Beijing: Performers erupted into orchestrated dancing and flag-waving in Beijing as the Chinese capital won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics host, with experts describing it as the only “safe” choice but campaign groups condemning the decision.
The choreographed events in the Chinese capital and co-host Zhangjiakou followed the International Olympic Committee vote for Beijing over Kazakhstan’s Almaty, making the Chinese capital the first city to host both the summer and winter Games.
“I am so excited. This is China’s pride,” Zhang Hong, China’s women’s 1,000m speed skating gold medal winner at the Sochi Games, told CCTV.
“This is going to change so many people’s lives,” a studio presenter on the state broadcaster declared.
To the sound of banging drums, young volunteers wearing matching polo shirts waved the Chinese national flag and bid logos outside Beijing’s iconic Bird’s Nest stadium, where the 2022 opening ceremony will be held.
Earlier they had been instructed to practice their clapping and cheering, an AFP journalist witnessed.
TV broadcasts included excitable reporters speaking to camera surrounded by middle-aged women bouncing up and down with fixed grins.
“The propaganda machine has started, but I guess nobody has asked the normal Chinese people what they think,” Xu Guoqi, author of “Olympic Dreams: China and Sports 1895-2008” told AFP.
“But the IOC has made a decision it believes will be safe. It gives it to Beijing because it will deliver the Games.”
Susan Brownell, a visiting professor at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Sinology, said the IOC chose Beijing because of its track record staging major sporting events.
“China knows how to organise the big events. It has proven capability,” Brownell told AFP, but added that enthusiasm was likely to be limited among ordinary citizens.
“This is no-where near as important to the people as the Summer Games were,” said Brownell, author of “Beijing’s Games, what the Olympics means to China”.
The Beijing bid’s final presentation included a video message from Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the IOC decision came despite concerns over political freedoms in Communist China.
Sophie Richardson, of US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch said the Olympic organisation had “tripped on a major human rights hurdle”.
“The Olympic motto of ‘higher, faster, and stronger’ is a perfect description of the Chinese government’s assault on civil society: more peaceful activists detained in record time, subject to far harsher treatment,” she said in a statement.
China has a chronic pollution problem but environmental campaign group Greenpeace was more positive, saying the co-host cities had set themselves “relatively ambitious air quality targets” and the award was a strong incentive to “accelerate the cleaning up of the country’s air and water”.
As the celebrations were being staged at the Bird’s Nest, similar displays were held simultaneously in Zhangjiakou, in the province of Hebei which surrounds Beijing and where many of the skiing events will be held in 2022.
State broadcaster CCTV showed onlookers celebrating.
Dancers in traditional Chinese tunics waved fans as they gyrated to the sound of banging drums in scenes reminiscent of the 2008 Olympics opening pageant.