September 08, 2004

You are on the invidual archive page of The greatest show on Earth. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
The greatest show on Earth

It is hard for many to imagine the huge amount of importance China places on hosting the 2008 Olympics. It is widely seen as a chance for China to show the world it is no longer a third world country of peasants but rather an emerging world power. Since the 2001 decision to give Beijing the games China has had an open chequebook for all things Olympic. Until now. As part of efforts to slow China's economy, the Olympics infrastructure budget is being cut. It's a blessing in disguise because the last thing Beijing needs is more white elephant projects. There is no doubt Beijing will make a success of the Games; there's too much national pride on the line for any other result.

Embarrassingly this week there is a seminar on investment opportunities in the Beijing Olympics for HK companies. Many of the projects that have been cancelled were the ones being hawked around HK at this seminar. Oops. The end result is China is proving to no longer be a third world economy: cutting back largesse on the Olympics and having a more realistic construction program.

posted by Simon on 09.08.04 at 11:07 AM in the




Trackbacks:

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/44572


Send a manual trackback ping to this post.


Comments:

You may be interested to know that hk blogs are being discussed (and in many cases, mocked) at http://www3.icered.com/icered/home/forum/threadList.jspa?forumID=55&threadID=65427&tstart=0

posted by: blogboy on 09.08.04 at 12:26 PM [permalink]




Post a Comment:

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember your info?










Disclaimer