Olympic Committee To Save Billions By Outsourcing 2008 Competition To China

BOSTON- The international Olympic committee announced with great excitement that the ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will be Beijing, China, and that moving the competition will literally save the organization billions of dollars.

"We've experienced extremely high programming and operational costs in recent years," said Olympic chairman Robert Twins. "Nobody really thinks about the price of fueling that endlessly-lit torch."

"To put it mildly, it's endless." "But nobody in China seems to mind if you burn all the fuel you want," Twins added. "What a country!"

The 2008 Olympics will hopefully look just like all the other Olympic games seen over the years, with the exception of a line of small print in the corner of the TV that will read MADE IN CHINA.

"We realized that by moving our center of operations to China we would be able to drastically lower our costs while still providing an aesthetically similar version of the ordinary Olympics," Twins concluded. "And we could blow off steam by eating rice and riding bikes all day like they do over there."

The decision comes in the wake of the 2004 Summer Olympics, which were held in Athens, Greece, and featured games in many historical structures that garnered exceedingly large costs for the Olympic committee and the Greek city.

"It was in ours and our viewers' best interests to relocate the competition's location to a country where labor and pollution laws are more conducive to our interests," Twins said.

Factoring into the decision was the cost of the opening ceremonies, which have historically featured exceptionally lavish decorations and displays.

"This year, the representatives from India wanted us to take fifteen dancing elephants, set them on fire, explode them, and then have all the elephant parts turn into roses with the words 'Punjabi 4 Ever' in the center. It would have required us to shoot our wad had we chosen Los Angeles or London."

"In China, that kind of presentation runs you only about 1100 yuan."

Olympic chairman Dan Milton said the Olympics provide a perfect opportunity to make a positive impression on the international community, provide a unique experience for those attending, and give professional athletes a chance to prove their worth.

"In China you can get virtually identical versions of all these things, and they're much, much cheaper," Twins said. "Sure, the positive impression might fall apart in a year, and your child might put the unique experience in his mouth and get lead poisoning. And of course there's a chance that an elderly woman at gunpoint made that athlete's worth. But when you think about it, most people can't tell the difference."

Many critics of the committee's decision cite that the Chinese Olympic games will be of inferior quality and lack the originality of native craftsmanship.

"When you make lowering your standards your number one priority, you inevitably sacrifice quality," said Olympics correspondent Dan Milton. "Of course, you'd probably have to ask Michael Phelps how that feels."

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