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Many businesses in Beijing expected the Olympics to bring a boost to the local economy, but an article in The Economist has proved the opposite. Due to visa restrictions and the temporary shutdown of many bars, restaurants and street vendors, local shops have actually witnessed a downturn in business. Furthermore lower than expected visitor numbers have also left many hotel rooms unoccupied during the games.
The article reports:
At least the police are not rigorously enforcing a threatened ban on carousing after 2am. They have, however, cracked down on prostitution, depriving many of Beijing’s seedier bars and night-shift taxi drivers of business. Olympic traffic controls and security measures, as well as the lure of sport on television, seem to be keeping people at home anyway.Not only in the retail sector but due to the pollution controls placed on nearby factories, manufacturers have also felt the brunt of the enforcement of controls during the games. Throughout the period of the Olympics, all construction and renovation work has also been banned outright.
Although initial fears that the Beijing Olympics would be "no-fun" was unfounded for foreign visitors who made the trip to the nation's capital, local businesses are clearly not the ones enjoying themselves.
Photo by Ciro Cattuto
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Beijing authorities banged their heads against the Echo Wall at Temple of Heaven in an attempt to find a solution to the capital's current image as a "no fun" zone. Bars popular with foreigners. such as Maggie's, have been temporarily shut down and prostitutes have been rounded up and sent to selected provincial cities not hosting Olympic events (Urumqi, Shigatse, and Lanzhou).
In order to "erectify" the situation, health bureau party chief Jin Dapeng ordered 400,000 free condoms to be distributed to 90,000 rooms of 424 hotels rated 3 stars or above in order to promote "safe sex during Olympics". (What about the cheap two star hotels and international youth hostels?)
I kid you not! Here's the official story from Xinhua, titled "Beijing advocates safe sex during Olympics"
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/15/content_9350131.htm
@Spelunker
There are many more restrictions in place, such as any visitor at any time to any room has to register at hotel front desks, rather than previously after 11 p.m. The bureaucrats somehow figured out, that sex does not only happen at night.
The hookers at Maggies were all Mongolian, a couple of Russians and Philippinas - gone now, no visa. Positively, no Chinese hookers, only Chinese animators/waitresses. That place is said to be spiked with hidden cameras for producing compromising video footage of foreign dignitaries (so reportedly were the apartments of some of the hookers), the previous and the current location being conveniently close to embassies and diplomatic living compounds.
Similar setups used to exist in all former communist countries, so no surprise here, not new at all, yet another foreign concept that China has copied successfully.
Maggies never got closed during any campaign (easy to understand, if you figured who runs Magggies), therefore the closure this time did raise eyebrows. Apparently this is in connection to some prostitute murder cases.