The Guangzhou Asian Games draw to a close on Saturday (November 27)and Guangzhou is already looking to secure a sustainable legacy from hosting Asia's biggest multi-sports event.
The bird's eye view of the Aoti Aquatics Centre, the venue for the Guangzhou Asian Games Swimming and Diving competition. (Liu Dawei/Xinhua)
The 16th Asian Games were unprecedented in both size and scale in the 59-year history of the quadrennial event. More than 10,000 athletes from 45 countries and regions have participated in a record 42 sports ranging from Archery to Chess.
This has offered China's third-largest city an opportunity to emulate Beijing, which transformed itself for the 2008 Summer Olympics, and Shanghai, which went on a construction spree for the recently completed Shanghai World Expo 2010.
"If you haven't seen Guangzhou since last year, then you'll be seeing a totally different city now," said Liu Jiangnan, Deputy Secretary General of the Guangzhou Asian Games Organising Committee (GAGOC).
One of the most striking facilities is Asian Games Town, a new community located about 40km southeast of downtown Guangzhou, which is the home of the Athletes' Village, Main Press Centre and Media Village.
The 600-metre-tall Canton Tower, also known as the Guangzhou TV &Sightseeing Tower, opened in late September in time for the Asiad. It has already become a landmark, attracting several thousand visitors daily.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said he was impressed by the changes that have taken place in the city, which he first visited in 2001.
"Nine years ago, you didn't see so many skyscrapers, you didn't have the high TV tower," Rogge told Xinhua last week, after he attended the Opening Ceremony on Haixinsha Island on November 12.
"Guangzhou was just a provincial capital back then. Now it has become a world city," he said.
Unlike previous multi-sports events, which tended to cluster their venues together, Guangzhou scattered its sites throughout the city's 10 districts, two country-level satellite cities and the three co-host cities of Foshan, Dongguan and Shanwei.
Liu said it was regrettable that some athletes may have felt inconvenienced by the travelling involved, but that Games organisers also had to bear in mind the demands of Guangzhou's 10 million residents.
"It's for the sake of the city's future development," he said. "Guangzhou has also taken action to ensure the venues don't become 'white elephants' when the Games end."
The Asian Games Town will become a residential community, while a dragon boat venue 74km from downtown Guangzhou will be turned into a public park.
"Big events usually result in short-term losses for their hosts," said Chen Jian, an economist at the Beijing Institute for Socialism. "But the impact on a city's image is huge, and the investments will bring infrastructure improvements that will boost future growth."
China's economy has expanded almost 20-fold since 1990, when Beijing hosted the 11th Asian Games, the first major international sporting event held in the nation.
Meanwhile, Guangzhou saw its gross domestic product rise 11.5 percent last year to 911.3 billion Yuan.
"After the 16th Asian Games, Guangzhou is moving toward world city status," said Li Yongning, a professor of economics and sociology at the Guangdong Research Institute for International Strategies in Guangzhou. "The investment for the Games helped internationalise and modernise the city."
