China Outlines Plan To Encourage Winter Sports Involvement Ahead of 2022 Games

The Chinese government said it wants to get "300 million citizens involved in winter sports by the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and plans to encourage them by building more than 500 ice skating rinks and 240 ski slopes over the next six years," according to Brenda Goh of REUTERS. The country's top economic planner said on Friday that "the number and scale of China's current facilities did not match its winter sports development targets." The National Development & Reform Commission said in a document signed by other government bodies including the finance and sports ministries, "At the moment ... there is a large gap with other developed countries with winter sports." The NDRC did not disclose how much it planned to spend on the drive, but said that "it would use a mix of government and private funding and was open to support from financial institutions" (REUTERS, 11/25).