputy director of State Sports General Administration), Yu Zaiqing (vice president of Chinese Olympic Committee and deputy director of State Sports General Administration), Zhang Mao (vice mayor of Beijing) Secretary General: Wang Wei (vice secretary general of Beijing Municipal Government) Address (tentative): Xinqiao Hotel, No. 2, Dongjiaominxiang, Beijing 100004, China Tel: 86-10-6528-2009 Fax: 86-10-6528-2008 E-mail: 2008@beijing-olympic.org.cn --The US-China Business Council

The PRC government has reportedly drawn up a budget of RMB180 billion ($21.7 billion) for 142 Olympics-related improvement projects in Beijing. Of this, some $14 billion will come from the PRC government and the remaining $8 billion will come from domestic and overseas private- sector investment. The Beijing Municipal Finance Bureau, under the central government's Ministry of Finance, will reportedly allocate half of the necessary PRC government funding.