Beijing’s economy: Going for gold

The Olympics have not brought Beijing’s businesses the boom they hoped for

YABAO ROAD in Beijing’s embassy district is normally bustling. Russian traders scour its wholesale shops for furs and boots. Hawkers throng the pavements. The street is jammed with taxis and pedicabs. But the Olympic games have begun. Yabao Road is now strangely quiet.

Only a few months ago many shopkeepers, restaurants and hotels were expecting these to be boom times as big-spending foreigners flocked in for the games. Today many businessmen in and around the capital are disgruntled. So too are other citizens who find that even some outdoor food markets have been closed as part of an Olympic spruce-up…

Officials say one-fifth of rooms at the city’s 120-odd designated Olympic hotels were unoccupied after the games started on August 8th (they finish on the 24th). But no figures have been published for the 700 others. Price-cutting at many hotels suggests there may be a glut of rooms. Some bars and restaurants say business is lacklustre too. The owner of one upmarket nightclub says he had been expecting a packed house “all night, every night up until dawn” during the games. But in fact business is much as usual.

Read more in the Economist.

Olympics Inc.

Billionaires Eye Beijing Gold

Shanghai, China –

China’s Communist Party hasn’t done much in the months ahead of the Olympics to quiet skeptics saying the country should have never been awarded this year’s summer games. Among other controversial moves, it has cracked down on Tibet following unrest and intimidated domestic critics from even showing up in Beijing. Pollution threatens to sully the event.

Yet interest and anticipation is running high among ordinary Chinese in the first-ever Olympics held on Chinese soil. That excitement, in turn, is encouraging many marketers to make a play for China’s 1.3 billion consumers. After all, the world’s most populous nation is home to the fastest-growing major economy, and businesses positioning themselves well during these next couple of weeks could reap benefits with Chinese consumers for years to come.

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