The Olympic Games are celebrated around the world as a big
sports gala with great significance of maintaining peace, enhancing
friendship and promoting civilization. As one of the most
influential countries in the world today, China is willing to do
its best to promote the Olympic Movement. It is the aspiration of
the Chinese people to share the Olympic spirit, take part in
Olympic affairs and host the Olympic Games. Over the past two
decades, China has achieved social stability and economic
prosperity through reform, opening up to the outside world and
modernization, and its national strength has increased greatly.
China's Olympic bid intention dates back to 1908, when the
Tianjin Youth magazine asked when China would send its athletes to
the Olympic Games and when China would host the Olympic Games. In
1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping pointed out that China would bid
to host the Olympic Games when time was appropriate. In 1984, IOC
President Samaranch said the IOC would like to see China host not
only the 1990 Asian Games but also the Olympic Games.
During 1991 and 2001, Beijing, the Chinese capital city, made
two Olympic bids, one for 2000 and the other for 2008. In its first
bid Beijing lost to Sydney by a narrow margin of two votes, and in
its second bid Beijing beat other nine cities to win the right to
host the 29th Olympic Summer Games in 2008, thanks to its great
potential of economic growth and the remarkable achievements in
sport made by China over the previous decade.
Beijing's renewed efforts to bid for the Olympic Games and its
final success in the bid not only have the significance for sharing
the Olympic spirit, celebrating humanity and expanding exchanges
between the East and the West, but also help provide a good
opportunity of showing the current state of economic, cultural,
social and political development in China in a comprehensive way.
While showing to the world a new, vigorous image of an open,
modernized, civilized and well-developed metropolis in the lead-up
to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is ready to become a truly
international city and make every effort to deliver a "Green
Olympics", a "Hi-Tech Olympics", a "People's Olympics" and, to top
it all, an unprecedented Olympics that would leave, as an IOC
Evaluation Commission report believes, a unique legacy for both
China and sport as a whole.
(COC Website?? July 8, 2004)