After the construction of the Three Gorges Dam project, the hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games will be largest public works project ever undertaken in China. By some calculations, this is also the largest sum that has ever been spent in readying any single municipality to host the Olympic Games. According to the estimates of a Beijing economist with the China Research Institute of Science Popularization, who used statistics from the Sydney Olympics to derive a model of job creation, if Beijing attracts RMB 74.5 billion (US$ 9 billion) in additional outside investment as a result of hosting the 2008 games, and if each RMB 100, 000 (US$ 12,100) invested creates one new employment opportunity, then Olympics-related investment will create 745,000 new jobs in Beijing. In addition, the government anticipates that the combination of Olympics-related fixed-asset investment and foreign direct investment will add 0.3 to 0.4% to China's annual GDP growth in the six-and-a-half years leading up to the event.
