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)
