Beijing Is Leading Contender To Host 2022 Olympic Winter Games

It looks like the next three Olympic Games would be hosted simultaneously by Asian cities. Beijing is the strongest contender to host the 2022 Winter Games, reports said.

In 2018, it will be Pyeongchang in South Korea that will be the venue, while after two years, the international sporting event moves to Tokyo, Japan, for the summer games.

Beijing goes against Almaty in Kazakhstan for the opportunity to play host, a role that previous strong contenders such as St Moritz/Davos in Switzerland and Munich in Germany backed off because of the high cost involved versus the returns, specifically at least $1 billion in investments, many of which become white elephants after the Olympics.

Prior to the disinterest of the two European cities, Oslo in Norway, Stockholm in Sweden, Krakow in Poland and Lviv in Ukraine also withdrew their bids to host the event.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will announce its choice in July 2015 at its next assembly at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

If Beijing - which also hosts this month's APEC Summit - gets the IOC's nod, it would have the distinction of being the only city to host both a summer and winter edition of the international sporting event.

USA Today pointed out that actually, the mountains near Beijing where the city plans to hold the skiing competition gets less than one metre of snow. Then, there is also the capital city's notorious and deadly air population level, but Beijing could also do a repeat of what they are currently doing in the run-up to the APEC by giving state employees with offices in the city 6-day furloughs, shutting factories, halting construction activities and imposing an odd-even scheme based on plate number of vehicles to curb by 50 percent the entry of cars that significantly contribute to Beijing's lung-buster air.

Despite these limitations, Beijing has plenty of cash to spare with China's growth rate - despite the slowdown - still the envy of many western nations. To further convince the IOC it deserves to become host, Beijing's bid committee has created a Facebook page, opened a Twitter account dedicated to clinching the hosting and prepared the following promotional video.

YouTube/CCTV News

However, this early, China needs to identify its strength in winter events so the host-nation won't end up red-faced due to poor medal harvest. Li Sheng, the founder and CEO of SECA Worldwide, cited the lack of a downhill Chinese skier and a bobsled team.

He estimated that China now has more than 5 million skiers, a big jump from only 10,000 in 1996.