China bid to host FIBA 2014 World Championship

China aims to make a successful bid for the 2014 FIBA Men's World Championship. But international basketball's governing body is issuing a new challenge, by asking the bidding countries to help to find a sponsor for 2010 to 2014.

China is one of the three countries bidding for the tournament, together with Spain and Italy. Italy is one of the founding members of FIBA, and Spain won the 2006 world championship, so both countries are strong competitors for China.

The future sponsor will need to spend six-million Euros to support FIBA over five-years. That won't be an easy task during the current world economic downturn, and it is turning into one of the biggest issues ahead of the FIBA vote on May 23rd.

Sun Kanglin, director, Beijing municipal sports bureau, said, "Generally speaking, China should be able to walk out of the shadow of the economic downturn faster than other countries. But that doesn't mean no companies from our competitors' countries want to be the partner for FIBA. So the situation for us is not clear yet. We also face big difficulties on this issue."

Interview: Building Asias own demand key to recovery

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

BALI, Indonesia, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Building up the demand of Asian countries, both domestic and intra-regional, is crucial to help Asia recover more quickly than the rest of the world, said Jong-Wha Lee, acting Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank(ADB) in an interview with Xinhua.

"Asian countries should do at least two things. One is to strengthen domestic demand and the other is to make big the regional demand, because this is very difficult time to rely on external demand for their source of growth," said Jong-Wha Lee on the sidelines of ADB's annual meeting ended Tuesday in Bali, Indonesia.

Export-reliant Asian economies are being hit hard by collapsing demand in the United States and Europe, as recession-hit consumers and companies cut back on spending.

ADB estimates that the crisis will keep more than 60 million people in developing Asia trapped in absolute poverty this year, and nearly 100 million more in 2010.

"Fortunately, Asian countries have more room to cut the policy rate, if the situation becomes deteriorating. Asian countries mobilize fiscal stimulus packages very actively, aggressively and very responsibly. So fiscal stimulus packages, especially like those adopted by China, (South) Korea and Japan would help to strengthen domestic demand," he said.

"China has been doing very well. Credit growth still maintains double-digit and actually is increasing. Fiscal stimulus was coming in," said Lee. "This time, China responded very quickly, earlier than other Asian countries and that's why we see some positive signs coming earlier than other countries."

In terms of boosting intra-regional demand, the economist called for cooperative efforts to do it simultaneously, mobilizing resources to build the regional demand.