In the 2022 World Cup, the host Qatar team lost all three rounds of matches and was the first to go out, setting a "world record" for the first host team to go out in history.
Qatar scored seven goals in three games against Ecuador, Senegal and the Netherlands, scoring only one of its own.
After being eliminated, unkind netizens began to make up jokes about Qatar again, and words such as "220 billion to buy a 1 ball" and "220 billion mixed faces" floated in the comment area.
In fact, Qatar officials said: "Direct investment for the World Cup is within 10 billion." "But people don't accept it at all, because the $220 billion news is deeply rooted in people's hearts."
Indeed, in the years leading up to the World Cup, Qatar did spend $220 billion on construction, but not entirely for the World Cup.
Although Qatar, a rich country in the desert, is rich, before this World Cup, it had poor infrastructure, small and dilapidated cities, inconvenient transportation, and low level of supporting facilities.
In order to become a world tourist destination and investment center in the future, Qatar spent 220 billion yuan to "renovate" the country, build stadiums and hotels in small cities, build subways and expand airports in the capital, and the rest of the money was spent in the new city of Lusel.
The 22nd World Cup is only the first exam for Qatar after the "renovation".
According to the Qatari government's plan, in the next 20 years, the country will change from a pure oil producer to a commercial center and tourist mecca, and Qatar will enter the ranks of developed comprehensive countries, rather than a "gas station".
So, what exactly is Qatar's $220 billion spent on? How did Chinese infrastructure companies perform at the Qatar World Cup? How much can this Qatari investment change the future?
1. Qatar: I wrapped this dumpling for this vinegar
After the opening of the World Cup, the city most people heard from the media was not Doha, the capital of the country, but Luselle. This is the location of the main stadium of the Qatar World Cup, "Lusail Stadium", and it is also a tourist area promoted by Qatar.
It is often rumored on the Internet that "in order to host the World Cup, Qatar even built a city", but the reality is just the opposite, Qatar is for Lucelle's "vinegar" to wrap the World Cup "dumplings".
Lucel is the absolute heart of Qatar, and in the future it may replace Doha as the heart city of Qatar and drive the transformation of the country.
Qatar is the driest and least inhospitable region on earth, with summer temperatures above 40 degrees and humans and animals largely inactive during the day. Qatar, which has such a harsh environment, would not have cared about it if it were not for oil.
After selling oil to make a fortune, Qatar vigorously built the capital Doha, but due to the limitations of the times and industrial reasons, Doha's construction level is not high, ranking at the end of the world.
Doha has a long history and is one of the important ports of the Persian Gulf, and although the city is known as the "metropolis of the world", its overall level is far inferior to that of Dubai next door.
Except for the high-rise buildings in the Bay Area's CBD, the entire urban area is old, dilapidated, with a population of less than one million, similar to some prefecture-level cities in China.
Previous searches for pictures of Qatar on the Internet were always just a few pictures of the "Doha Bay Area Building", because the country is also available here.
As for the rest of Qatar, most of them are small-town level, and the country's small cities are near Doha, as far as 80 kilometers.
As for the economy, Qatar has only an oil industry, lacks financial and high-tech companies to create value, and even the skyscrapers in the capital Doha are foreign-owned buildings.
This dilemma reflects the Qatari nation's problem of being so dependent on oil that Qatar is often referred to as the "gas station of the earth" and is good for nothing but selling oil.
Qatar itself is also very nervous, one day the price of oil plummets, or even the oil industry is eliminated, it will become a food, so transformation is necessary.
Qatar has always wanted to make the capital a true "cosmopolitan city", just like "Dubai" next door and even Singapore in Asia. This is not only for their own face, but also to promote economic development and enhance comprehensive national strength.
For Qatar, it is not a question of how much money is spent, but there is a roadblock lying in front of it that cannot be solved - there is no talent.
There are only 500,000 Qatari natives, plus 3 million immigrants, which cannot support the super metropolises of New York and Shanghai.
Qatar also has a sorely short supply of value-creating people, such as skilled people and business elites, who are at the heart of the city and responsible for driving economic development. Qatar itself has almost no such people and does not attract foreigners.
To develop the economy, industrial transformation, it is necessary to attract capital and talent from overseas, money has not been a problem, but in terms of attracting people, Doha obviously does not have this ability.
Therefore, since the beginning of the 21st century, Qatar has planned to build a modern new city to attract foreign high-end talents to live and invest in the country and drive economic development, which is the city of Lucelle, where the main stadium "Lucel Stadium" is located during the World Cup.
The city will not only host the 2022 World Cup, but also next year's Asian Cup, and the Asian Games in 8 years, Lucel is a core city.
The Lucercity project, launched in 2005, plans to build an emerging city of 500,000 people in Lussell, a village 15 kilometers north of Doha.
The city's design and construction technology is in line with the international advanced level, and it is responsible for attracting high-end industries, such as technology enterprises and financial enterprises. The city also serves as a tourist hub, with dedicated resorts and upscale hotels, artificial islands, and world-class shopping centers.
Qatar itself has announced that $50 billion has been smashed on Lucel so far, and the city is now 70% complete, 90% of the property has been sold, and real estate is very hot.
Foreign media believe that in order to build the city of Lucer, by the way to make the city of Lucelle famous, Qatar bid for the World Cup. As long as there is a World Cup, the aristocracy of the country has more enthusiasm for investing in the project, and the more money is spent.
Looking at Lucel and Doha now, the former is much more high-end than the latter.
Second, Qatar spends money to renovate the country, and important projects still look at China
Having said so much about the city of Lucelle, how high is its level of construction?
For example, because the city is too hot, there is actually an "outdoor cooling system" throughout the city, that is, blowing air conditioning to the entire city in the open air, even if the weather in Qatar is 30 degrees, the temperature of the pedestrian street in Lucel is about 23 degrees, which is very true.
Lusell has accelerated construction in recent years, largely completed during the World Cup, and Qatar has only really paid for the World Cup since 2018.
It is planned that Qatar will use 8 stadiums to host the matches.
Among them, in addition to the "Khalifa International Stadium" is renovated, Lusail Stadium, Artumama Stadium, Bay Stadium, Education City Stadium, Janubu Stadium, 974 Stadium, Ahmed. Root. Ali Stadium was all newly built, spending a total of $12 billion.
All of these courses are designed by famous designers, the appearance combines Arabic aesthetics and modern atmosphere, and all buildings have integrated cooling systems, adjustable ceilings for shade, and internal air conditioning to ensure that the temperature of the stadium does not exceed 20 degrees.
Even the lawn of the court can be temperature controlled, so that the grass does not emit heat during the ball game and affect the performance of the players.
Around each stadium, Qatar has built a series of supporting facilities, hotels, pedestrian streets, shopping malls, hospitals, the total cost of these supporting facilities is not less than the stadium, 100 high-end hotels alone, the total value is more than 30 billion US dollars.
The eight World Cup stadiums are relatively close, only the Bay Stadium is farther away, dozens of kilometers away from Doha.
In order to facilitate the transfer of millions of fans, Qatar also spent 35 billion yuan to build a rail transit system to connect eight stadiums, all of which use driverless electric car cars to shuttle between different stadiums 24 hours a day.
This facility not only serves fans, but will be the most important high-speed bus system on Qatar's east coast in the future.
In addition to the stadium and urban transportation, Qatar has also renovated its airport.
Millions of fans flew to Qatar during the World Cup, and the country's Hamad International Airport is old, with low throughput and aging facilities.
Qatar has spent another $15 billion to renovate Hamad Airport's concourse and double it to make it the world's most advanced international airport, surpassing Singapore's Changi Airport as the world's best airport in the past two years.
Finally, the "Pearl Island" resort promoted by Qatar also cost 15 billion US dollars to build.
The island is entirely a product of the "Palm Dubai" next door, which is completely reclaimed by the sea, covers an area of 4 square kilometers, and has villa areas for sale, five-star hotels and office buildings.
In order to make the quality of the beach meet the needs of tourists, the sand here is all desert fine sand imported from Saudi Arabia, which shows that Qataris attach great importance.
However, although Qatar does have money and does not scatter money brainlessly,
Take the "Lusail Stadium" as an example, this building is the most eye-catching in this World Cup, the stadium is large-scale, new technology, in order to ensure the speed and quality of the project, Qatar handed over the project to China.
Therefore, the Lusail Stadium was praised by the domestic media as the "Chinese element of the World Cup", and some netizens ridiculed this as "putting money on themselves", but the Lusail Stadium is indeed 100% "Made in China".
At that time, China Railway Co., Ltd. successfully bid among dozens of enterprises around the world, not only participating in the overall design of the stadium, but also contracting the entire construction, with a project amount of 5.2 billion yuan.
As the main venue of the World Cup, the stadium is the largest stadium in Qatar and the entire Middle East, even bigger than the Bird's Nest.
The stadium can accommodate 88,900 people to watch the game, and in addition to the refrigeration system, temperature-controlled stadium, a huge logistics facility is crammed into it, including security, warehouses, restaurants and bars, water purification systems, fire protection systems, etc.
In order to build the Lusail Stadium, the Chinese side brought a team of several thousand people to Qatar, and the preliminary preparation work took a year, and the Beijing Institute of Architecture and Architecture was responsible for the main design.
In this process, the design of the Lusail Stadium was changed three times, and the Chinese technicians made the Lussell Stadium have solar power generation and internal circulation water purification capabilities in accordance with the energy-saving and environmental protection standards emphasized by Qatar and the local climate characteristics.
And because the local climate is hot and the temperature difference between day and night is large, in order to prevent the steel structure of the stadium from accelerating aging due to thermal expansion and contraction, the Chinese side separated the stadium from the shell, and the metal part was separately "framed" on the ground.
This design is difficult to build, but the course is safer and lasts longer.
After the design was finalized, the Chinese side hired more than 5,000 workers to build the stadium, which began construction at the end of 2016, and the whole project took less than five years, and the safety and quality of life of workers during the construction period were praised by the West.
In addition, heavy industry enterprises such as China Sany, China Precision Industry and China Juli have also deeply participated in the construction of the Lusail Stadium and took the opportunity to make another advertisement internationally.
Three or two cups to make a name for themselves, Qatar could become the leader in the Middle East
Thanks to the Lussell Stadium project, which was praised by the Qatari government, Qatar also contracted another small project, the fan village, to China.
Qatar is a small country, with 10,000 square kilometers of land mostly desert and a concentrated population on the eastern coast. Although the Qatari government has built a large number of hotels, it cannot accommodate millions of fans, so the construction of fan villages is necessary.
In order to reduce costs, Qatar has built a "container fan village", transforming abandoned containers into guest rooms, which is basically another kind of "movable panel room".
The containers in the fan village come from the port of Doha in Qatar, a port city with a large number of abandoned containers, which is also a local product. The Chinese side has undertaken the construction of infrastructure for the fan village, such as roads, water supply and drainage systems, electrical systems and so on.
With the World Cup group stage coming to an end and Qatar eliminated, the hosts are really sad, but the Qatari government should be satisfied.
The heat of the World Cup made the Qatari government very satisfied, and the world's tickets to Qatar were sold out.
Qatar's more than 30,000 hotel suites are also full, and the fan village is even more overcrowded, with many fans having to go to live in Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates next door.
In addition, the advertising effect of the World Cup is incomparable, hundreds of official media and tens of thousands of self-media around the world have poured into Qatar to report the grand event in Qatar in an all-round way.
Qatar paid for Western media to cover the city of Lucerle and experience all the facilities, and even the American and British media spoke highly of the new city, saying:
"Lucel is more of a temperate city than a tropical city than Doha, and with its greenery that makes you forget it's in the desert, with comfortable outdoor climate control and undoubtedly one of the best settlements in the Middle East."
After receiving strong publicity from the international media, the Qatari government also launched the "buy property, give residency" project in a timely manner:
Buying a property of more than $1 million in Lucel, the owner's family can settle in Qatar, enjoy free medical care and free education for Qataris, and enjoy subsidies and tax exemptions for setting up a company in the local area.
So far, the World Cup has gone according to the Qatari government's plan, and Qatar's international appeal is at the top of the Middle East by the end of 2022.
And next year, there will be an Asian Cup in Qatar, 8 stadiums will be fully utilized, and the Asian Games will be held in 2030, Qatar's 220 billion is equivalent to holding three international events, which is worth the money.
If nothing else, by 2030, Qatar will become a commercially developed country. According to the Qatar 2030 National Outlook, in the next 20 years, Qatar will complete the transformation from a "gas station" to a developed country.
The oil industry is about to enter "middle age", various ills have broken out, and the Middle East "oilmen" Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are all seeking change.
Even the most conservative Saudi Arabia has been building desert future cities in recent years, and gradually opening up the country's doors and building a little "special zone" to connect with the world.
However, Saudi Arabia is far inferior to Qatar in opening up due to national system restrictions, and this World Cup may make Qatar a pioneer in the opening up of the Middle East and a leader in the Arab economy.
Literature / Commerce
Resources:
1. "2022 World Cup, "money" to Qatar! , Qu Shuangshi
2. "China Railway Construction won the bid for the Qatar World Cup Main Stadium Project", anon