“Ice ribbon” light and shadow flow, “snow Ruyi” dominates the peaks, “Snow Dragon” winds and moves flexibly… These Winter Olympic venues that combine modern Olympic elements and Chinese traditional culture have left rich Winter Olympic heritage for the host city Beijing, but this is only a snowflake that the ice and snow events have played on the cultivation and construction of Beijing’s international consumption center city.
2022 Xu Hejian, director of Beijing Information Center, stressed at the meeting: “Since last year, Beijing has coordinated epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development. The economy has continued to recover, and the city’s total economy has jumped to a new level of 4 trillion yuan. The successful hosting of the Winter Olympic Games has a positive effect on Beijing’s economic growth and plays a great role in promoting the development of ice and snow industry, infrastructure construction and the improvement of people’s livelihood.”
Xu Hejian said that during the preparation of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, ice and snow tourism, sports events, education and training and other fields developed in a coordinated manner, fiscal revenue was integrated with the improvement of people’s livelihood, and mass ice and snow sports were rapidly popularized, changing from cold sports to hot sports.
“It is estimated that the population participating in ice and snow sports in Beijing will reach 10 million in 2022.” Xu Hejian said, “especially the youth ice and snow sports have made great progress. For example, there are more than 5000 registered youth ice hockey players in Beijing, laying a good foundation for the sustainable development of ice and snow sports.”
In July 2021, the State Council approved Beijing and other five cities to take the lead in the cultivation and construction of international consumption center cities. This is a major decision and deployment of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council to focus on building a new development pattern with China’s great cycle as the main body and China’s international dual cycle promoting each other.
Guo Wenjie, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, said: “since the State Council approved Beijing and other five cities to carry out the cultivation and construction of international consumption center cities, Beijing’s’ one game of chess’ has been promoted as a whole, with remarkable phased results. Beijing’s total consumption increased by 11% year-on-year in 2021, and the consumption market as a whole has recovered to the level before the epidemic in 2019.”
Consumption is a key link in promoting the economic cycle. Driven by a package of effective means, both Lbx Pharmacy Chain Joint Stock Company(603883) in Beijing and visitors from all over the world can feel the further upgrading of the consumption experience. For example, Guo Wenjie said: “the Bureau of Commerce released the ‘2022 Beijing ice and snow consumption map’, and launched 22 ice and snow themed tourism routes in Beijing and 10 spring festival tide tourism routes in the year of the tiger. The number of indoor standard ice rinks with an effective ice surface area of no less than 1800 square meters reached 49.”
Take the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as an opportunity to vigorously guide and promote ice and snow consumption, and Beijing’s ice and snow sports will be in full swing.
Meng Qianghua, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of sports, said that in order to encourage citizens to actively participate in ice and snow consumption, since January, the city has issued more than 46500 ice and snow experience vouchers. During the Spring Festival holiday, 54 ice and snow places were opened, with 740000 people, a year-on-year increase of 253%.
The construction of a large number of international level ice and snow venues and facilities provides venue guarantee for building an international ice and snow consumption destination. Many scientific and technological achievements in ice and snow provide important support for the subsequent development of ice and snow equipment and ice and snow sports training, and the development of Beijing’s ice and snow industry in the post Olympic era can be expected in the future.
Xu Hejian expressed his belief that with the successful hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, more preparatory achievements will bring more long-term benefits to the general public and the development of the host city. The economic effects of the Winter Olympics will continue to be released. The “double Olympics city” will further enhance Beijing’s international influence and urban competitiveness, and inject new momentum into Beijing’s stable and high-quality economic development.
