Many Hands Contributed to Olympics Success

As I stated earlier in this blog post, my visit to Beijing early in the year led me to the the conclusion that China would be a wonderful host for the Olympics games this year. During the very brief visit confirnmed to the host city, I understood that the government generally and most of the Chinese people I spoke too considered the hosting of the games as an opportunity to present a face of competence and national confidence in spite of the controversy in Tibet and the demonstrations that accompanied the torch relay in some cities and countries outside China.

For that reason, articles such as this by Christie Blatchford in the Globe & Mail are merely rehashing the obvious. In choosing to highlight the attention accorded to the bathrooms during the games, the piece fails to understand that China merely chose to leverage on its advantage in a huge labor force. This is unsurprising for a person with a minimal understanding of factor prices because China's huge population necessarily means that labor is comparatively cheap hence it is possible to deploy between 3 to 6 people in charge of a single bathroom block. I noted during my visit that even small shops tend to be manned by a large number of people in the city and this is a reflection of that endowment. It is unlikely that with the higher costs of labor in London, that the same number of people will be available to perform the same tasks.