Olympic Megaprojects Spur Charges of Waste

HEISHANSI, China — The view from this village north of Beijing is classically Chinese: Crumbling towers of the Great Wall jut from ridges above farm fields.

But a new monument is changing the landscape. Since October, workers have been blasting the face of a nearby mountain and plan to carve a Chinese character large enough that visitors arriving for the Summer Olympics will see it from airliners.

The plan, which according to a local official will cost the government more than $13 million, highlights China's extreme efforts to impress hundreds of thousands of tourists expected at the Games, which begin on Aug. 8.

According to Chinese government reports, Beijing will spend some $37 billion to build new stadiums and other Games-related infrastructure, including new subway lines and an airport terminal, an amount four times the cost of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

But in a nation where tens of millions of people live on less than $1 a day, many citizens have criticized the spending as wasteful. Other Chinese are angered by forced relocations, work stoppages and other costs citizens are paying for Beijing's makeover.

"Our leaders have made the Olympics into a giant political symbol of achievement, but they should be working to help the poor instead of investing in expensive architecture projects," said Liu Xiaobo, a Beijing-based writer who has publicly called on China's government to improve human rights ahead of the Games.

Fifty miles north of bustling downtown Beijing, Heishansi epitomizes the growing gap between China's cities and poorer countryside.

Many of Heishansi's 190 residents cannot afford to heat their homes. Children in the village walk three miles to the nearest elementary school and students who earn spots in high schools have to move to a nearby town.

Many days, Heishansi looks like a ghost town because stagnating farm incomes have driven farmers to take distant factory jobs generally paying less than $100 a month.

"We're poor here," said a woman who gave only her surname, Ho, because she feared being punished for criticizing the government. "We just get by."

While some residents hope the carving on the nearby peak, called Big Cloud Mountain, will attract tourists and spark economic growth, Ho and other villagers were pessimistic that the project would benefit the community.

"The Olympics isn't for average Chinese," she said. "If it was, they'd use the money to fix our homes and build a school."

Such criticisms have become common in the run-up to the Games. The central government tightly controls China's media and regulates Web sites, often deleting critical comments, but citizens have openly challenged Beijing's Olympic spending.

In a recent article posted to a popular Web site, Peng Peigen, an architecture professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University, criticized a $417 million national stadium being built for the Olympics as "absolutely opposite government promises for a frugal Olympics."

"The government wants to stimulate viewers and show off, but the (Olympic stadiums) are ridiculously expensive," Peng said.

Other Chinese have directed indignation at a national theater opened in the heart of Beijing in December. The $400 million building is covered almost entirely in titanium, one of the world's most expensive metals, and will cost $13,000 in daily operating fees, according to Chinese media.

Officials have defended the projects as part of an architectural legacy that includes the ancient Forbidden City and the Great Wall. But Beijing is also investing in a series of more economically questionable initiatives.

Company officials overseeing construction on Big Cloud Mountain declined interview requests. But, Hu Guangtai, the Communist Party leader in Heishansi, said the carving will be a character for Beijing and be "about two soccer fields tall."

"The government wants people arriving for the Olympics to see it from their planes," he said.

A report last year by Human Rights in China, a New York-based nonprofit group, documented a series of "extravagant" publicity events for the Games, including 2,008 professional drummers hired to mark the 500-day countdown to the opening ceremony.

"Public discontent over wasteful spending on the Beijing Olympics centers on extravagant preparations that seem aimed mainly at gaining media attention and providing financial benefit to local officials rather than benefiting the local community or promoting the Olympic spirit," the report said.

Preparations for the Olympics have also cost Chinese citizens directly.

Tens of thousands of Chinese have been forced to relocate to clear space for Olympic venues and new infrastructure and many have received less compensation than guaranteed under Chinese laws.

A magazine affiliated with the Beijing Tourism Administration reported this month that 300,000 homes in Beijing had been demolished to make room for "some monumental stadiums" ahead of the Olympics.

The Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, a nonprofit group working to limit forced evictions, said last year that 1.5 million Chinese will be displaced in Beijing "due to Olympic development."

Although some of the evictions "resulted from large-scale urban development that would have occurred without the Olympic Games," the number of people forced to move each year doubled after Beijing was chosen to host the Olympics, the group said.

To reduce air pollution during the Olympics, officials will order factories in the city and surrounding provinces to shut down, largely without compensation.

"Maybe instead of production, the workers will spend time working on the machines and so forth," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for Beijing's Olympic organizing committee.

Even if people are inconvenienced by the Games, "I think they're very, very supportive," he said.

In Heishansi, Ho expressed anger and resignation over Beijing's spending on the Olympics.

Sitting in a two-bedroom house shared by eight relatives, she steered her grandson around battered furniture and a past a glossy poster showing stacks of money and the words, "May we become rich."

"We don't need an Olympic symbol on Big Cloud Mountain," she said. "It would be better if they built a school."