The Beijing Olympics were the most talked-about event leading up to 2008. The Games were undoubtedly a vehicle to show that China had arrived. And indeed she had, as China showed that she could do it faster, higher and stronger. Outside China, the international community harbored hopes or skepticism that Beijing’s hosting the Olympics would pave the way for a more open China. But five years on, there is nary a whisper about the Beijing Olympics in China. After all the crowds have gone home, it certainly seems like it is "business as usual" in China. Hosting the Olympics almost never makes economic sense, but China, like other host countries, hoped for prestige, increased tourism and business investment. Can five years of time tell if it was all worth it in the end for China or was it just a lavish show of “face”?

Dollars and sense of Olympic proportions

In a typical Chinese show of “face”, China certainly pulled out all the stops to wow the world. Official estimates put spending on the Games at 2.2bn USD, in addition to an unprecedented 40bn USD expended on infrastructure starting from 2001, the year Beijing won the bid. According to an assessment by the U.N. Environment Programme, most went into creating green space, expanding the public transport network and pumping up the sewage system. At least $2bn was splashed on 37 stadiums and facilities.

Obviously, the Olympics are not exactly a cheap party to host, so what kinds of returns on investment can be expected? Probably the best possible scenario was that of Barcelona, which saw a tripling of tourism for the three years after the 1992 Games. However, for China, increased tourist arrivals during the Games wasn’t immediately possible because of tightened visa requirements. Tourist arrivals also continued to fall the year following the Games.

In any case, all hosts countries experience a surge in GDP in the years leading up to the event, due to the requisite massive capital investments. But figures go back to normal right after the Games. Besides, recouping this capital outlay is another matter altogether. Purpose-built stadiums do have a tendency to morph into white elephants. Case in point: the Beijing National Stadium went from a $480 million Bird’s Nest into a (mostly) empty nest. Tourists did flock there immediately following the Games but after the halo wore off, attempts failed to turn it into a money-making venue, one that included a snow theme park. The nearby Beijing National Aquatics Center, or Water Cube, may have been spared from this fate by becoming a water theme park, albeit at a loss of $1 million a year. For the amount spent on sprucing up Beijing infrastructure, leaders argued that the capital expenditure was what a growing economy would have undertaken anyway. Small change for a country capable of constructing entire “ghost towns”.

Take a deep breath

One facet of Beijing that warranted immediate attention was air quality, a nagging problem that still plagues the capital today. Concerns of the effects of chronic pollution on the performance and even health of athletes led the capital to implement measures ranging from factory closures, reduction in coal consumption and aggressive restrictions on car numbers. During the Games, reporting on air quality and cloud seeding measures were practically silenced. Air quality in Beijing improved markedly, only to return to previous levels after controls were relaxed. While it may never be known if the 2008 Olympics served as a catalyst for unexpected air quality data disclosures last year, it certainly does invoke a sense of déjà vu. But one leftover from the 2008 Games is continued restrictions on car use by the last digit on number plates, which took 2 million cars off the road.

Spirit of the Games

Unfortunately today, events like the Olympics have been downgraded from their lofty ideals to become political carrots. Proponents like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair believed that the Games would herald a “new epoch”, with greater openness and less “ignorance and fear”. But in other quarters, the controversial move of awarding the right to host the Games to what many deemed as a repressive regime was met with skepticism and even hostility. Predictably, the impeccably choreographed opening ceremony coincided with protests in countries overseas. Despite China’s promises to improve its worldwide image regarding certain controversial topics, nothing much has changed in the years following the Olympics

So was it all worth it in the end?

So hosting the Olympics makes no economic sense. Then why is there no shortage of bids every four years? Like athletes competing in the track, hosting an event of this magnitude in the global arena does seem a glorious avenue to push oneself to the limits. And undeniably, China had achieved that. Yet from the experience of one residing in China in the years surrounding the Beijing Olympics, the Games seem to be a distant memory in everyday life. The past glory is never brought up in conversations of the average person on the street, on a steady diet of more immediate concerns on Weibo. From an organizational standpoint, China executed a flawless Olympics to silence detractors, who picked on pollution, food safety, traffic and anything and everything else. But that’s all that seemed to be achieved. To the authorities, for whom face seemingly means everything, perhaps that is enough.

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Keywords: Beijing Olympics five years on