Socio-Economic Impacts of Beijing 2008

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous grade: 58 Stellenbosch Universitiy course: Political Economy of China language: English abstract: The next Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 are a major interest of the Chinese leadership. By 2008 China aims to have spent $35 billion on the games (Beijing's Olympic 2007) dwarfing the $8.7 billion spent by Greece. The Economist (2007) has calculated that this amount makes up more than 43 percent of the total for all the games including Beijing since Montreal's in 1976. The summer Olympics shall crown 30 years of successful economic reform. They will symbolize the outside world that China is on its way to reach world power status. The symbolic character to hold the world's biggest event seems to overshadow other impacts such an event can have (Owen 2005). But Uu Jingmin vice chairman of the Beijing 2008 organizing committee believes that the Olympics will contribute not only to economic development it will bring also social progress for the whole country (in Hua 2004). The Organization committee has proclaimed three major topics: the People's Olympics the High-Tech Olympics and the Green Olympics (Hua 2004). But it is highly controversial if mega events are at the end economically and social beneficial for a venue city or not. The output of Olympic Games is incalculable or if calculable best considered as estimates only (Hiller 1998). At some points the Olympics in Beijing can even lead to economic or social damage. To draw a conclusion about the whole range of impacts of global sports-events is difficult because of a lack of available data. Furthermore China as a whole is still a developing country and faces massive socio-economic challenges. The impact of the Olympic Games will be small in regard to China's general socio-economic challenges facing Chinese leadership in the twentyfirst century. A final conclusion how useful the Olympic G