Submitted By: Simeon Trieu

Beijing Reorganizes Olympic Ticket Sales: Olympic Ticketing Director Is Replaced

Now is not a good time to screw up.

Unfortunately for Mr. Rong Jun, the director of Beijing’s ticketing operations, the ticketing system that was supposed to distribute 1.8 million tickets for the Beijing Olympic Committee (Bocog) sales event crashed before even processing 9,000. It was reported that the system was only equipped to handle 200,000 requests per hour. However, when the flood gates opened, consumers gushed into the site, purchasing tickets at a rate of 150,000 requests per second.

Mr. Rong Jun was recently replaced by Mr. Zhu Yan. Any guess as to why?

Mr. Zhu has not commented on why he succeeded Mr. Rong, however, from a little deduction, we can guess that it was because of the ticketing fiasco. China knows that the eyes of the world are on them, and this fiasco will not reflect well on their image. They cannot afford to screw up and will not tolerate anything that tarnishes the country’s image.

Similarly, for China’s space program in Sichuan, they are looking for ways to impress the world and establish dominance in Asia, as Japan tried to do not too long ago in World War II (except China is not resorting to military force… yet). But does the world world care, as Rob Belloni has said in “Government Promises and 2008 Olympics”?

Now is the time for China to prove itself as a world power. Throughout the modern Chinese history after the fall of the Qing dynasty, they have been exploited and looked down upon by the Western powers. Going from one of the richest nations in the world to one of the poorest (as Andrew Morris in his China lecture has said) has put them at a major disadvantage in the world. However, they are struggling to get their position back… and winning according to Deloitte Consulting (see bar graph entitled “History Share of Global GDP”). As the US middle class shrinks and China and India’s middle class grows, maybe we should care what China is doing?