Ready? Set, Go!!! (An amateurish Tibetan independence protest clip below)
Did you know: China will spend more than $400 billion through 2010 building airports, roads, water systems and infrastructure projects, according to today’s Wall Street Journal. Three major tabs: $40 billion for the Beijing Olympics (by 2008, 3 times that of Athens’s infrastructure spending), $41 billion for Shanghai 2010 World Expo and $27 billion for Guangzhou’s 2010 Asian Games. Wow…
Other Beijing Olympics-related projects: $600 million Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV new tower and $336 million Paul Andreu-designed National Grand Theater.
That’s why multinationals like GE, Siemens and Otis of United Technologies are investing huge human resources and energy to take part in the “Olympics Contract Games.” GE created a team of 100 to work on Olympics-related projects targeting about $1 billion contracts. It has already won $150 million.
Technorati Tags: Olympics construction, Olympics preparation
(GE’s Olympics sponsorship president is happy about their job in the Olympics-chasing, but its former senior manager Li Jianbo said Chinese authorities were unable to ensure a fair bidding process for foreign companies.)
Siemens has won a $200 million contract to supply a baggage-handlding system to the new Beijing airport and Otis will install 136 escalators and 41 elevators. [Full Text, for subscribers only]
