A total of 463,000 people have applied for volunteers working for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in just four days after global recruitment started for the 34th International Volunteer Day.

The volunteers selected will have the opportunity to work in one of the Beijing, Yanqing, or Zhangjiakou competition zones and play a valuable role in a variety of areas such as sport, media operations, language services and technology.

"People are very enthusiastic about the global recruitment of (Olympic) Games volunteers for Beijing 2022," Yan Cheng, director of the human resources department of the organizing committee, told Xinhua on Monday. "Compared to Beijing 2008, the scale of Games volunteers is smaller and that to a certain extent increases the difficulty to be selected into Beijing 2022 Games volunteers."

"The selection will be conducted in strict accordance with the recruitment requirement and procedures, giving volunteer applicants equal opportunities." 

Beijing is gearing up for the Olympic Games in every way, striving to put green power to use in all venues for carbon neutrality, according to Zhang Jun, the Chinese UN envoy in a UN General Assembly debate on sports for development and peace at the UN headquarters in New York, U.S., on December 9, 2019.

Zhang pledged that China will continue to promote openness in the Olympic Games and through the Beijing games. "We will strengthen sports cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world," Zhang said.

The organizing committee of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games plans to recruit 27,000 volunteers for the Winter Olympic Games and 12,000 volunteers for the Winter Paralympic Games.

(With input from Xinhua News Agency)