Tourists experience cross-country skiing at the Shougang Big Air in Beijing, the venue for Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, on January 15, 2023. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By TANG Zhexiao

One year after the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, people are still enjoying the social and economic benefits created by the Games.

"All the Beijing 2022 venues are being enjoyed by the public and local athletes, and the winter sports industry in the country is booming," said a report published on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) official website on February 1, 2023.

"China can look back with great pride into the past and with even greater confidence in the future," said IOC President Thomas Bach in a statement on February 5, adding the Beijing spectacle is a "great chapter in Olympic history".

Sustainable venues

Most of the Beijing 2022 competition venues adopted energy-saving construction standards to reduce emissions and ensure long-lasting use. They have been opened to the public and hosted top-level sports events after the Games.

Beijing 2022 concentrated its efforts on carbon avoidance and reduction.This meant that for the first time in Olympic Games history, all the competition venues were powered with renewable energy, especially, with solar and wind as primary energy resources.

The Zhangbei flexible direct current grid project used in Beijing 2022, one of the largest of its kind in the world, uses wind and solar energy resources to transfer electricity from Zhangjiakou to Beijing, boosting the city's use of clean energy.

The venues are incredible and they will serve the purpose of training Chinese athletes, and hosting community sport as well, said Christophe Dubi, the IOC's executive director.

To date, all the competition venues of Beijing 2022 have finished the transition from Games-time to post-Games use, fully opening to the public, according to the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 Legacy Report (post-Games).

Furthermore, by demonstrating new ideas and technologies, these Olympic venues illustrate solutions for cutting energy consumption and greenhouse gases.

"Using renewable energy to power all the venues, and implementing innovative technology, such as the CO₂  refrigeration systems, make winter sports more sustainable," said Dubi.

Post-Games legacies

From encouraging people to enjoy winter sports to alleviating poverty, and boosting the ice and snow industry which in turn improves livelihoods, Beijing 2022 has created a lasting and wide variety of social and economic benefits for its hosts.

It promoted the regional coordinated development in transport infrastructure, environmental protection, industrial growth and public services.

The Olympic Games may make no economic sense for many cities, according to an article in The New York Times, but China has an enthusiasm for building transportation infrastructure and providing millions of jobs to its citizens.

"It also hopes to nurture an abiding interest in skiing, curling, ice hockey and other winter sports that could increase consumer spending, particularly in the country's chilly and economically struggling northeast," said the article.

It is true that the winter sports fever is on the rise across the country. By June 2022, the number of winter sports instructors had reached 29,000 in Beijing, and the number of ice rinks in China had increased by 317 percent by 2021 compared with 2015, said the Legacy report.

High-quality urban development has been promoted as well. Beijing 2022 has created some 81,000 new job opportunities for those living in areas surrounding the venues.

Data from Shougang Group showed that the number of visitors to Shougang Industrial Park, which hosted the big air events of snowboarding and freestyle skiing during the Games, have reached 206,000 during 2023's Spring Festival, with 9.6 million RMB revenue generated.

The Games' lasting legacy will go down in history as a magnificent demonstration of the Olympic values, said Juan Antonio Samaranch, vice president of the IOC.