Can China environmentally afford a new winter sports hobby? Barbara McCarthy
The fake snow may have settled on the Winter Olympics in Beijing, but enthusiasm for snow sports in China may have only just begun.
After the final curtain fell on a games largely overshadowed by corruption concerns, diplomatic frost, human rights abuse, doping controversies and punishing Covid regulations, the eastern giant failed to win international applause, but spurred a winter sports boom on home turf.
In 2002, China only had 130 ski resorts. In 2022, there are over 700 and by 2030 there will be 1000. For context, the Alps boast 1146 ski resorts according to skiresort.info. An ambitious plan set out by China’s leader Xi Jinping to rejuvenate the country’s nascent ski industry was set in motion when Beijing won the bid to host the games in 2015. A €157 billion snow sports market is set to exist by 2025.
Part of the government’s formidable ‘Chinese Dream’, which involved grooming 300 million Chinese people into participating in winter sports in seven years, was exceeded as the National Bureau of Statistics counted more than 346 million people engage in winter sports since 2015.
While many of the world’s ski resorts were closed or partially running as a result of the pandemic, ski resorts, ice rinks, ski simulators and indoor ski arenas popped up across the country as part of China’s big snow plan.
The Asia Pacific Snow Industry Forum said the number of skiers in China increased nearly 99 percent from May 2020 to April 2021. The 2020 China Ski Industry White book described the 2020-2021 snow season in China as ‘outstanding.’ A ‘prosperous indoor skiing market, a strong rebound at the beginning of the snow season, and more and more popular snowboarding’, with international skiers switching to internal circulation, thereby unexpectedly gaining “a good experience in domestic ski resorts”, according to Wu Bin, author of the report.
Social media platform Xiaohongshu found winter sports related searches went up 150 percent, while posts with skiing increased by 400 percent. China’s growing middle class need to spend their disposable income on something- or at least pretend to.
Based on income band classification from Pew, China’s middle class have been amongst the fastest growing in the world, swelling from 39.1 million to around 707 million in 2000, making up 50 per cent of the population - so figures from 2018.
18 year old freeskiing sensation Eileen Gu, who won three gold medals, ensured that, despite lacklustre viewership from the west, China has a new hobby. But can the country of 1.4 billion people afford a hobby which requires fake snow, usurpes much needed water supplies, encourages travel and damages ecosystems? 50 million people annually say yes annually, but does the environment?
The arid mountains, devoid of snow in the Zhanjiakou region, around 172 kilometres north of Beijing and Yanqing, around 72 kilometres from the Chinese capital, which were chosen as host venues looked dystopian on our fareway TV screens. A man made snow initiative was planned from the beginning, but it made for difficult viewing.
The Winter Olympics in Beijing were the first to use 100percent artificial snow
Even before the games, the Olympic Committee estimated that 49 million gallons of water were needed to produce fake snow using over 60 TechnoAlpin snow machines - enough to fill 3,600 ‘average sized swimming pools’ also translated as drinking water for 100 million people.
Despite the fact that in 2017, World Bank Data showed freshwater resources per Chinese resident standing at just 36,000 gallons, with the venue Zhangjiakou having just 83,000 - for comparison, in the US, figures showed there were 2.3 million gallons per person- the country went ahead with a 100 percent man made snow initiative.
Droughts and water shortages in Beijing saw the Chinese government spend more than €80 billion constructing 2,400 kilometres of canals and tunnels to pump 45 billion cubic metres of water from the moist south to the parched capital and surrounding areas.
For the games, Beijing diverted water from the Balboa reservoir to the Guishi river. 20,000 trees down to make room for events. A report by David Cyranoski, published in August 2015, called “Chinese biologists lead outcry over Winter Olympics ski site,” found that the proposed alpine ski area lies within a nature reserve, prompting fears of development in other conservation areas. “Biodiversity loss, boundaries getting redrawn, and replanting taking place, were undeniable,” Cyranoski stated.
In an article in ‘The Encyclopaedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers, Carmen de Jong, a hydrology professor at the University of Strasbourg said artificial snow and compressing snow grooms ensure a lack of oxygen between soil and snow causing the soil “ to become “very much compressed and impermeable”.
Despite being home to some of the world’s highest peaks including Shishapangma and sharing Mt Everest, Lhotse and Makalu with Nepal and K2, Gasherbrum II with Pakistan, most of the popular resorts in China are close to the big cities, small and low lying. Of the top ten resorts in the China Highlights travel website all lie around beneath 1400 metres and require fake snow or high tech fake pistes. Worldweatheronline.com found that between January and March 2021, the National Ski Centre in Yanqing had just 2cm of snow- less than London, Paris and Madrid.
Data released by Xiaohongshu states that Around 75 percent of the resorts in China are small. These are filled with novice skiers not wearing helmets with stuffed toy turtles strapped to their behinds in case they fall.
Zermatt in Switzerland it isn’t. Pricewise, it’s affordable for middle class Chinese people on a day out. They pay anywhere between €15 and €50 for a ski pass, but often hotels throw them in for free. A pass in Jackson Hole in the US costs €165, while in Zell am See Austria, a day pass costs €65. But the largest ski resort in China - Changbaishan International Ski Center, has just 40km of slopes. In Trois Vallees in France, there are 600km.
In Europe, towns like Saas Fee and Zermatt have been car-free since the 1950s, the Swiss use hydropower and have a great train network, offering free train service. The Lachtal resort in Austria is powered by windmills, while hydrogen powered snow ploughs are used in Switzerland and Austria. The Austrian region of Tyrol is planning on being climate neutral by 2035, yet the Alps are warming at twice the global average as glaciers retreat and snow becomes more scarce.
Currently there are around 135 million skiers in the world, who often use air travel to ski to locations where snowlines are receding and ecosystems are being damaged. Once borders open up, maybe China’s newbie ski fans will tire of their small resorts and travel to Europe or the US to ski. In Switzerland in 2019, according to the tourist board, Chinese tourists were the fourth largest contributor to the tourism market, spending €380 per day.
According to Vogue Business, skiing is seen as a lifestyle trend, which has opened up a brand new market for branded gear, while growing peripheral industries like fashion, photography and ski social media. European manufacturers, many of whom were involved in the Beijing Games, are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of 50 new million snow sports converts each year.
They may like to visit the Alps this year- where snow has been good. The snow machines in Zell am See have ‘barely been used’ according to local ski guides.
Back in China, a 2021 report by Zhijian Bai and Yang Zhang called, “Sustainability of Ski Tourism in China: An Integrated Model of Skiing Tourists’ Willingness to Pay for Environmental Protection”, found that in order to meet sustainable development goals, ski tourism destinations cannot develop without considering the natural environment, calling skiing a “highly climate-sensitive market.”
“Environmental protection in the context of ski tourism must take these natural elements into consideration in addition to concern for climate change. Skiing tourists, as the main users of such a natural environment, are undoubtedly responsible for the protection of sustainable ski tourism”, Bai and Zhang state.
How many visitors to China’s 700 odd resorts take heed is anyone's guess. There are no clear figures on how many resorts use fake snow, let alone how many skiers are protecting ski tourism.
Small 200 metre long resorts outside China’s cities, where locals gather to ski badly and enjoy noodle soup won’t destroy the planet, but a mass snow sports trend won’t help it.
There’s no reason why Chinese people can’t enjoy outdoor sports, but sustainable adaptation is necessary to feed the potential frenzy. Without snow in the long term however, resorts may become white elephants as patrons go elsewhere in search of the white stuff- while it’s still here.
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