'Bird nest' sings too costly an Olympic tune
By You Nuo (China Daily HK Edition)
Updated: 2004-08-16 13:37

China is re-evaluating the immense construction budget and possible overspending for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

This photo displays a nest-like architecture scheme for the main stadium of the 2008 Olympics. The scheme has been pre-approved by the Beijing public during a design show in Beijing, beating the other two favorites by the smallest margin. The architecture plan, co-designed by Swiss company Herzog & DeMeuron and China Architecture Design Institute, won 3,506 votes for the first place from over 6,000 visitors to the six-day exhibition. [newsphoto/file]

As part of the campaign to reduce luxury items from the Olympic plan, the building of the new main stadium, nicknamed "bird nest", has already been put on hold, the architects asked to come up with a cheaper design.

Beijing's original budget for the main stadium was 3.5 billion yuan (US$423 million). But the current design would most likely incur huge overruns, according to Wei Jizhong, one of the executive directors of the Beijing Olympic Organization Committee.

One of the architects of the "bird nest", Wu Xuemin of the China Institute of Architecture Design and Research,told reporters that its designers, including those from Switzerland and the UK, are being requested to lower the stadium's building costs to below 3.1 billion yuan (US$374 million).

But it's not because China has learned to be stingy after China's sports officials were impressed by how simple some of the Olympic facilities are for this year's Athens Olympics. The key is whether it's worthwhile.

"China won't look good for building too much," one major sports facility administrator said.

The trend is changing in society, many critics say, where all large buildings sponsored or owned by the government will be regarded as ugly reminders of the waste of public money.

"Frankly," the administrator, who didn't want his name to be disclosed, said, "I think Beijing's existing sports facilities are enough for hosting the Olympic Games, so long as there's money for their facelifting and for the modernization of security and transport conveniences."

Other designs of would-be Olympic sites are likely to be subjected to a review.

The central government review of the Olympic building plan is being led by Premier Wen Jiabao, according to the official press, after he recommended that Beijing should avoid waste and squandering public money.

Locally, it is new Mayor Wang Qishan - made head of public affairs of the Chinese capital city during the SARS crisis early last year - who is coordinating the effort.

Wang reportedly swore to try all means to lower Olympic costs.

The central government is taking the action partly to set an example for all rapidly developing cities on the mainland, encouraging them to be thrifty in their spending, especially on landmark buildings.

In an article published in China Youth Daily last week, the author said that since new buildings in many mainland cities are mostly owned by either business monopolies or government agencies, they actually present a cause of concern, and certainly less commitment to public education and farmers' welfare.

The author proposed that Beijing expand its review of Olympic buildings into an overall review of government office buildings across the nation.

Some of them, he said, are showing such a high level of material comfort that if their budgetary plans had been submitted to due legislative approval, or citizens' scrutiny, they would have been rejected.

As the weekly newspaper Economic Observer pointed out in one of its editorials, what is really important is the decision-making process.

One of Beijing's recent examples of poor decision making in public facility development is its West Railway Station, which cost some 3 billion yuan (US$360 million) and has had a number of problems, ranging from building quality to inner city traffic jams.

However, during the planning period, the West Railway Station won favour from the municipal authorities over a more practical, yet less impressive plan to revamp some of the city's existing railway stations, which would cost only 400 million yuan (US$58 million).

At the same time, news from the Athens Olympics is showing disturbing signs of huge budget overruns and soaring security costs. According to Chen Jian, a Beijing-based economist doing Olympic related research for the municipal government, the role of such an international sports event in business development is still not clear.

He noted that the Athens Olympic budget has already overrun by two billion euro.

In all likelihood, he said, the event would leave an economic burden for the country for the next couple of years. As one of the more dramatic examples, he said, the Montreal Olympics left the city in debt for 15 years.

A wasteful Olympics is not a good image for a developing economy like China's.

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