Winter Games light at end of pandemic tunnel

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games is just over three months away, and China is preparing for it in the most challenging of times.

In 2015, when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing, the world looked very different. Today, expectations have been framed by the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games, which was postponed by more than one year to July-August 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the Olympic Games had been canceled earlier－during the two world wars－it was the first time for the Games to be deferred. And even then, the Games was held largely behind closed doors, due to the pandemic emergency in Tokyo.

But unlike the Tokyo Summer Games, the Beijing Winter Olympics will be held in China which has largely contained the pandemic, resumed economic activities and realized positive economic growth.

Outside China, ineffective containment and vaccine inequality have prolonged human suffering and economic malaise associated with the pandemic. The risks are reflected in the recent resurgence of COVID-19 in some countries and the highly transmissible Delta variant, which has hit 14 provincial-level regions in China.

Nonetheless, in these conditions, China's determination to hold the Winter Olympics represents light in the long and dark pandemic tunnel.

Mirroring the Tokyo Summer Olympics protocol, the IOC deemed that only Chinese residents will be permitted to attend the 2022 Winter Games as spectators. So broadcasters, particularly China Central Television domestically, Eurosport in Europe and NBCUniversal in the United States, will play a critical role in sustaining the Olympic dream around the world.

As costs have soared and environmental effects increased, the pride of hosting the Olympic Games has lost some of its luster in recent years. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games required shutdowns against pollution.

As the Olympics torch relay will visit the three clusters of Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, the Winter Games seeks to portray a greener China, with an estimated budget of $3.9 billion.

Reusing many of the venues built for the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Winter Olympics aspires to integrate the Games with sustainable development plans for the wider region, focusing on clean energy, green technology, ecological improvement and air quality.

In February, Beijing announced that the 26 venues for the Winter Olympics would be running on entirely renewable energy, thanks to partners such as Beijing Jingneng Power Co, China Huadian Corporation, and the State Grid Beijing Electric Power.

Geared toward the integration of smart grid planning into the Olympics, these efforts will likely facilitate the development of new smart grid technologies and renewable energy production in the three Winter Games clusters.

At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the Republic of Korea, Chinese athletes competed in only half of the 102 events. So, qualifying for all of the 109 events of the 2022 Winter Games became the first goal of Chinese athletes, and by 2019, China had some 3,300 athletes training in the national team－11 times more than the last time.

Before the 2022 Winter Olympics, China also signed agreements with several leading winter sports countries in Europe to host and train Chinese athletes, while recruiting foreign coaches for disciplines in which China's performance had been weaker.

Since the mid-2010s, several major initiatives have been launched to promote these objectives, particularly the Ice and Snow Sports Development Program (2016-25) and associated infrastructure investment. It was supported by several programs to boost China's nascent winter sports industry, including the national fitness plan (2016-20), and the programs for ice and snow facilities (2016-22), and ice and snow tourism (2021-23).

The targets for 2025 remain ambitious: to increase Chinese participants to 300 million in winter sports, while raising the value of the industry to some $155 billion.

As in the 2008 Summer Olympics, the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Games will be held at the National Stadium, popularly known as the "Bird's Nest", in Beijing.

At a time when the pandemic is still raging in some parts of the world and unwarranted attempts are being made to divide the world, China's Olympic motto, "Together for a Shared Future", should be taken seriously.

As a young man, my father was a weight-lifter training for the 1940 Olympics until the world lost its way and he was forced to spend five years of his life on the war front. I was luckier. As a sprinter, one of the teenage highlights of my athletic career was swimming next to Mark Spitz who later won a record seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Many of my friends chose winter sports. While only a few made it to the Olympics, none of us has forgotten those experiences that made us stronger, healthier, and hopefully better as human beings. Taken in the right way, sports prepares youths for life, through competition and cooperation. Boycotts divide, friendships unite.

From Feb 4 to 20, the world's eyes will be on Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. The Olympic dream of competing to transcend one's own potential, yet with a spirit of friendship and solidarity, must be kept alive.

The author is the founder of Difference Group, and has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.