China Doing Olympics on the Cheap
China has announced an operating budget of $2 billion dollars for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. This is higher than their original forecast, but they said it'll be cheaper than Athens. The 2004 Athens Summer Olympics reportedly cost $10 billion dollars to operate.
The operating budget doesn't include the cost of construction, which will cost the Chinese an additional $37 billion dollars.
Liu Jingmin, Executive Vice President of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics committee said:
"This year we will start construction of all the new venues. We have already started work on nine new venues. Venue construction on the whole has been coming along smoothly."
He also said:
"We are going sport by sport to educate people when to applaud and when they shouldn't walk around. We're also teaching them how to watch different events and how to cheer athletes, not only Chinese, but also foreign athletes."
Great. Government mandated etiquette.
