When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing, environmentalists were aghast.
Not only would the city’s dwindling water supplies be further diminished to produce snow, it later emerged that some of the ski slopes to be built for the games would be carved through a nature preserve, a precedent that bodes ill for the integrity of China’s other natural parks.
But water scarcity and nature are no obstacles in a planned economy. President Xi Jinping is now adding his clout to China’s leap into skiing, leading efforts to create a domestic ski industry almost from scratch to ensure that the billions invested in the games do not end up creating white elephants.
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