The Hangzhou Asian Games kicked off. The national team topped the list of medals. The Hong Kong team had a good start and won 3 gold medals. The results are gratifying.
Watching the opening ceremony of the Asian Games brought a lot of emotions. Digital people and torchbearers jointly lit the “Qianjiang Tide” of the torch tower to light up the night sky of the Hangzhou Asian Games.
The opening ceremony of this year’s Asian Games is different from the style of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This time it has both Jiangnan delicacy and digital characteristics. Looking back 33 years ago, when China hosted the Asian Games for the first time, the difficulty was completely different from what it is now.
In 1989, the June Fourth Incident occurred in China, which was under foreign sanctions. In addition, China’s national strength was far less than it is today. It was really difficult to host the Asian Games in 1990.
Mainland China’s “Beijing Daily” public account “Chang’an Street Governor” reviewed this process. On July 3, 1990, Deng Xiaoping inspected the Asian Games venues and said a few famous words: “Some people always think that the moon in foreign countries is round. I think the moon in China is also round, maybe even rounder.”
Comparing the 1990 Beijing Asian Games and the Hangzhou Asian Games 33 years later, Deng Xiaoping’s sigh is even more evocative. It was indeed difficult for China to host the Asian Games at that time. In the 1990s, China had only been reforming and opening up for 12 years. The country’s GDP was only one-tenth that of the United States. The construction of the capital Beijing was still relatively backward, and its sports venues were incomparable to those of Asian powers such as Japan.
To successfully host the Asian Games, the first issue is funding.
Wu Shaozu, then executive chairman of the Beijing Asian Games Organizing Committee, recalled that at that time, hosting an Asian Games required 2.14 billion yuan, but the central government only provided 850 million yuan, leaving a gap of 1.29 billion yuan. Faced with a huge gap, we could only raise funds across the country. From charity performances by artists, auctions of painters, to donations from entrepreneurs, the people generously donated money, and finally solved the funding problem of the Asian Games.
The second is the difficulty of construction.
A large number of venues have to be built in a short period of time. Even if all the venues are worked overtime, there is still a question whether they can be completed as scheduled. At that time, Beijing deputy mayor Zhang Baifa even joked: “If the Asian Games project cannot be completed as scheduled, I will jump from the top floor of the Beijing-Hong Kong Center, the tallest building in Beijing!”
However, China has used miraculous speed to complete the massive construction of the Asian Games in just over three years from design to construction, including the International Olympic Center, which was also built within the deadline and became a new landmark in Beijing. China has now become an “infrastructure maniac”, and China’s high-speed genes have long been revealed.
The third is the advantage of the system.
Although China is still quite poor and backward, and under the pressure of foreign sanctions, it can still successfully host the 1990 Asian Games. The key is an efficient system. Deng Xiaoping said at the time: “Such a good Asian Games building was built in a short period of time by concentrated efforts, and it was done so well, which proves that socialism is good. Socialism can concentrate its efforts and can accomplish all difficult things.” This is what is called “concentrating efforts to accomplish big things.” By gathering the strength of the whole country and focusing on development-related projects, we can get things done. This was true in the past, and it is even more true now.
From the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, and then to this year’s 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, China has rich experience in hosting world-class sports games. China is now the world’s second largest economy. If we use the “purchasing power parity” indicator of actual output capacity, China’s economic output has surpassed the United States as early as 2014, becoming the world’s largest.
With the Asian Games held in Hangzhou this year, there is no need to worry about the hardware construction. The software used is also world-class. The content of technology is getting higher and higher, the proportion of greenness is getting larger and larger, and the functions are getting stronger and stronger. Not only are they far exceeding the level of the year , also world-class.
Watching the opening ceremony of the International Games hosted by China is indeed a sigh of relief as if Hedong has been in Hedong for 30 years and Hexi has been in Hexi for 30 years. It only took China more than 30 years to go from catching up to surpassing!
Lu Yongxiong
This is a world where both sides coexist.
While the SAR government is vigorously countering the slander and slander issued by the British government’s “Hong Kong Half-year Report”, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po continues his visit to London to promote the development of Hong Kong-British trade.
After arriving in Hong Kong, Mr Chan attended the “Hong Kong Dinner” organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. About 400 British leaders and professionals from all walks of life were invited to participate. In his speech, he said that Hong Kong has completely overcome the epidemic, has full customs clearance with the international and mainland countries, and has steadily recovered its social economy. The country supports Hong Kong’s long-term implementation of the “one country, two systems” system. Hong Kong will continue to play its unique role and function in connecting the mainland and the world. Ordinary people The legal system and rule of law are effectively implemented in Hong Kong as usual. The “Hong Kong National Security Law” safeguards national security, maintains the overall stability of Hong Kong society, and consolidates the confidence of international investors and business circles in Hong Kong.
The SAR government can normally promote Hong Kong in London, which more or less reflects the beginning of a thaw in the relationship between the UK and Hong Kong. The premise of this thaw is that there are also signs of thaw in Sino-British relations.
Sino-British relations were once very cordial. In 2015, China launched the “One Belt, One Road” initiative and established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The UK was the first Western country to join. Also in this year, the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne said that the UK had “consolidated its position as China’s best partner in the West.” Then-Prime Minister David Cameron took President Xi Jinping to have a beer in a local bar to demonstrate friendly relations. The British government declared in 2015 that Sino-British friendly cooperation has entered a “golden era.”
However, Sino-British relations are subject to change and are not led by the UK. Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016 and took office in 2017. In 2018, he launched a trade war against China, stirred up anti-China sentiment around the world, raised the issue of genocide in Xinjiang, and launched sanctions on Chinese technology companies such as Huawei.
The big boss of the United States stood up and shouted, and the little brother of the British could only respond. Since then, Sino-British relations have undergone fundamental changes. The British government has parroted China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The UK also used Hong Kong to enact a national security law, opening the door of peace to Hong Kong people, and absorbing Hong Kong immigration funds when the UK’s Brexit funds were being lost. In 2021, Huawei was banned from participating in the UK’s 5G infrastructure due to security concerns.
All this angered China, which sanctioned five British MPs, including Sir Smith, accusing them of spreading “lies and false information” against China.
As time goes by, after several years of anti-China play, the UK began to find that it was no longer fun. After the Russo-Ukrainian war, British inflation soared, which further exposed the lackluster British economy after Brexit. Therefore, I thought about the benefits of doing business with China, knowing that it had nothing to do with the United States.
British Foreign Minister Qi Zhanming’s visit to China on August 30 is the first step in the improvement of Sino-British relations. Qi Zhanming is the first senior British cabinet minister to visit Beijing in five years. He visited China despite the skepticism in the British political circles.
The British BBC described Qi Zhanming’s visit to China: “Will the restoration of communication in the post-golden era start a virtuous cycle?” The BBC believes that the core of all this is the basis of the British Xin Weicheng government’s recent China policy, which comes from the change in the British balance between economic interests and security concerns.
The conclusion is that China and Britain will continue to quarrel, but business will also follow suit. What China is now engaging in is an international united front, uniting all forces that can be united to target only one principal contradiction.
Lu Yongxiong
2023-09-25 11:31:40
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