By Tomoyuki Tachikawa,
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has been nearing as the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, already delayed by one year, is feared to be canceled or postponed again with the number of new coronavirus infections rising in Japan.
Some Japanese firms, whose corporate performance has been languished at home amid the virus-hit economy, have already begun to secure necessary personnel and expand their businesses for the big events in China in February 2022.
Preparations for the Beijing Olympics have been "well under way and highly recognized," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in December, signaling the country's confidence that it has brought the virus outbreak under control.
Many test events for the Winter Games, however, have been called off against a backdrop of the pandemic, sparking speculation that China might be also forced to consider whether to hold the main competitions as it has envisioned.
Since the increase in new infections apparently peaked in late February 2020, the world's second-largest economy has shown signs of a V-shaped recovery as business activities have intensified and retail sales have been recuperating.
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In June, a virus cluster was found at the biggest wholesale market in Beijing, but the authorities conducted PCR tests on more than 10 million citizens and locked down parts of the city, which contributed to curbing further infections for around four weeks.
People's lives have got back to normal and a large number of recreational facilities have been operational even at late night in China, unlike in Japan where local governments have asked restaurants and bars to shorten their business hours.
While citizens in Beijing have been still urged by the municipal authorities to wear protective face masks when they go outside, a 38-year-old Chinese woman touted the capital as the "safest city in the world" as other nations have struggled to contain the virus.
With expectations growing that the Beijing Olympics would provide broad business opportunities, Yuji Miyamoto, an employee of a Japanese electronic equipment maker in China, said, "We have been stepping up efforts to gain profits."
A major Japanese travel agency has been arranging to set up a new bureau in China in an attempt to strengthen measures to attract foreign tourists on the occasion of the Olympics, a source close to the matter said.
In Japan, the tourism industry has become stagnant as the pandemic has prevented people from going abroad and the nationwide "Go To Travel" subsidy campaign, designed to spur the economy through domestic tourism, has been suspended for the time being as coronavirus infections surge.
The source added that some Japanese companies have frequently hosted job information fairs for Chinese youth, who have been facing difficulties in obtaining employment in the wake of an economic slowdown stemming from the virus spread.
China's economy grew 4.9 percent from the previous year during the July-September period of 2020, posting the second straight quarter of expansion, after shrinking 6.8 percent in the first three months of the year.
Nevertheless, the pace of recovery has been too moderate to offer adequate employment for Chinese citizens, analysts say. In China, over eight million students are believed to have graduated from universities and entered the job market in 2020.
"There are many excellent university graduates who have yet to find jobs in China, which has a population of more than 1.4 billion. It may be a good chance for Japanese firms to recruit talented local staff at low costs for the Beijing Olympics," the source said.
"It remains uncertain whether the Tokyo Olympics will really take place in 2021, but China is likely to do its best to hold the Olympics with national pride at stake. Some Japanese companies in China have turned their eyes to Beijing from Tokyo," he added.
China, where the virus was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, has not let down its guard against the outbreak.
In early 2020, the Chinese government introduced a health code system that can confirm whether a person has a high risk of infection. The leadership of President Xi Jinping has been also trying to pitch the technology to the world.
The system assigns residents multicolor QR codes to register where they went and whether they had contact with infected patients. With a green light shown on their smartphones, they are permitted onto trains and expressways, and into shops and office buildings.
As for coronavirus vaccines, China has been seen as a frontrunner in the escalating race to develop them, as many citizens have recently started to receive one of them in the country.
The national medical team was quoted by the Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, as saying in December, "More than 60,000 people visited high-risk overseas regions after being vaccinated and no severe infection" has been reported."
Although hopes for the Beijing Olympics are mounting with skiing all the rage in the capital, some Chinese officials are worried about whether the situation will get better by February 2022 so that the games can be held in a complete form, a diplomatic source said.
So far, the Olympic test events for a lot of sports, including figure skating, curling, snowboarding and skiing, have been canceled.
Also in China, the number of new infections has been minimal but at least over several new cases have been reported daily for the past few months despite the government's radical "zero corona" policy, in contrast with Japan's request-based "with corona" policy.
"China has been keen to host the Beijing Olympics, even without an audience," the diplomatic source said.
"The worst-case scenario for China is that the pandemic will continue in other nations through late 2021 and many of them will boycott the Olympics. China does not want to hold a large-scale athlete festival only for Chinese people," he added.
