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This picture taken on January 17, 2015 shows a man walking past a billboard after skiing at the Yunding Ski Field in Chongli town, near the Zhangjiakou,in China's Hebei Province. A flag on a barren mountainside marks where China hopes ski jumpers will vault to glory at the Winter Olympics, marking a giant leap the country must make to stage the Games.WANG ZHAO/AFP / Getty Images

There is little subtlety in China's desire to host another Olympics. It is written in bold characters, and translated into English, on billboard after billboard along the 250-kilometre drive from Beijing to Chongli, the distant mountain town chosen in China's bid for snowboard and cross-country skiing events.

"All Chinese people are eager to hold the winter Olympic Games," says one. Others entice visitors with promises of "joyful rendezvous upon pure ice and snow" at an "ideal ecoresort in which oxygen is abundant." And for locals, the promotion is: "New snow city. New homeland. New world."

The big-letter campaign is among the most visible elements of China's campaign to take ownership of the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it's a very different campaign from its last bid. China hopes that winning the Games might spark a domestic sports revolution and at the same time solve one of the Communist Party's trickiest political problems: how to keep its people happy.

A decade ago, the preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics offered China a chance to stage a once-in-a-millennium coming-out party, as it hosted an event meant to convince thousands of visiting dignitaries, billions of television viewers and its own people that it had arrived. China, the Olympics proclaimed, from the scintillating opening ceremony on through the blockbuster closing ceremony, had shaken off decades of poverty and backwardness to resume its place as a great nation.

The 2022 bid is different. Bringing the Winter Games to China "will inspire over 300 million Chinese to participate in winter sports if we win, which will contribute greatly to the development of the international Olympic cause," President Xi Jinping said recently.

Mr. Xi's pledge is perhaps his country's most succinct response to a question China is trying very hard to answer: Why should it be awarded another Olympics?

The obstacles for China are familiar because they are unchanged from 2001, when it was awarded the Summer Games in Beijing. China remains a country with a decidedly checkered record on human rights. In many ways, the pre-2008 Olympics freedoms sought by the international community have actually grown more elusive.

Beijing under Mr. Xi has further restricted free speech and ordered a new reversion to Maoist re-education. China is still detaining activists and beating regime critics, just as it was before the Summer Games.

The argument from China, however, is that the International Olympic Committee should set aside those concerns in favour of awarding a Games that could help the sports ambitions of the world's most populous country. China doesn't want to stage an Olympics for the world. It wants a domestic athletic explosion so dramatic it will match the country's giddiest years of economic growth.

Manufacturing the good life is increasingly an imperative for the Communist Party, whose legitimacy rests in its ability to improve the quality of life for its citizens even while the country's GDP, which has grown for nearly four decades, begins to slow.

To underscore the scale of their determination, Chinese officials recently said they want their sports sector to be worth $1-trillion (U.S.) a year by 2025, a greater than five-fold increase from 2012, the latest year for which there are figures. It's a massive goal. Although the numbers aren't directly comparable, PricewaterhouseCoopers has forecast the entire U.S. sports industry will bring in $67.7-billion in revenue by 2017, while Statistics Canada valued Canada's sport industries at $5.2-billion (Canadian) in 2010.

Against that broader ambition, a Winter Olympics in 2022 offers a bit of serendipitous timing, a chance to dress up a sports push in Olympic rings. Though great parts of China are too warm for cold-weather sports, the hope is that hosting the Winter Games will increase interest in winter sports, and the spending that goes with them. Most people don't fence or throw javelins. They might skate or ski – or even curl.

"The impact of the Winter Olympics on Chinese people's perceptions will be enormous," said Guo Jing, an investor who helped pioneer skiing in Chongli, and is now a tourism consultant who has sought to build up – and profit from – a new winter resort industry. "As Chinese get richer, they are chasing fashions. And a Winter Olympics would underscore the idea of skiing."

Around Chongli, for example, local sports officials are building a recreational belt for activities of all kinds, from camping to snow sports. There are now five ski resorts in the area, with another in the making, its future runs already stripped of trees. Cranes hang over the concrete shells of future condominiums and resorts.

Zhang Chunsheng, executive director of operations for the Chongli bid committee, calls the area "the backyard" for Beijing and nearby Tianjin, another megacity with a population of 10 million.

"There is a rising middle class in China. They have plenty of time and money – what they need is space to enjoy themselves," Mr. Zhang said.

When it comes to bringing the Olympics here, however, there are more fundamental problems for China, chief among them the basic ingredient of most winter sports: snow. Yanqing, the chosen site in China's bid for alpine events, receives on average five centimetres of snow a year. Chongli gets more, but still not enough. Last week, slopes not blasted by snowmakers were equal parts white and mud brown. The area is also prone to sudden weather shifts, and even the most ardent skiing supporters worry bad conditions could cause lengthy suspensions of competition. "What if it lasts for three to five days?" Mr. Guo said. "It's going to be very troublesome."

China, as part of its bid, promises to dig ponds to store water for snowmaking. It's also considering construction of a water pipeline at Yanqing.

And it has sought to sell itself as a rightful home for winter sports. In Chongli, a new snow and ice museum – still closed to the public but opened, with a tour guide, for important guests – includes a display of cave paintings it says show skis made of animal skin used by Altay people 10,000 years ago in what is now western China's Xinjiang region. From there skiing "spread to other places such as Scandinavia," the display claims.

China, the message seems to be, has proper winter sport bona fides, even if it took until 2002 to win its first Winter Olympics gold – and even if the International Ski Federation dates the earliest skis to 6300 BC at a lake 1,200 kilometres northwest of Moscow.

Whatever the case, the current generation of Chinese skiers is only just beginning to feel its way down the hills. A decade ago, few Chinese skied – but few owned cars, and for those who did, there weren't any ski hills to drive to. That's changing fast, with gleaming new freeways, some 400 ski hills in China and an estimated 10 million skiers. But this remains a nation of beginners.

"Chinese people are increasingly interested in all sports. Many of my colleagues, friends and their family are getting into sports like jogging, swimming and skiing," said Mr. Zhang, a 43-year-old businessman who gave only his surname. "I think it matches our current phase of economic development."

On a recent sunny weekday, Mr. Zhang was at the Genting Grand Secret Garden ski resort, one of the chosen Chongli venues in China's bid. As a magic carpet lift slowly rolled new skiers to the top of a nearly-flat run, he set out, his skis jittering unsteadily as he followed his 10-year-old daughter. "She's better than me," he admitted.

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