Posted on 01/02/2009 3:30:30 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Three months after the end of the games, new figures show the "Olympic Effect" has been short-lived and hotels are empty, industrial output has fallen and the streets are quiet.
Much of the pain is due to the worldwide financial crisis – and in some cases due to brave decisions by the government to keep polluting industries shut to spare the environment.
But even the biggest single symbol of the modern rise of China, the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium, stands forlorn, largely unused except for a shrinking number of tourists.
Attempts to attract the city's main football team to move to the ground have failed – it is simply too big for the club's crowds. Instead, it charges 50 yuan – around five pounds – per person to come and stand where Usain Bolt and others touched glory in the summer.
Henry Zhang, deputy head of the Stadium's management firm, said he was concerned about whether it would recoup its investment. "I have been worried and I'm still worried," he said.
"The situation is OK at the moment but we are calling it 'Ju An Si Wei' – 'Enjoy the calm but prepare for danger'."
Other countries have suffered post-Olympic blues, a warning to Britain's own planning for London 2012. The huge investment in facilities and transport comes to a sudden end, and if alternative uses cannot be found for the venues, they can seem like expensive white elephants.
But China was forecast to avoid the fate of Australia and Greece after the Sydney and Athens Games of 2000.
The amounts being spent on Beijing, though on the surface huge at between 25-40 billion pounds, were dwarfed by sums being spent countrywide in a large and booming economy on roads, airports and new factories.
Unfortunately, the figures show that in
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Isn’t Hussein Obomber impressed by what the Chicoms are doing?
but, but, but, Obama said............
Take that, Lord Keynes!
If you build it they (won’t necessarily) come!
They need to disassemble that ugly birds nest eyesore
I didn't want to watch it at the time, because I knew it was going to be a huge dictatorial-state propaganda art piece. Indeed it was - but it was an amazing show! (As it turns out, when you're granted the legal right to put people through hell, you can get an amazing performance out of them!)
Throughout it all Costas and the other announcers mentioned (besides carrying other water for their Chinese masters) that the soccer team would be taking over the stadium after the games. I wonder how many of their other (Chinese) patriotic pronouncements were just BS, too....
As finances get worse in Communist China, the push will become greater and greater to take military action and take Taiwan “back”.
They want a bail out also.
“....hotels are empty... the streets are quiet.”
No tourists? Could it be that it’s winter...high temps are 35 degrees with 15 degree lows....
brrrrrrr
Now... let’s don’t bail them out...
The Olympics have as much to do with real economic activity as hiring people to dig holes and other people to fill them.
No! No! We’re all Kenyans now!
By the way - Nazis were atheistic Jew and Christian hating National Socialists.
The MSM won't admit that.
Now that Texas Stadium (where the Dullus Cowgirlz played) is about to be plowed under, God needs a new locale to relieve himself... might as well be the commie’s “bird’s nest.”
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