Beijing Shows High-tech Side to IOC Inspectors

Beijing Shows High-tech Side to IOC Inspectors

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To equip the 2008 Olympic Games with the state-of-the-art technologies is what Beijing has promised in its bid for hosting the Games.

And the Chinese capital also demonstrated before the visiting evaluation commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

With the support of high technologies, Beijing made assurances to the IOC inspectors that the Games will be blessed by pleasant weather, well-controlled traffic, adequate supply of clean energy like natural gas and high-quality services from the medical staff.

Bolstered by massive investment in urban road building, officials of the Beijing Traffic Control Center (BTCC) said that they will set up a highly-efficient traffic system aided by technologies of computer, software, automatic control and communication.


Beijing Shows High-tech Side to IOC Inspectors

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"When the city invests heavily in urban road infrastructure, further development of the traffic control system and education efforts, the traffic order by the year of 2008 will be much better, " said Ma Zhenchuan, the commissioner of the BTCC.

Though Beijing's total number of motor vehicles had been increasing to 1.5 million, at an annual rate of 10 percent, Beijing has set a target that by 2005, vehicles could travel at a minimum speed of 50km/h on the city's three ring roads while the minimum speed could be 25km/h on other main streets.

At the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the IOC inspectors were shown that the climate in Beijing during the proposed Games period of July 25 to August 10 in the last decade proved to relatively amenable for sports and tourism.

According to the statistics from CMA, there are only six days with daily precipitation beyond 1mm during the proposed Games period with an average temperature posting at 25 degrees centigrade and the possibility of sever weather events standing almost none.

Boasting a sophisticated network of 2,600 meteorological observation stations and advanced radar and satellite observing system, the CMT also installed two high-performance computers -- a Chinese-made set with a peak performance of 384 Gflops and the other one, a USA-IBM-SP, performs at 80 Gflops.

"This morning you made quite a few pledges during your presentation on the theme of law, now after listening to your presentation, we seem to also get the assurances in meteorology," said Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC evaluation team.

In the China-Japan Friendships Hospital, two Australian members of the evaluation commission talked with their fellow countrymen in a hospital in Perth through the telemedication system.

"We are impressed by the hospital," Robert McCullough, a representative of the International Paralympic Committee, told his compatriot which appeared on the screen.

Beijing has also pledged that if it wins the bid, the 2008 Games will be a environmental-friendly sporting gala, with 83 percent of Beijing's energy usage coming from natural gas.

"Our natural gas supply can be adjusted to the climate change and its use is very safe and clean with the high technologies we have applied," said one presenter of the Beijing Natural Gas company.

Saturday is the fourth and last day for the inspection tour by the IOC commission. The inspectors will then tour the four other candidate cities -- Osaka, Paris, Istanbul and Toronto.