The Chinese Olympic Committee has announced that the Capital and the city of Zhangjiakou in Hebei province have launched a joint bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. If the two Chinese cities are awarded the Games, Beijing will become the first city to ever host both a Summer and Winter Olympics.

According to the COC, Beijing would stage the ice events while Zhangjiakou, reknowned here in China for its excellent ski resorts, will host the snow events.

In order to ensure easy transportation between the two cities which are located 200 kilometres apart the preliminary plans call for a new high speed railway to be built cutting travel time between them to only 40 minutes.

The IOC Executive Board will review the bids next July and then take a vote to determine the finalists with the host city to be elected in July of 2015 at the 127th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur.

Beijing will be up against Kazakhstan's Almaty, who have announced their intention while Germany's Munich faces a referendum on Sunday that will decide if it will officially bid for the 2022 Games. Bids could also be on the way from Poland, Ukraine, Spain and Norway.

The news of China's aim to host a second Olympiad has been met with varied opinions from Chinese citizens who have taken to popular microblog Sina Weibo to weigh in.

"Enough is enough. Why must we do it again? The deserted venues of the Beijing Olympics are still not utilized. Are we going to build more of them?"

The 2018 Games will be held in, Pyeongchang, a South Korean city. It's unlikely the IOC will reward the 2022 Games to another Asian city.

And that could prove to be a tough problem for Beijing. Those behind the joint Beijing/Zhangjiakou bid however, say they believe the success of the 2008 Summer Olympics in the Chinese Capital gives them confidence they can win this bid.

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