Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeng
First, I don't count infrastructure as pure expense. Infrastructure has great value for any country and it is great that Beijing gets the new infrastructure. The value of the infrastructure will surely increase.
I never studied financial, but as I heard that the Asian game village in Beijing has increase its value several times now.
Great city deserves great culture and sport centers as well as associated facilities.
Second, I hope that the game itself balances itself out financially. But I don’t consider pure financial statistics show the true value of the Olympic game even if it can not balance itself financially.
Great country and great city deserve the great legacies. Holding Olympic game is one of them.
Third, it forced China to open up for scrutiny in one way or another. The constructive criticism will improve China to better direction.
Great country should have the tolerance to accept the constructive criticism.
Fourth, the civil campaigns in China for behaving more polite and more civilized for Olympics will improve the behavior of our people. The campaigns for learning foreign languages for the Olympics will give more people a chance to contact the rest of the world.
Great people should have their proud to facing the world in a respect way with confidence.
|
I cannot understand your words exactly, perhaps because my reading ability is too weak.
Ok, anyway, lets continue our interesting discussion.
BTW, you mentioned you never studied finance. It doesnt matter, because the conceptions I am talking about are very common ones.
Firstly, you think the infrastructure should not be taken into consideration and believe their value must increase in the future.
For one thing, it is a kind of the government's spending, which belongs to fiscal policy. You see, nowadays China's economic market is quite differnt from two years ago and the goverment's aim is to control the the inflation and its effect. And the central bank and the Ministry of Finance did somethings for it, such as, successive increase in saving interest rates. Nevertheless, because of the rising of the RMB's value, the gap of the interest rates between China and US, international hot money and so forth, all of these policies received little effect and some failed completely. However, in the meanwhile, the infrastructure's building and re-building in Beijing are contrary to the whole environment and the policies I mentioned above. CCP has to continue its steps, but we here should account its cost to the economy.
For another, every investment has its opportunity cost. China decided to use the money to improve the road conditions, the air pollution, and the like for Beijing people. So a big big big opportunity cost comes. This huge amount of money, why not for our lamentable students in rural areas in Henan Province? Why not for villeges affected deadly by the desertification in Inner Mongolia? Why not for the lung cancer patients in the smoky and highly polluted Lin Fen in Shanxi Province? I bet even 100 yuan can improve their conditions a lot, due to the law of diminishing marginal utility and leverage effect. Ok, tomorrow you will see a more beautiful and "harmonious" capital, but millions of the poor are still struggling for life. Do you still think it doesnt matter?
In your posts, you mentioned the Olympic Villages twice. Well, it is quite good that you see the price is increasing at present. However, you havent seen its future. On one hand, did you ever think about which factors are making the price growing? One crucial factor is the coming Olympics this summer! But what will happen after that? I am not sure, but Hu said, it would be very difficult.On the other hand, the prices of real estate in Beijing and Shanghai are very unreasonable according to many indexes. I dont know what the price will be in the future, but if it keeps growing like this, the two cities will face some terrible problems. Besides, I learned about the Olympic village from my roomate. Her father is one of the officers who takes charge of the whole project. I have to keep some things as secrets, but I can tell you that even he is worrying a lot about it.
Secondly, you alleged that financial methods wont show the value of the Olympic 2008. I admit that if everything grows just like what China expected one year ago, it can bring the country a good reputation, its citizens long-lost confidence and blur blur blur as what our media used to publish. However, 人算不如天算(ren suan bu ru tian suan./Man proposes, God disposes.) Just have a look at the tough torch race.... Then may we come back to the talk about financial balance? I just used a simplest model.Though it still needed hypothesis of unknown Xs, we can see this Olympics may get deficit finally.
Thirdly... I can not get what you mean. What do you think is the constructive criticism? How to build the membrane structure of the Water Cube?(I also studied civil engineering for six months. Frankly, this membrane structure is not as beautiful or creative as the one of Allianz Arena) Or the "weight" of the Bird's Nest? If you refers to criticism to Tibet issue, my opinion is like this: I wish it should have come earlier and I dont think it has much directly to do with the Olympics Games. Just for Olympic Game2008, it is a bad news.
Fourthly, many Chinese have a strange logic. I saw too many posts saying something like "we are looking forwards to Olympics and dont spit on the ground" and "many foreigners will come so that please be more polite". Being more civilized is good unarguably, but it is very silly to do this just for Olympics and foreigners! So what will they do when the fall comes and the foreigners go back? Each Chinese should know that she should do it for herself, rather than for "face" showing to foreigners and do it every day, every minute and every moment, rather than a mania merely before one Olympic Game!
In fact, I appreciate your positive attitude. However, pls dont lose your ability to appraise events objectively, or rather, dont get blinded just by your enthusiasm.
Thanks.
PS: Id better remind you again, when you talk about Great city(Beijing) next time, dont forget the following places: Shan Xi, Nei Meng Gu, He Nan, and Tibet. And what you can do for the nation is not only telling people "great...,great...,great...".
Zeng, I never did it, but I used to donate money to poor pupils for two years before I left for Ireland, and I am applying for an intern in a charity organization in mainland of China.