"There is no question China is a totally different dimension--in terms of what the Games can do for China and what China can do for the Games," said Michael Payne, the IOC's marketing director. "And in the business community, there is an incredible realization at the role the Games will play as a catalyst for change."
Yuan Bin, Beijing 2008's deputy marketing director, said that more than 100 companies had already come calling at Beijing 2008's temporary offices, adding, "Every day, there are companies coming."
Rick Burton, executive director of the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, said, "If you're not already in China, it's already too late. You've got to be on the ground, working China right now. The way they build relationships is very different from the way we do things in the West."
Nineteen Olympic venues in Beijing need to be built, including an 80,000-seat stadium, an 18,000-seat arena for gymnastics and volleyball and an 18,000-seat swimming center. Thirteen other venues will be renovated or expanded.
The sports venues will be concentrated at two sites, one north of central Beijing, the other west, both abutting what is called the Fourth Ring Road--at present the outer ring of a series of concentric highways encircling Beijing. By 2008 plans call for a Fifth and a Sixth Ring Road.
The city will nearly quadruple the size of its subway system, from 54 kilometers to 201. It also plans to build new bus terminals and parking lots.
In addition, it plans to improve sewage systems and add thousands of acres of trees, according to the Beijing 2008 master plan. The trees, officials hope, will help limit Beijing's fierce sandstorms carrying the product of dust that flies in from the Gobi desert, particularly in the winter and spring.
The 2008 master plan calls for Olympic-related construction work to begin in 2003 and be completed by 2006, allowing for venue testing before the Games.
As it is, the construction clamor is about to get more fierce. Shang Yuzhu, a 79-year-old retired kindergarten teacher, shook her head in amazement.
"Since the [WTO] and the Olympics were announced, Beijing has become more internationalized. We've seen so much more construction," she said one day recently over a lunch of homemade dumplings, a construction crane shining bright yellow in the dull afternoon haze outside her fourth-story window.
A lifelong resident of Beijing, she added, "I've even lost my way because there is so much construction. I can't find my place. So many changes. So many more to come."
