Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics host district opens construction bidding

BEIJING - Suburban Beijing's Yanqing district, home to Xiaohaituo Mountain, one of the host sites for the 2022 Winter Olympics, launched bidding for sports venue construction on Friday.

The venues open for bidding are the Olympic Village and mountain media center, as well as the transformation and operation of the Yanqing Olympic venue cluster after the games conclude.

Beijing and Zhangjiakou City in north China's Hebei Province won a joint bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in July 2015.

With ample snow in the winter and high-altitude mountains, Yanqing lies between Beijing's city proper and Zhangjiakou. The venue cluster in the rural district is set to stage the Alpine skiing, bobsled and luge events for the 2022 Games as well as to house a national training base.

Zhang Yuan, deputy district chief, said at the launch of the bidding that Yanqing's Olympic sports venues will be high-quality engineering projects to promote China's ice and snow sports.

He said the open bidding is expected to draw private investment and construction contractors, preferably those with advanced technology and winter events operating experience.

The construction contracts will be in the form of public-private partnerships, including Build-Own-Operate (BOO) and Rebuild-Operate-Transfer (ROT) projects. The terms of the partnership will be 30 years, he said.