Abstract
Perhaps no other sporting event draws more geographically dispersed visitors, or showcases the host city as visibly as the Olympics. According to Andy Xie, an economist from Shanghai, "there is a huge psychological effect. Organizing the Olympics means that the country has succeeded, that it has finally reached the level of the developed countries." The Olympics are seen by China as an opportunity to optimize its economic growth and signal its emergence as a world power. The preparation for such an event needs a huge investment in various economic areas and creates an impact on the Chinese economy. According to Wei Xiaozhen, a division director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, Beijing can expect its gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at 9.8 percent a year leading to 2008, after allowing for inflation owing to the "Olympic factor". This is 0.8 percentage points higher than the average growth between 2001 and 2005. We can thus wonder how China is going to deal with the challenges that represent the Olympics, what are the key points of the preparation and what kind of impacts on growth can be expected, along with a study of the issues that China will have to face to make a success of this event.
