AS Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, crossed the Olympic finish line in 9.69 seconds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium the world stopped to take a second look.
So the Chinese had succeeded, as splashing out on the most expensive Olympic games of all time and building some of the most spectacular buildings ever seen, made the world sit up and take note.
No longer do Stalinist structures dominate the communist landscape of the world’s most populated nation with such prevalence.
Instead they now form the historic backdrop to what China has become, an economic show pony with grand ambitions.
The 80,000 seat, skeletal, Swiss-designed Beijing National Stadium, also known as Bird’s Nest Stadium, is a small part of a huge cultural change, casting polished steel shadows over historic Chinese landmarks.
Even 17th Century Tiananmen Square is now overlooked by an other-worldly futuristic blob, known colloquially as the Alien Egg.
Officially called the Grand National Theatre, the French-designed Alien Egg follows the pattern of western architects being commissioned to shape Chinese cityscapes, suggesting a departure from traditional oriental design.
As a result China and Beijing in particular are now synonymous with cutting edge design and this $300million three-theatre structure, is every bit the grand spectacle.
Another imaginatively named example of extreme development, the Twisted Donut, is a structurally radical, 44 floor loop that acts as the Chinese Central Television Headquarters.
Yet this facade of aesthetic transformation, sparked in part by Olympic ambitions, is seemingly covering the cracks of a painful, forced economic growth.
After communism took hold of China following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, a longing to become the dominant world super-power, despite their drained economic status, led to ecological and social strife.
Over cultivation, over grazing and deforestation have turned around a quarter of China’s land into desert, while an estimated 300,000 people die prematurely every year from polluted air in the country.
And for decades questions have been murmured tentatively from world leaders as to how and why controversially communist China’s immense environmental shortfalls have not been corrected.
At one point it was even believed that on average China opened one new coal-fired power station every week, increasing its emissions more than any other industrialised country put together since 2001.
Typically however, the Chinese were never going to solve this simply.
Instead they, among other things, pledged to build from scratch a showpiece ‘eco-city’ that would support itself through renewable energy created on the island, minus gas guzzling cars and troublesome landfills.
However this more than ambitious plan, proposed to be on Chongming Island, across the water from Shanghai, has been beset with problems and delays since it was announced in 2005.
Recognised as one of the world’s most exciting ecological projects, Dongtan still may become the world’s first zero carbon, completely self sufficient city despite a lack of construction years after it was scheduled to start.
Proposed to home around half a million people in an area about the size of Manhattan, the island still has its supporters and many environmentalists refuse to accept that Dongtan is dead.
And with funds practically spewing from a country with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, such immense environmental undertakings are by no means out of the question.
In fact China has also embarked on an aggressive mission to cut fossil fuels, spending more than $34billion in 2009, more than any other country in the world.
TOWERING: Pudong skyline with soon to be completed Shanghai Tower.
The Chinese now has more hydroelectric generators than any other, is increasing its use of bio-fuels, tops the world in terms of solar power generation and is frenetically increasing its use of wind power.
The Three Gorges Dam, in Hubei province, is all that is modern China.
Considered the largest hydroelectric dam and largest generator of electricity in the world since 2006, this dominating dam measures 1.5miles in width and is the country’s largest construction project since the Great Wall.
This humungous structure, which along with its underground power station is set to be fully operational by 2012, is the tip of the iceberg in terms of Chinese environmental ambition.
Immense projects such as this and the increased push for renewable energy has made red China a green giant.
Projects like these provide a constant reminder of Chinese ambition and innovation in the face of crisis, the centre piece of which however lies to the east, in Shanghai.
In 1992 the then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, described the city as “the head of the dragon” pulling the country into the future.
Shanghai has since experienced massive investment aimed to redress over half a century of neglect.
Yet again, foreign architects were commissioned to transform what was a rundown industrial city into the personification of modernity and more importantly of the new China.
Shanghai’s recent development again is linked in to European design and competitive communism, with an unprecedented skyline that has sprung up from virtually nowhere.
The 88 storey Jin Mao Tower and immense 101 storey Shanghai World Financial Center, in the Pudong district, lie on what was an area of rice paddies and small factories just over twenty years ago.
Home to economic heavyweights like General Motors, IBM and Credit Lyonnais, these buildings are a bold statement of Chinese world ambition, but again it is argued that a ruthless cultural sacrifice has been made.
Similarly Shanghai International Circuit, a spectacular $450million venture, was transformed from swampland within 18 months to become a world renowned Formula 1 race venue from 2004 onwards.
And the construction steam train is by no means coming to a halt as the biggest Shanghai mega structure yet begins to materialise. The Shanghai Tower will be the third tallest building in the world by 2014.
The multibillion dollar glass tower, which will engulf its Pudong neighbours and feature the world’s highest observation platform, is another glowing example of architecture that marks out China as forward thinking.
After decades of decay and environmental neglect, China is now ruthlessly transforming itself from an over industrialised workhorse into a rounded, environmentally viable economic powerhouse.
As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but China’s relentless charge towards to the top seat in world economics is seemingly inevitable.
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