Beijing's resolve to stage a environment-friendly Games has won the approval of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors who wound up Saturday February 24 a four-day tour of the candidate city for the 2008 Olympic Games.

"We are pleased to see that in fact Beijing has engaged on a ten-year major environment project with huge investment," said Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC evaluation commission at a press conference at the end of the inspection tour in Beijing.

Beijing municipal government has implemented a five-year (1998-2002) plan to improve the environment, with a budget of 5.6 billion U.S. dollars. And for the next five years (2003-2007), a further sum of 6.5 billion U.S. dollars is to be budgeted for the environmental protection.

The IOC commission chief said that even if the Games were not allocated to Beijing, the government of Beijing should be complimented for their environmental efforts.

Beijing's senior bidding official told the IOC inspectors that the massive spending the city's planners promised for the environmental and infrastructure purposes had not been included in the Olympic bid budget.

"Even though we were not to land the 2008 Olympics, the investment on the environment and infrastructure should still go ahead," Jiang Xiaoyu, Vice-president of Beijing Olympic Bidding Committee.

Australian Simon Balderston, a member of the IOC evaluation team and expert on sports and environment, also showed his satisfaction with Beijing's environmental drive although some problems might still be concerned in the future.

"What I should say is that the bidding committee is obviously taking these issues as seriously as we do," he said.

(People's Daily 02/25/01)