Children from Daliang Mountain, a poverty-stricken area in Southwest China

As several Chinese media organizations have criticized the government for ignoring the poverty-stricken areas by spending huge sums of money on the 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing, the Chinese official newspaper Global Times rebutted the criticism in an editorial on Wednesday, saying that the investment in the Olympics has nothing to do with helping the poor.

Over the past several days, it has been reported that a fourth-grade girl of Yi ethnic group in the Daliang Mountain area in Southwest China became orphaned and is struggling now due to her poor living condition. She did not get much help from the local government largely because the area has long been suffering from poverty. The media questioned why China would still host the Olympics even though the poor areas need more help?

The Global Times, a media organization affiliated to the government’s leading newspaper the People’s Daily, argued that most of the money to be used on the Winter Olympics will come from the Beijing municipal government, and only a tiny portion of the expenses will be allocated by the central government, so the spending on the Olympics will in no way affect the central government’s effort to alleviat poverty in China’s remote areas.

Of the $3.07 billion budget for the Olympics, $1.56 billion will be used on the holding of competitions, and of this amount, only $94 million will be subsidized by the central government, the newspaper said.

Of the $1.51 billion to be used on the construction of venues, 65% will come from investments from non-government sources, and of the remaining 35%, $485 million will be funded by the Beijing municipal government, and the central government will be only responsible for $49 million.