Fireworks are out and frugality is in at China’s national games after the organising committee rushed to comply with edicts requiring officials across the country to tighten their belts as the economy slows.
The austere sporting championships, which start at the end of August in the northeastern province of Liaoning, will contrast with China’s lavish spending on events from the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to the world expo in Shanghai in 2010 when the economy was growing at a double-digit pace.
Now, with growth dipping towards 7.5 per cent and Xi Jinping, the new president, railing against ostentatious displays of wealth, the organisers of the Liaoning games – the largest, highest-level national sports competition in China – have gone out of their way to highlight their cost-saving measures.