The promotional slogan of Beijing’s successful bid to host this year’s Winter Olympics, “joyful rendez-vous on pure snow and ice”, sounded like something from the pages of a ski holiday brochure. That’s entirely in keeping with the spirit of the games, which have always served as an economic tool of the winter tourism industry.
Beijing 2022 is no different, and for all the global grandstanding at the games, these Olympics are primarily serving a domestic economic agenda. As part of the Chinese government’s plans to shift the country’s economy from manufacturing to services, considerable effort has been put into developing a winter sport’s industry, centred around the country’s north-east, where the games are being held.
But however many people attend the joyful rendezvous, pure snow will be in short supply. In fact, there won’t be any at all. Given the near-drought conditions in the area – made worse by climate change – all of the skiing events will rely on the production of huge quantities of artificial snow, created by a massive array of fans spraying chilled water mist, which requires more than 222 million litres of water. This has accumulated into long white ribbons sitting on bare brown earth, though the runs are sufficiently large and landscaped to give the illusion of complete snow coverage on television.
